Harvestin' time!

OK, so I'm not a real farmer but I am currently gathering, organizing and storing data for my action research project.  I am gathering attendance data from the prior school year and entering it on my google docs spreadshseet, as well as attendance data from the start of this school year up until now to run a comparison of pre and post PlascoTrac integration.  PlascoTrac is the program being used by our administration to generate up to the minute reports of truancy and absences and while it promises reductions in those numbers of students that are gone everyday, when followed as instructed. Time will tell (or the data will show) the impact the program is having overall.  I have calculated the results from last year and last year our average daily attendance was around 94.7% in a school of a little over 800 students.  This year I only have the first 60 days recorded but at the end of the year, the overall attendance will tell one side of the story. The other side of the data collection story is the qualitative, that being the effort our administrators and front office put every day in creating the reports and reaching those students that are absent each class period to find out what is going out.  Regardless of what my research says, our administrators and teachers work hard to make sure as many students are in the classroom as possible every day.  Stay tuned for more updates.