Impact of Anti-Vaccination Movement on Public Understanding of Science

Despite decades of scientific research, many still have reservations about the safety, efficacy and morality of immunization. However, most of these reservations are based off of false or incorrectly interpreted information. Through research on the spread of this information, this project aims to help educators better understand why and how this information is spread, and what can be changes can be made to improve this dissemination of and response to scientific information.

Identifying the Connection Between Low Wages and Obesity in Santa Clara County

This project focuses on some of the causes of obesity. The research will focus on the correlation between wages in Santa Clara County and what solutions may be implemented to help lower the obesity rate. The problem of obesity is extensive and needs to be resolved as higher BMI rates can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and many types of cancer. The obesity rate in the Santa Clara County stands at 25.4% and a large percent of that population work low-income jobs.

Effectiveness of Academic Support/Resources post DreamCatchers

Dreamcatchers is a tutoring resource for low-income middle school students in PAUSD. This year, Dreamcatchers does not have plans to inform parents of the academic resources available to their children in/outside of PAUSD when they can no longer attend Dreamcatchers.This project aims to give these parents information on these resources and give them a pre and post-survey to evaluate the effectiveness of the project's efforts.

Educational Inequality in Lower Income Communities in the Bay Area

The economic increase of the Bay Area due to the growth of the tech sector has lead to unparalleled wealth across the Bay Area. Despite this growth, that wealth has not been spread evenly across the Bay Area and there are many communities across the Bay Area that are considered low income. Across the US and the rest of the world, economic inequality often leads to a discrepancies in educational attainment, exacerbating these problems and preventing social mobility. The Bay Area has a different form of inequality, chiefly caused by the growth of one specific sector and the resulting gentrification, so researching the schools in the lower income communities will reveal whether the same educational discrepancies exist.

Autism and Poverty

At least 1 in 59 children are on the autism spectrum in the U.S. (CDC, 2019). These rates are likely higher in low-income communities. People with autism are at a higher risk for ADHD, sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and obesity. There are no papers on PubMed, the world’s leading medical database, that compare CBT, ABA, and RDI (three treatment methods). Such a comparison could identify which treatment would be best in low-income places.

How Different Kinds of Media Affect Perception of Mental Health

I put together a podcast about mental health, which includes interviews about people's personal experiences. A focus group will be surveyed about their perceptions of mental health. Then, the podcast will be played to the same focus group, and they will be surveyed on their perception of mental health after the podcast. The two sets of surveys will be compared to determine whether and how the podcast changed people's perception of mental health.

How High Schools in America Support Students with Mental Health Issues

For this project, I will be going to different high schools in the Bay Area and meeting with their guidance counselors and administration. I will ask them what programs and services they offer to support students at school with mental health issues. I will then use this information to evaluate each school. The results will be used to create a baseline of what all students need.

The Voluntary Transfer Program and the Racial Achievement Gap in PAUSD

The “achievement gap” is the persistent disparity in educational performance among various groups and is a commonly discussed issue in today’s society. In reality, there are numerous achievement gaps: the gender achievement gap, socioeconomic status achievement gap, learning disabilities achievement gap, and the racial achievement gap. When people talk about a generic achievement gap, it is generally assumed that it is the racial achievement gap. But why is race inevitably linked to underachievement? Many people fail to see that this racial achievement gap started hundreds of years ago and is a result of historically discriminating against minorities. Just because we no longer support discrimination laws does not mean we are suddenly a color-blind society. “Historical conditions create a social and psychological environment for African American students, including peer sanctions for ‘acting white,’ that causes disengagement from or devaluing of school and therefore poorer performance,” (Fordham and Ogbu 1986). In other words, our country’s history of discrimination has created a negative learning climate for African American students. When they value academic success or other “white values,” they are looked down upon or given a penalty by their peers. Economic discrimination and inequality are caused by an unbalance in things such as job availability, wages or prices of goods and services. This, along with national health and housing policies that put minority children and their families at risk, are forces that drive minority academic underachievement. “Roughly a third of the black-white achievement gap can be attributed to measured family characteristics” (Jencks and Phillips 1998), which are factors such as income, education level, and race. “We cannot talk about children at risk without making those connections, without recognizing the pervasive, negative effects of racism on our educational institutions and on the children those institutions must educate. For educational disparity is part of a social web of inequality” (Jacob, 1991). “Because high-minority schools are low achieving on average, the concentration of minority students in these schools may perpetuate racial achievement gaps and especially harm high-achieving minority students” (Hanselman, 2014). When students feel that the general consensus of the larger community is that minority students are underachieving, they are more likely to have lower expectations for themselves and consequently perpetuate the negative stereotypes. The questions guiding this research are: “How does busing minority students out of their home district affect their self-identity and self-confidence?” and “How does busing minority students out of their home district affect the racial achievement gap in the district to which they are bused?”

Mental Health in the Juvenile Justice System

Youths who have gone through the Juvenile Justice System are often underrepresented and overlooked. These youths often face irreversible changes to their mental health, such as the development of mental health disorders or the worsening of pre-existing conditions. Using data collected through a series of interviews and focus groups, we are going to create a proposal to submit to the city on how to improve the treatment of kids during and after their incarceration.

Increasing Access to Higher Education for Low-Income Students

There is a college access problem for low-income students. Nationwide efforts have been made to increase access to higher education, and nationwide efforts have been made to increase access, but “while half of all people from high-income families have a bachelor’s degree by age 25, just 1 in 10 people from low-income families do” (Bailey, Dynarski, 2011). This negatively impacts low-income students, because college degrees are becoming increasingly necessary in order to increase socioeconomic standing.

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