Community Institutions: Associations with Mexican-origin Children’s Middle School Stem Outcomes

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Integrative Statement

Mexican-origin children are one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population, but are under-represented in the increasingly Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)-driven U.S. economy. Often coming from disadvantaged circumstances, these children’s access to institutional resources may be a key channel for reducing STEM disparities between them and their majority peers. Some research indicates that connecting with community resources is key for Latin American immigrant and/or Mexican-origin children’s educational success (e.g., Dearing et al., 2016). However, almost no empirical research exists on the relation between community resources and children’s STEM progress more generally. The current paper seeks to better understand the extent to which community-based institutional resources such as libraries, non-profit organizations, and businesses help Mexican-origin children have the greatest chances of progressing in STEM.

The paper will integrate a variety of national databases to track Mexican-origin children STEM academic performance and the community resources hypothesized to be supportive of them. It employs data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), a representative study of ~21,500 kindergarteners randomly selected using a multi-stage sampling design within geographic clusters. Children were followed through 8th grade using a variety of assessments, interviews, and informants. This paper focuses on a sample of approximately 15,100 respondents whose immigrant status could be ascertained, with a focus on 1,770 identified Mexican-origin children (Table 1). Preliminary analyses indicate that Mexican-origin children (M = 47.47, SD = 9.59) have significantly lower math achievement scores than their peers (M = 51.59, SD = 9.85) in 8th grade; t(1400) = 12.82, p < .001 (see Figure 1). The paper will integrate these data with publicly available data on community-level resources beyond sociodemographic factors (e.g., National Center for Charitable Statistics and Institute of Museum & Library Services).

Using a multilevel modeling framework with random intercepts and slopes to account for nesting in the data, analyses tested the moderating roles of Mexican-origin status and institutional resources on the associations between children’s math achievement from K through grade 8. Regression estimates indicated that the presence of libraries at kindergarten significantly increased Mexican children’s 8th grade math achievement scores (R=1.18, p < .05). The final paper will report the contextual associations between other non-profit community-based institutional resources and Mexican-origin children’s STEM outcomes throughout elementary and middle school. Analyses will also explicitly estimate selection factors to partially account for endogenous measurable confounds that need to be controlled when studying these processes. Results will be discussed with regard to policy implications that promote Mexican-origin children’s STEM participation.

Authors

• Robert Julius Anastasio, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Tama Leventhal, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rob Crosnoe, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author