Mission: The Intercultural Development Research Association is an independent, non-profit organization. Our mission is to achieve equal educational opportunity for every child through strong public schools that prepare all students to access and succeed in college. IDRA strengthens and transforms public education by providing dynamic training; useful research, evaluation, and frameworks for action; timely policy analyses; and innovative materials and programs. We are committed to the IDRA valuing philosophy, respecting the knowledge and skills of the individuals we work with and building on the strengths of the students and parents in their schools.
Project: IDRA conducted COVID-19 focused participatory action research (PAR) and hired four student researchers to lead the project over a three-month period. The phases of the project consisted of building, distributing, and analyzing responses from the survey to produce a student-centered advocacy agenda. Within the survey the students chose to focus on four main categories: Discipline in School, Education Equity, Home Stressors, and At-Home Learning. Throughout the project, IDRA provided trainings to the students and opportunities to learn from experts and supported the student researchers as they created the survey by hosting sessions to identify survey themes and formulate specific questions.
Outcome: The students were able to exceed their goal of distributing 100 surveys and acquired close to 120 surveys completed by classmates in 28 different zip codes in the San Antonio area.