My goal for this blog was never to post on a daily basis like many people do. When I realized that my posts were pages long, while most blog posts are only a paragraph, I decided that I should strive for a post a week. So I am just as surprised as my readers that this is my second post in as many days, but I ran across some information to support yesterday's post and I can't help sharing it.

I've mentioned before that I am carrying eighteen hours of graduate credit this semester to try to finish up my Master's program and get my administration certification by the end of the summer. One of my six classes is Methods of Research, a web-based course on quantitative and qualitative educational research facilitated (I hesitate to use the word "taught") by a member of the counseling department faculty. This is, by far, my least favorite class at SEMO, and I can't wait until it's over!

The title of my research paper is "The Principal’s Commitment to the School Climate and the Development of the Vision of Learning." If you click on the internship link on the right-hand side of my blog and go to project 6, you can read the updated version as I continue writing it. Chapter Two is due this Friday, and I am frantically working to complete the review of related literature. In doing so, I am skimming all of my references for useable information and copying and pasting the text into my paper. When I finish (hopefully tomorrow morning), I will go through all of the information to paraphrase, delete, quote, etc. to finish the chapter.

One of the resources that I reviewed earlier today is the Southern Regional Education Board's "Teachers in the Workplace: A Staff Development Approach That Benefits Faculty and Students." This is an interesting publication from the group that created High Schools That Work, the school improvement philosophy that our high school uses. While there is no information in the twenty-two page document that would be useful for my paper, I did stumble across a very interesting set of statistics to support my theory that the view that one has of public education depends on his or her role, and therefore more than one education system exists in the United States:

• A majority of the general public (60 percent) believe schools should place more emphasis on academic skills. Most teachers (66 percent) think schools already do so.
• A majority of the general public (52 percent) think students need to learn more mathematics, science and computer skills. Most teachers think students learn enough of these subjects.
• Almost half (47 percent) of the public and 63 percent of community leaders do not believe a high school diploma guarantees that a young person has learned the basics. Seven in 10 teachers think it does.