A Fork in My Data

My data collection this year has focused on my chemistry class.  Data from this year and others shows students in our district are less likely to take chemistry than those in neighboring districts.  Common assessment data from this year has revealed that chemistry students in my class score substantially lower on the same tests than their counter parts in the next town over who are one to two years younger.  I have always known that due to socioeconomic and other factors that we have more students in need of a lot of support than the students at many nearby schools.  What is new to me (perhaps because I have never had a chance to work with this group before) is that our high achieving students are not working at the same level as high achieving students in surrounding areas.  To compound my dilemma halfway through the school year I have lost about half of my original chemistry students that started in September.  The gap just seems to keep increasing.  This problem is big.

Luckily I have my FBI (Feedback Initiative) coach helping me with an exterior perspective on this problem.  She broke my dilemma down into two separate paths.  The first is chemistry specific– the content that students struggle with and the attitudes of students and adults in my building that keep enrollment so low.  The second I hadn’t consciously recognized as fundamental to my problem.   Now that she pointed it out I know it is what really gets me so fired up about this whole things  - the college readiness of high achieving students in our school and district.  I want to focus here.

Now that I think about it I realize science teachers at LHS have known this is a problem for sometime.  Discussions always spring up around senior project and graduation time as dozens of LHS seniors share their plans to go into medicine or other science related fields.  As yet another student announces they want to be a veterinarian or pediatrician we talk amongst ourselves about who has had that student in class.  Did they take chemistry?  No.  AP Biology?  No.  Physics?  No.  Are they going to be able to compete with their peers when applying for colleges and in college classes?  The answer seems clear.  Too often students seem to choose a higher GPA over the appropriate college prep classes. 

Pursuing this issues seems a bit intimidating as it requires gathering data about students that are not my own, but it seems the right choice to make.  I would really appreciate advice about data you think I should collect to help me investigate this issue!