Do STEM Enrichment Programs Enhance College Readiness for Racial and Ethnic Minorities?

• In Event: 394 - Section on Sociology of Education Paper Session. Evaluating Educational Programs and Policies: Challenges and Successes

Abstract

Racial and ethnic disparities in students’ engagement with scientific and technological subjects threaten to exacerbate long-term educational and labor-market prospects in coming decades. STEM engagement programs that target underrepresented students early in middle school and high school promise to reduce racial and ethnic achievement and attainment gaps in STEM. While most of the literature in this area focuses on disparities at the post-secondary level, none (to our knowledge) have examined the role of STEM engagement programs during the critical first few years of high school when students are solidifying their academic trajectories. We apply propensity score matching models to the first two waves (grades 9 – 11) of data from the High School Longitudinal Study and find that participation in STEM engagement programs mostly benefits whites’ and Asians’ college readiness, while having no statistically significant effect on black and Latino students. Sensitivity analyses reveal that these results are robust to unobserved sources of bias and confirm that while white and Asian students are benefiting from these programs, blacks and Latinos generally are not with one caveat – Latinos’ are more likely to take either the ACT or SAT due to having participated in a STEM engagement program.

Authors

• Steven Elias Alvarado, Cornell University

• Paul Muniz, Cornell University