First Day.

This marks the official start of my dissertation process (not exactly true, as I've been thinking about this topic for about a year... but it's been on the backburner for most of that time because of other responsibilities of a doctoral student).

For those who have come across my blog by accident, I am sorry because this will be a boring blog that will discuss, for the most part, my struggles with the dissertation. It is only available for the public because (a) I'm not tech-savvy enough (in reality, just too lazy) to mark it as private; and (b) in some weird psychological way, it keeps me honest in writing, thinking, and immersing myself in this project.

Research Question: something to do with treatment of special education students in charter schools (I say "treatment" because I am thinking about achievement as well as enrollment).
Methods: looking at national databases to see if I can access their data, and perhaps merge them (this is what has been holding up the process).

Update:
(1) Lit Review: I need to gather more sources because my lit review is quite weak and hasn't been touched since spring 2007 (and then, only because I was working on a different project re: special ed and charters).
(2) Databases: I have gathered articles re: merging databases that I should read, to see if this is feasible.

Current Struggles:
(1) Databases: concerned that the quantitative aspect will be beyond my reach -- in terms of the merging process as well as the sophisticated statistical analyses.
(2) Special Ed categories: what will I be focusing on (there are about 12 categories) -- anyone who has marked themselves as special ed on the given test? There are so many different types and levels of severity.
(3) Achievement: everyone has discussed charter school achievement! Will it help that I've narrowed it down to special ed?
(4) Enrollment: I'm curious about this steering concept, but not sure how it can be measured (without gathering extra data through surveys and such).