Quantitative Data Analysis Project for School Improvement

Task:

Effective analysis of data is integral to making decisions influencing a school, classroom, or program. This project will involve choosing an existing data set at one’s district, school site, or place of employment to analyze in order to answer guiding questions. The data set may be also be retrieved via public sources such as those posted online by the California Department of Education. 
Some examples of projects are listed below. Again, these are just ideas. You are free (and encouraged) to come up with your own!
1.Analysis of test scores (ex: SBAC, Curriculum Based Measures or other formative/summative assessment) scores in ELA or math for students receiving special education services from one year to the next to determine if there is a trend or to inform instruction. 
2.Examining quantitative data on Curriculum Based Measures following the incorporation of a new instructional method (PBL, cooperative learning, etc.).
3.Analyze referral, detention, or expulsion rates for students with special needs over a selected period of time to identify potential patterns or trends.

I.Project Background:  For the background of the project, you will introduce the topic guiding your quantitative evaluation using a clear, logical explanation that leads from the context and background to your question and project idea. This section should provide the reader with…
A.Project name and a 1-2 sentence description of proposed project, description of data set to be analyzed, and where the data will come from or be retrieved
B.At least one guiding question for the evaluation. This question should be answered through data analysis.  Ex:  Have rates of detention and/or expulsion for students with special needs at ABC school increased, decreased, or remained the same in the last 5 academic years?
C.Problem statement:  State what problem or issue the analysis will address. Why is the analysis necessary at this time? Cite from the literature as to what has been done in the past to address the problem or issue, and how effective it was.
D.A purpose statement.  Your purpose should discuss what you aim to accomplish with the analysis.  What benefits do you hope this analysis will provide? 

II.Review of Literature:  This section should provide an overview of literature pertaining to the topic you are addressing in your analysis. The major themes of the literature related to the research/project question(s) should be examined in an exemplary manner.  At least 10 quality sources (i.e., articles from peer reviewed journals) must be cited and all sources cannot be more than 5 years old, unless it is a seminal piece for your topic. Using the guiding question above as an example, a literature review addressing this topic would include research on the rates at which students with special needs are suffer from disciplinary action, how that impact their education, social-emotional skills, etc.  The literature review should provide a foundation and justification for key components of the project using the most current peer-reviewed sources of information.  The literature review should not be a paper by paper summary, but a synthesis of important work related to your topic.

III.  Methods & Project Plan:

A.Project Plan: The project plan should be a detailed description of how you plan to carry out the project. It should be detailed enough so that someone wanting to replicate the project with a similar data set could do so without difficulty.  The project plan should include the following information:
1.Project overview (feel free to use information from Part I)
2.Personnel/stakeholders to be involved
3.Role of all persons involved in the project
4.Goals of the project
5.Timeline for implementation from start of project to project completion
6.Materials to be used
7.Ethical Considerations: A description of how data (and those whose data are included in the data set) will be protected is included.  How will you ensure confidentiality?
8.Description of Procedures for analysis:
a.The specific methodology is clearly explained for the research study or project. This is your method of quantitative analysis. How will you analyze your data set?
b.How Data Set will be Analyzed: Will you be using descriptive and/or inferential statistics?  Ex: Correlation, regression, t-test, ANOVA, etc.
c.Software you will use to analyze the data is discussed. Ex: Excel, Google Sheets, SPSS, SAS, etc.
9.Procedures for project implementation
10.A plan to assess project success. How will you know that you answered your guiding question and met the goals stated in #4?

IV.  Presentation of Project: The results of the analysis must be clearly presented in detail with accompanying graphs, tables or presentation materials as appropriate.  This section should also contain a clear introduction with the guiding question(s), and a clear summary of findings relative to the guiding questions. 
V.  Project Implications:  The discussion section should provide a detailed connection between the results obtained by the researcher with the current literature on the topic. Information in this section should include…
A.A summary of findings and unexpected findings
B.Information on how the project contributed to a body of knowledge or provided benefits stated in the ‘Purpose’ statement
C.A discussion of how validity was thoroughly addressed
D.Limitations of the project and future areas for study
E.Concluding remarks and in-depth reflection are provided.  What worked or went well?  What would have done differently?  Any other observations or comments relating to the experience you had conducting the analysis?