Oh my God, i have been forgetting to blog.  Everything is moving so fat.  Ok, we went to AA campus and had a session with SW 683 students.  We conducted a presentation based on the questions that Prof. Sue Ann forwarded.  Students has an opportunity to meet us and afterwards get a little acquainted.  We agreed that we should visit every 2-3 weeks as a part of the process.  Meeting with the class helps to build the relationship with the evaluation team, all of which facilitates a positive experience for students.  Chris and i met immediately after this session to de-brief and discuss next steps.  Next steps were to continue to work on grantee memo and accompanying  questions.  After a series of revisions and reviews, this was sent out Oct. 1st.

We next worked on a tentative outline for the site visits.  Our primary site visit we focused on in this first round was the UP--greatest logistic challenge.  After several phone calls and emails to UP grantees we have as of Oct. 2nd, put together a tentative schedule based on grantee availability and logistical arrangements.  Hopefully some time this week we should firm this up.

Another very important and really critical part of our work is the whole issue and development of student level data. Chris and Kia Hunter (Ferris State U).  Team members have been in a series of conversations and meetings with key parties--MDE, ARL, Lansing leadership team, grantees, CEPE etc. about accessing student level data.  Seems to be a challenging terrain of FERPA, different perspectives, turf issues and what's in it  for me?  All of which represent the usual configuration when trying to get disparate parties to see the common good.goal.

To that end....I was part of a MDE conference call with most of the aforementioned last week Monday (Sept. 24th).  We concluded at the end that we are still working on making access a reality.  I came up with the idea of getting parents involved in a way that might move the disparate parties closer together via some sort of advocacy campaign.  Dr. Gant thought this an idea to explore.  The Lansing team gave it a thumbs up so we will begin to see what that might look like.

Chris and i met Monday to further discuss the UP site visits, check in on the next steps for the team and brainstorm about the parent involvement piece.  We talked about the UP logistics Tuesday Oct. 2 and now we are awaiting response from all of the UP partners.