Research Proposal

Research Question
How would a no zero homework policy effect course failure rates at Pennfield High School?
Sample
Describe: The sample that will be used is comprised of semester grade reports from two teachers at Pennfield High School. One freshman English teacher and a sophomore level Civics/Economics course will be examined. Gradebooks were saved as PDF’s and are accessible on the schools network. The student population at Pennfield High School numbers around 700 and is made up of middle to lower income students, with many students on a free or reduced lunch program. The school is located on the northern border of Battle Creek, Michigan and has a mix of rural and urban areas. The district prides itself on the amount of technology that is available to students and staff. Every staff member was given a Gateway table, a projector, and classroom amplification system at the start of the 2008 school year. That same year, every freshman was given a gateway laptop free to use 24 hours a day during the school year. For the 2009 school year the laptop program will be expanded to include every student in the high school.
Justify: This sampling suites this research project because the concept of eliminating zeros is being pushed by the administration. The concept was introduced at a staff meeting and was not well received by the staff. The data that will be used, two teacher’s gradebooks for the 2008/09 school year, will provide a data set that is familiar to both staff and administrators. This familiarity will help give the research results validity to the staff and administrators.
Study design, data sources, procedures, & analysis
Study Design: The number of course failures earned without a no zero homework policy will be tallied from the 2008-09 school year. These tallies will be taken from the online gradebooks of two teachers. The researcher will look for a correlation between the number of zeros on homework assignments, unit test grades, and overall semester grade before removing the homework assignments.
Once that is completed, all zeros on homework assignments will be removed from the gradebooks and the researcher will then look at the correlation between unit test grades, and overall semester grade without allowing zeros. The correlation is important to examine if and when this research proposal is presented to the staff at Pennfield High School, and possibly at a School Board meeting. This correlation will show the difference, if any, between student achievement on unit test’s with and without zeros.
Data Sources: The data is coming from a district mandated online grade book system that teachers are required to use to post grades. This system keeps grades online which allows students, parents, and teachers the ability to view student grades and assignments in his/her classes. The researcher has asked for and received permission to use semester grades for two classes at Pennfield High School. To the right is a sample of one students semester two grade in an Economics class without taking away zeros for missing homework assignments. The student failed the semester while the teacher allowed homework to not be completed or turned in.
Below is the same student when zeros for missing work are removed:
Looking at the red text box, it is apparent that the overall percentage of 57% is closer to his/her cumulative final exam grade of 63% than his original 45.2%.
Procedure and data analysis: The first step in the research process will be to find and pull out the students that failed the two classes from the online grade book. The amount of points that the student missed because of missing homework will then be subtracted from the total points possible and the total points that the student earned for the semester. A new grade will be calculated using the new totals to seeif they are now passing. Data will be compiled of the number of students that are now passing without allowing any zeros, and how many students still failed.
Finding these data sets will provide quality data to present to the necessary personal at the school that has the ability to make this change in philosophy possible. The data is going to show how the staff at Pennfield High School could lower their course failure rates dramatically. Course failure rates are an ever increasing element of progression in No Child Left Behind eligibility as the requirements for No Child Left Behind continue to increase. Too often, teachers and students take the easy way out and do not complete homework or do not assign a remediation session in order to complete the homework. Having a no zero homework policy would force teachers to hold their students accountable for work that they assign and force the staff to examine what kind of homework they are assigning. This will also reduce the amount of busy work that teachers sometimes assign. For the students, this would force them to complete the assignments that were assigned and designed to encourage understanding of the Michigan Merit Curriculum.