Composing STEM: The STEM Coursework of Adolescents Navigating Diverse High Schools

• In Event: 3-218 - Context matters for STEM outcomes: Factors that help or hinder underrepresented students in K-college education

Integrative Statement

Due to its important implications for college achievement (National Science Board, 2018) and success on the 21st century job market (Csikszentmihalyi & Schneider, 2000; Hira, 2010), high school STEM achievement remains a topic of interest among researchers and policymakers alike, especially for Hispanic students, an increasingly large proportion of students in U.S. public schools (Fry & Lopez, 2012; National Science Board, 2015). Our understanding of such achievement can be informed by developmental theory (Lerner 2006), particularly the emphasis on seeing achievement as an individual path embedded in ecological context. For example, students enroll in and drop out of STEM coursework over time. This dynamic path occurs within a school setting. Hispanic students are not in one type of school, and the composition and context of schools is a likely contributor to the opportunities and motivations that Hispanic students will have to take advanced coursework, like Calculus, at any one time and over time (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Crosnoe 2005; Frost, 2007; Wang & Eccles, 2013).

Integrating the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 with the Civil Rights Data Collection of 2011-12, this presentation features: 1) latent profile analyses evaluating the different racial composition of schools in which 2,800 nationally representative Hispanic students are enrolled, and 2) logistic regressions evaluating the likelihood of persistence in math to higher difficulty courses during the transitions from 9th to 10th, 10th to 11th, and 11th to 12th grade. Further, these analyses include an interaction, whereby math difficulty level and school grade interact to influence student decisions to continue in the math course sequence.

Results show that students typically reside in one of three school types: a majority White school (50% of the sample), a majority Hispanic school (35%), or a diverse school with a Black plurality (15%). Although Hispanic students move through the math course sequence at similar rates in later school years, these students are less likely to take coursework of a higher difficulty in 10th grade than they took in 9th grade when they are in majority White schools than when in other school types. This pattern, however, may not paint the full picture of opportunities available to Hispanic students, as majority White schools more commonly offer Calculus than do majority Hispanic or diverse schools.

Findings from this analysis have important implications for schools and those who create school policies. Specifically, they suggest a need for White majority schools to better support Hispanic students, as those schools provide the highest potential for math advancement but have the lowest rate of persistence during the critical transition from 9th to 10th grade (McCallumore & Sparapani, 2010). Hispanic majority and diverse schools may better support students in early high school years, but currently are lacking with regard to providing opportunities for students to maximize their math skill attainment. Reconciling the differences between these school composition types should expand opportunities to a growing demographic that will be vital to the success of the American school system and institutions beyond.

Authors

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

• Matthew Snidal, The University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author