Draft Action Research Project Progress Report
How can we decrease the number of students who are losing credit in
Geometry? This
is a question I’ve watched my district face for the last thirteen years. Students are failing Geometry at an alarming
rate. When they fail Geometry, the
students must repeat the course for credit.
Many of the students are choosing not to take summer school. They are choosing to wait a semester to
retake the second semester of Geometry.
This puts the district in a position where the student must be placed
into Algebra 2 before they have received full credit in Geometry. This seems to set the student up for failure
of another required math course – Algebra 2.
The same thing is happening for students who fail a semester of Algebra
1. If they only fail one semester and do
not take summer school, they are being placed into Geometry, etc. It’s a travesty. Ultimately, if a student fails any semester
of a core course, they should make it up in summer school. But for some reason, whether it is financial,
lack of motivation, or decreased parental involvement, this is not happening.
So the school system is faced with a mess.
How can you help this type of student be successful?
I’ve watched my district make many attempts
to help alleviate this situation. We’ve
tried offering “trailer” courses in the fall.
This is where the student can take the second half of Geometry in the
fall, as an extra course, while taking the fall semester of Algebra 2. This helped a few students, but ultimately it
was unsuccessful because you were forcing a weak math student to take two
different math courses in a day. They
became tired, classes became unruly, and both students & teachers gave up. We then tried offering a trailer course in
the spring. In this case, students who
failed the fall semester of Geometry signed up for a double block of Geometry
in the spring. They too spent two hours
in the class room. The first half of the semester they received credit for the
fall, the second half of the semester they received credit for the spring. This was somewhat successful, but the
students who didn’t pass the fall part (again) gave up and were a nuisance for
the remainder of the semester to those who were trying to receive credit for
the spring. Courses like these are very
difficult to teach because you are taking a weak math student and giving them
twice as much math and they hate it.
Last year two of our schools offered a
Geometry Recovery School. If a student failed a six weeks, they were allowed to
participate in an after school program for tutoring and retesting twice a
week. It was somewhat successful. After we weeded out the students who just
felt like attendance was enough, the workers persevered. This recovery school was held for the first,
second, and third six weeks. This year
we offered it for the first six weeks, but since then it has been “tweaked” to
be a re-test policy. When a student
fails a test, they must fill out a contract, attend two tutoring sessions and
then retake the test for a high grade of a 70.
This 70 can replace the test, and any daily grades associated with the
test.
My vision for this action research study is
that the retest policy can be accepted district wide for all Geometry
courses. If it is successful, it can
also work for many other core courses to help with their success also. I will be the sole and primary person
conducting my action research.
