Postsecondary Matriculation Patterns in Denver High Schools

• In Event: 26.036 - Pathways to STEM Among High-Achieving Low-Income High School Students of Color in Two Cities

Abstract

Shavit, Arum, and Gamoran (2007) argue that despite the expansion of postsecondary educational opportunities, higher education is still markedly stratified in the U.S., with those who are already advantaged gaining entrance to more selective schools, despite the fact that greater numbers of under-represented students have access to college. Kerckhoff (1995) raises an important question regarding the extent to which where students are located in the structure of educational opportunities at each stage empirically limits their possible locations at the next stage. As he notes, we must “view these structural locations both as hierarchically ranked and as providing varied opportunities for later moves and access to various kinds and levels of attainment” (1995, p. 324). A focus on where students are located in the structure of educational opportunities and the extent to which location at one stage empirically limits their possible locations at the next stage (Kerckoff, 2001 p. 8) constitutes a critically important question, and one that has, to date, received remarkably little empirical attention in the scholarly literature. In point of fact, this question has received no attention with regard to pathways to STEM.
In this paper, we draw on survey data gathered at the end of the Denver focal students’ high school career (Spring 2013), at the time of their first enrollment in college (Fall 2013) and to be gathered in the Fall (2014) of their second year in college. These data allow us to track the students’ college-related circumstances, decisions, and choices over time. We use Barron’s (2013) scale of college selectivity to determine the competitiveness of the colleges these students attend and compare them across schools and gender. We have also developed a category scheme for STEM majors that differentiates among students pursuing “academic STEM” majors, e.g., physics or biochemistry, “professional STEM” majors, e.g., medicine, and “technical STEM” majors, e.g., audio technician, certified nursing assistant. These categories give us a more fine-grained picture of STEM in college than has often been used in other studies and another way of comparing across high schools and gender. Finally, because one of four Denver high schools was more highly capitalized than the others, we will give special attention to differences between its focal students and those at the three less-capitalized schools.
Preliminary results (note that the Fall 2014 have yet to be collected) suggest that focal students at the highly capitalized high school were more likely to attend competitive colleges, but less likely to pursue STEM, than those at the other high schools. Overall, girls were just as likely to pursue STEM as boys, and students from STEM-focused schools were no more likely to pursue STEM than their counterparts at traditional, comprehensive high schools. These results contribute fine-grained ethnographic data to Kerckhoff’s hypothesis, suggesting how promising school models, opportunity structures, and student populations combine to produce structurally persistent outcomes.

Authors

• Margaret A. Eisenhart, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Sarah Ohle, University of Colorado - Boulder