Practicum Reflection Report

Practicum Reflection

This paper will summarize the effort and implementation of a summer-long project per requirement of the capstone course for the Masters of Education in Educational Leadership at the University of West Florida. This paper will be split into two major components. The first section of the paper will discuss the project as defined in Practicum A. I will discuss the following aspects concerning this project: motivation, method, and conclusion. The second section of the paper will discuss my activities and observations with regard to Practicum B. Both of these practicums were completed under the supervision of the principal at Keys Gate Charter High School (KGCHS) in Homestead, FL.

Practicum A: Toward a Data-Driven Instruction

This approach could be likened to an IQ test. Furthermore, this approach could be justified if a teacher wanted to know his or her students abilities at the beginning of the year, making it easier to determine the background knowledge of the students. However, it falls short in several parameters. First, the RIT scores are normed using school districts across the United States. It is suggested that since most states across the Union have implemented the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), many differences exist as to what each student is learning at each grade level, particularly when dealing with high school grades (Thomas & Edson, 2014). For instance, the CCSS suggest a streamlined approach for the mathematics curriculum in the high school, incorporating topics in algebra, geometry, and statistics throughout the four years of math curriculum. Some states, such as Florida, have chosen to maintain the traditional sequenced approach of Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 throughout the high school curriculum. A typical ninth-grade student in Algebra 1 in Florida may not encounter topics of plane geometry until the tenth grade, whereas a student in New York, which uses the blended curriculum, is introduced to both Algebra and Geometry topics during their first year of high school. Furthermore, Virginia, Indiana,

During the professional development, the teachers would have the opportunity explore the program and learn how to use it for instructional planning purposes. The vision would have teachers adhering to the following four-step process. First, students are tested. Second, the teacher obtains the results and input their student’s scores into the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet then automatically calculates the student RIT ranges and groups students by ability levels. Third, the teacher plans his or her instruction depending on his or her student’s deficiencies. Fourth, the students are retested and the process begins over again. It is this data cycle that O’Neal (2012) suggests for the development of a data-driven decision