Postsecondary Matriculation Patterns in High Schools in Buffalo

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

Abstract

Employing comparable follow-up method and analysis as outlined in paper 3 above, this paper explores postsecondary matriculation patterns among our primary sample of 48 low-income focal students in non-selective schools in Buffalo. Here we track the relationship between high school course-taking patterns, matriculation outcomes, and intended as well as declared college major. Comparing focal students in our 4 low-income, high minority schools with a secondary sample of students in more privileged high schools in the same geographic area, we illustrate dramatic differences in broad-based school opportunity structures that collectively work to encourage markedly different college attendance patterns and relationship to STEM. Additionally, pronounced differences in the college knowledge (cultural capital) that students bring with them exist between the two differentially located school types, further compounding stark differences in patterns and processes of college linking.
We will propose and employ a broad-based measure of the “absolute” and relative structural locations of the Buffalo-area focal students and their 7 high schools (4 in the original Buffalo sample plus 3 additional schools that draw more highly capitalized students as noted above), most particularly with respect to opportunities for STEM. This will be developed with reference to student course-taking patterns in math and science (math/science pipeline), including Regent’s/AP/IB courses; percent of students who achieve “mastery” in state math and science tests; and ACT/SAT scores. We will then chart selectivity of college (Barron’s, 2013; 2 versus 4 year; and high/middle/low competitiveness within the 4-year sector) at which students in each sampled high school matriculate, offering comparisons with both Denver and national data reported by Lee, Weis, Kang and Liu (2012). This will enable us to further locate our students with regard to structural location of high school and linked pathways to college.
We will also take account of perceived pathways to college and STEM among focal students and parents across high school location. Among the Buffalo population, for example, students and parents expressed strong commitments to post-secondary education, but none had much knowledge of STEM careers or possibilities. Data indicate that knowledge of STEM careers was vague, or drawn from popular culture, e.g., TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and CSI. Students subsequently exhibit misaligned ambitions when they said they wanted to be doctors or engineers, for example, but did not plan to take additional math or science. Data from the low-income Buffalo population will be contrasted with those drawn from 3 geographically comparable privileged area institutions, and Denver. To close this session, we will look across opportunity structures, STEM choices, and college matriculations in privileged versus non-privileged schools in these two iconic cities, carefully theorizing the ways in which a range of relevant factors including high school opportunity structures, “figured worlds” of STEM and “spaces of authoring,” collectively work to produce differences in matriculation outcomes and continuation in STEM both within and across two cities that are differentially located in the global economy.

Authors

• Rachel Fix Dominguez, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Andrea Nikischer, Buffalo State College - SUNY

• Lois Weis, University at Buffalo - SUNY