Exit Interview

Content:

(1) What is your essential question and answers?  What is your best answer and why?

 

My essential question is "How can a nonprofit best promote high school education to socioeconomically disadvantaged teenagers in Los Angeles?" My first answer is "To push for a reform in education that emphasizes workforce training. My second answer is "To support teachers with effective technology integration within educational environments." My third answer is "To ensure students are granted equal educational opportunity." My best answer by far is my third answer, because educational opportunity is extremely dependent upon socioeconomic status. Improving the educational opportunities for those who do not necessarily have high economic status will repair the wide gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unless this gap is repaired, technological implementation or effective workforce training will not be effective.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

 

Lots and lots and lots of research.  I had to think a lot about the underlying problems of education, being that it's so integrated with everything else. I considered technology and its enormous on society, and I thought maybe it could be used effectively. I considered utilizing an education based on the workforce, and that wasn't quite right. In the end, I had to acknowledge all the factors of society and education, and I soon considered that the socioeconomic gap in our society - the widening gap between the rich and the poor - was to blame. All of this was backed by outside research.

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

 

 The biggest problem I had faced in answering my essential question was the integration of all aspects. Education is a very big field, and has a lot to correspond with the health of the economy, the integrity of the workforce, and societal well-being. This made it very challenging to form good answers because I had to acknowledge all aspects of the problem.

 

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

 

Both of these articles are by very prestigious institutions, contain great citations, and provide very good insight into my third answer.

Duncan, Arne. "A Blueprint for Reform." United States Department of Education, 2008. Web. March 2010. http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/blueprint.pdf

 Brown, Cynthia. "Ensuring Equal Opportunity in Public Education." Center For American Progress, 2008. Web. June 2008. http://www.broadeducation.org/asset/1128-ensuring%20equal%20opportunity.pdf#page=1&zoom=auto,0,800

Independent Component 2

"Education is the most powerful tool you can use to change the world." 

- Nelson Mandela.

LITERAL
(a) “I, Adrian Gallegos, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
(b) My source that I have used the most that can be referenced is the following: Means Barbara. "Technology and Education Change: Focus on Student Learning." SRI International, 2010. Web. 2010. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ882507.pdf
(c) I have completed the log.
(d) I have completed a mock grant iniative, in which I have chosen International Polytechnic High School as a hypothetical school, and I have established a grant in which a specific amount of money goes to specific causes. I have chosen to use the hypothetical grant for a more rigorous math and science program, and I defend my reasoning.  
INTERPRETIVE 
The mock grant proposal definitely took 30 hours of work to research, write, and assemble in its entirety. It is similar to a large research paper, and required lots of research, editing, writing potential educational plans, looking at other schools as models, and finally assembling all of my materials.
APPLIED
This component helped me answer my essential question because writing a grant proposal is one of the primary aspects of a nonprofit, and understanding what a nonprofit organization has the power to do is an integral aspect to my Senior Project.

My full independent component can be found at this link.

*I suggest downloading it to avoid formatting errors found in Google Drive. 

Post Spring Break!

Over the break, I have found something markedly interesting about my topic. As it turns out, education has an even larger correlation with socioeconomic status than I have previously thought.

According to Laura Post's article "Inequality in Teaching & Schooling", by Stanford University, there is almost a linear relationship between the median amount of income per household to the mean performance on standardized tests and G.P.A. In addition, high-income white students outperform all students of all other given ethnicities on all areas of achievement. The wealthiest schools on average, have individual student expenditures 4-6 times more than low income schools. One of the infographics can be found below.

Before this read, I was under the impression that income and social inequality were social constructs that were behind us in the past, but I now understand that they still pose extremely large threats within our society, and will continue to hinder our progress if we don't do something. This might also make for an interesting turn in my senior project. Hmmm...