Data is powerful, especially in the realm of education. At times, it may be self-affirming while on the other hand, it makes you question your current practices and policies because the data identifies further ramifications that make us have to dig deeper to determine what’s going on as well as devising solutions to the problems we face as educators. But, most importantly, it tells a story about the students we serve, which then we are called to do something about it as teachers and administrators. Over the last few days, I have been able to analyze several data sets that have been collected from the California Department of Education. The data sets I analyzed encompass all of the 2018 California K-12 School demographics, state testing scores, attendance rates, suspension rates, and funding mechanisms. My goal was to transform the data into several self-affirming stories of what the data is telling us as well as how we dig deeper into the stories the data is illustrating to determine new insights into we how to solve the problems we have identified.
Author Archives: Matthew Rhoads, Ed.D.
Doctoral Defense – Mission Accomplished & A Short Version of my Study’s Findings/Conclusions
My experience defending my dissertation as well as a short version of my study’s findings!
Doctoral Research Update! Winter 2019 – Recruiting Participants
Winter 2019 doctoral research update, recruiting participants, future projects, and ACSA conference!
Doctoral Research Update – Working Title and Progress on Chapters 1, 2, and 3.
Doctoral Research Update – Working Title and Progress on Chapters 1, 2, and 3: Chapter 1, 2, and 3 of my dissertation are coming along very well. While revision and editing are needed for each chapter, major progress has been made this summer!
Summer 2018 China Trip
This summer I was lucky enough to travel to China for my doctoral program. Our trip spanned 15 days and encompassed the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi’an. During our stay in China, we had meetings with K-12 and post-secondary educators, international education attorney’s, and officials from the Confucius Institute. In this blog post, I will outline two focal points pertaining to K-12 education and higher education I was able to research and analyze over the course of the trip. In addition, I will discuss some fun sidenotes and tourist destinations we were able to visit during this trip.
Evaluating California’s Tax System: Ranking the Tax System and Determining the Best Tax to Fund Education
California’s tax code is a complex system that has been reformed numerous times over the course of its history. Currently, California has some of the highest overall taxes in the United States. Politicians in California argue about taxes during every election cycle as well as when they determine the state’s budget. Democrats advocate for increasingContinue reading “Evaluating California’s Tax System: Ranking the Tax System and Determining the Best Tax to Fund Education”
Financing Education in California: An Analysis of Proposition 30 and 55
A short analysis of Proposition 30 and 50 for my education finance class at Concordia, University Irvine.
New Book: Igniting Your Teaching with Educational Technology – A Resource for New Teachers
A New Book! I would like to announce the release of Igniting Your Teaching with Educational Technology: A Resource for New Teachers I helped write with my doctoral cohort. As a cohort, we worked extremely hard to complete this project over the course of the last quarter. I am proud of our accomplishment and I extremelyContinue reading “New Book: Igniting Your Teaching with Educational Technology – A Resource for New Teachers”
Doctoral Research and New Book Coming Soon!
In this blog post, I am going to be discussing my doctoral research as well as a book I am helping co-author regarding Edtech tools for new teachers coming out in early 2018. Doctoral Research First, I am really getting into my doctoral research. My research involves data mining (DM), data-driven decision making (DDDM),Continue reading “Doctoral Research and New Book Coming Soon!”
Where are we in Education Today? Big Data and Educational Data Mining
Background of Big Data and Educational Data Mining
History of Data Mining
This blogpost is about the history of data mining…
How does Data Mining work?
In this blogpost, I will discuss how data mining works within the knowledge discovery process.