Guidance or Gatekeeping: An Audit Examination of Racial Discrimination in U.S. Premiere STEM Schools

• In Event: Probing Structural Inequality: Expansion of Audit Examinations to Educational Contexts

Abstract

Despite STEM fields representing the fastest growing sector both nationally and globally (Vilorio, 2014), US students’ global STEM ranking continue to decrease, demonstrating the inadequacy of the US education system’s STEM preparation for all students (DeSilver, 2017; National Science Foundation, 2012: 2014). Moreover, data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) indicates that ethnic/racial minority youth may be disproportionately affected by the STEM education deficit in the US and, as a result, are underrepresented in STEM fields (National Science Foundation, 2017; National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016; Musu-Gillette et al., 2016). In light of these alarming reports, US students’ STEM engagement and proficiency has become a primary concern. Selective public high schools, referred to as high achieving STEM secondary schools, have embraced STEM education, putting extensive time and resources in offering hands-on STEM experiences, rigorous STEM coursework, and advanced placement curriculum that stimulates students’ STEM engagement and subsequent collegiate and career participation (Erdogan & Stuessy, 2015; Morse, 2018). Despite prior research highlighting their ability to advance students through the STEM pipeline (Means, House, Young, Wang, & Lynch, 2013), little research has been conducted on ethnic/racial minority experiences within high achieving STEM institutions, nor examined mechanisms within these institutions that may be perpetuating ethnic/racial minority underrepresentation in STEM.

Guided by The Life Course Perspective’s (Gee, Walsemann, & Brondolo, 2012) component of sensitive periods (i.e., a developmental stage where experiences of racial discrimination have a more profound effect on subsequent life stages), the current study used audit techniques to examine racial bias in guidance counselors among 251 of the US’ highest achieving STEM secondary schools, as reported in US News and World Report. The selected guidance counselors received emails from fictitious mothers whose names were designed to elicit their ethnicity/race. To ensure that recipients noticed the name of the sender, racialized names were shown three times: 1) in the sender field, 2) in the email body, and 3) in the signature. Email content was constructed to contain simple queries that did not require significant time for recipients to answer. Institution prestige, geographic region, and school racial and socioeconomic diversity were examined as moderators.

Logistic regressions accounting for cluster robust standard errors were conducted in Mplus. Results revealed that Latina senders were the least likely to receive a response from guidance counselors at high achieving STEM highs schools. Institution prestige, geographic region, and school socioeconomic diversity moderated the relation between race and response such that Latina and African America inquirers were disproportionately disadvantaged in these contexts. Findings of racial discrimination from high achieving STEM secondary schools demonstrate structural limitations in ethnic/racial minority access to advanced STEM curriculum and opportunities, while privileging dominant group members’ advancement through the STEM pipeline. Results are discussed in terms of both educational and lifelong implications of experiencing racial discrimination from high achieving STEM secondary schools.

Authors

• Jayley Ann Janssen, Arizona State University

• Eleanor Seaton, Arizona State University

• Justin Jager, Arizona State University

• Cindy Miller, ASU