Whether or not charter schools offer a less segregated experience than the public schools to the increasing numbers of students they serve.
Current Selections
ClearExamining STEM Bachelor's Degree Completion for Students with Differing Propensities at College Entry
1) What aspects of students’ demographic, socioeconomic, and academic backgrounds influence selecting a STEM major during the first year of college? 2) To what extent do students’ first year propensities toward a STEM education moderate the influence that first year financial aid and declaring a STEM major, as well as academic performance and integration in the academic and social environments have on STEM degree completion?
School Segregation Under Color-Blind Jurisprudence: The Case of North Carolina
Measure segregation in terms of uneveness in racial enrollment patterns both between schools and within schools.
Do Housing Choice Voucher Holders Live Near Good Schools?
Do housing voucher holders live next to good schools?
Ethnic Segregation in Arizona Charter Schools
Is there evidence that charter schools are “skimming” White students?
Stepping Over the Color Line: African-American Students in White Suburban Schools
A complex conversation about the separate but unequal situation in many schools today, resulting in a call for a re-examination of school choice policies across the country to bring about more racial and social class integration
Student and high-school characteristics related to completing a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) major in college
What is the relationship between completing a particular high-school mathematics curriculum and completing a STEM major in college? What is the relationship between student and high-school characteristics and performance in college level mathematics? Can the relationship be generalized across high schools of varying sizes, percentages of college-bound students, SES, and location in the US?
Are ELL Students Underrepresented in Charter Schools? Demographic Trends in New York City, 2006-2008
Empirically examines the gap in English Language Learner (ELL) enrollment between charter schools and traditional public schools and looks at trends in this gap over several years of data in New York City.
Racial and Economic Segregation and Educational Outcomes: One Tale-Two Cities
Racial & economic segregation of public schools in Philadelphia and Houston.
Does Immigration Affect whether U.S. Natives Major in Science and Engineering?
Does the amount of immigrants have an impact on the amount of U.S. natives that major in STEM?
How Do Academic Achievement and Gender Affect the Earnings of STEM Majors? A Propensity Score Matching Approach
This study examines how the earnings benefits of choosing a STEM major vary both by gender and across the distribution of academic achievement, accounting for the selection into college major using propensity score matching. The purpose of this study is to estimate the earnings gap between STEM and non-STEM majors both across gender and across the distribution of achievement test scores. These estimates improve our understanding of the relationship between STEM major choice and early labor-market earnings, and how this relationship varies across gender.
More Than One Gap: Dropout Rate Gaps Between and Among Black, Hispanic, and White Students
Examine variables associated with dropout behavior as a measure of achievement gaps.
Who Wants to Have a Career in Science or Math? Exploring Adolescents' Future Aspirations by Gender and Race/Ethnicity
The authors investigate how different racial/ethnic and gender subgroups compare to White males in terms of adolescent career aspirations in science and math, further considering the role that achievement and attitudes may play in shaping disparities at this early point in occupational trajectories.
Science Aspirations, Capital, and Family Habitus: How Families Shape Children's Engagement and Identification With Science
How and why is science a more ‘‘thinkable”
aspiration in some families and not others?
Trends in the Black-White Achievement Gap: Clarifying the Meaning of Within-and Between-School Achievement Gaps
Decompose black-white achievement gap trends between 1971 and 2004 into trends in within-and between-school differences.
Attrition in STEM Fields at a Liberal Arts College: The Importance of Grades and Pre-Collegiate Preferences
To quantify the important factors responsible for the high attrition rates in STEM majors, particularly in relation to gender.
"What Comes to Mind When You Think of Science? The Perfumery!": Documenting Science-Related Cultural Learning Pathways Across Contexts and Timescales
How do everyday moments – experienced across settings, pursuits, social groups, and time – result in scientific learning, expertise development, and identification?
Student Segregation and Achievement Tracking in Year-Round Schools
Studied multitrack year-round education (MT-YRE) schools (system that differentiates school attendance groups) in California.
Mind the Gap: Student Researchers Use Secondary Data to Explore Disparities in STEM Education
1) How do students’ math and science self-efficacies relate to students’ post-secondary education plans? Are there differences by gender? 2) Is gender or race related to students’ taking of computer science courses? In the student’s choice of a computer science career? 3) Do students with individualized education plans (IEPs) differ from general education students in their expectations to obtain a degree post high school? Of the students that have an IEP, are there differences in their expectations for post-secondary plans by socioeconomic status? 4) Does participating in extracurricular activities (EA) have an effect on a student’s plans to attend college? Does SES status affect the relationship between participation and educational plans?
Pressurizing the STEM Pipeline: an Expectancy-Value Theory Analysis of Youths' STEM Attitudes
Through the lens of expectancy-value theory (EVT), what are the potential factors that influence STEM attitudes in the context of computing intervention?
Peer Effects in North Carolina Public Schools
Estimate the relationship between peer characteristics and student achievement and to infer whether any such relationship is casual in nature.
Indicators of Success in STEM Majors: A Cohort Study
If there were factors attributed to STEM students who graduated that might serve as predictors or indicators of successful navigation in STEM majors?
Gendered Choices of STEM Subjects for Matriculation Are Not Driven by Prior Differences in Mathematical Achievement
– Gender streaming among STEM fields appears already in secondary school.
– Girls are under-represented in physics, IT and advanced mathematics.
– This pattern is not driven by gender differences in prior achievement in numeracy.
– Socio-economic disadvantage has a greater adverse effect on boys than on girls.
– There is significantly less gender streaming among STEM fields in all-girls schools.
– Students with a language background other than English choose STEM fields with greater frequency than other students, reflecting their comparative advantage, while exhibiting more markedly gendered subject choices, indicating a role for cultural factors.
The Roots of STEM Achievement: An Analysis of Persistence and Attainment in STEM Majors
1. What factors predict that incoming STEM majors who graduate will attain a STEM degree?
2. What elements affect incoming STEM majors’ persistence in college?
3. What variables influence non-STEM majors who graduate college to switch to and attain a degree in a STEM field?
4. What factors motivate undecided majors to declare and graduate with a STEM degree?
Laying the Tracks for Successful Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education: What Can We Learn from Comparisons of Immigrant-Native Achievement in the USA?
This paper examines the immigrant-native achievement gap in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in college in the USA.
Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion
Does having a small class size in K through 3rd have an impact on postsecondary outcomes?
Boom for Whom? Education, Desegregation, and Development in Charlotte
A history of the use and demise of the mandatory busing plan in Charlotte, specifically the political and economic consequences of busing that facilitated the city’s economic boom and enhancement of civic capacity
Characteristics of US Students That Pursued a STEM Major and Factors That Predicted Their Persistence in Degree Completion
1) What are the characteristics of students’ who declared a STEM major? 2)What are the characteristics of students who completed a STEM major? 3)What factors influence students who persisted to complete a STEM major?
K-12 Race-Conscious Student Assignment Policies: Law, Social Science and Diversity
Examines the legality of K-12 race-conscious student assignment policies
Decomposing the Racial Gap in STEM Major Attrition: A Course-Level Investigation
This paper examines differences in STEM retention between minority and non-minority
undergraduate students. It examines the role of ability in the switching decision and timing, they estimate STEM and non-STEM ability, and then compare the joint distribution of students who switch out of STEM versus STEM stayers.
The Impact of Group Diversity on Performance and Knowledge Spillover- An Experiment in a College Classroom
Examined how group characteristics affect productivity.
A Method for Identifying Variables for Predicting STEM Enrollment
This research examines demographic, academic, attitudinal, andexperiential data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) for over 12,000 students at two universities to test a methodology for identifying variables showing significant differences between students intending to major in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) versus non-STEM subjects. Identifying potential candidates for STEM enrollment necessi-tates a methodology for analyzing databases containing demo-graphic, academic performance, and attitudinal information acrossa wide array of students. Finding variables that are consistently significant predictors of STEM interest and capability across a range of population subgroups requires the ability to examine a large set of variables since some variables may be significant only for specific subgroups.
The Role of Peers and Grades in Determining Major Persistence in the Sciences
This paper examines the determinants of entering and then persisting in physical and life science majors. Also, it investigates the impact of one’s peers on major persistence.
Choosing an Undergraduate STEM Major: Family Socioeconomic Status, Individual, and Institutional Factors
The purpose of this study wasto examine college students’ enrollment decision in STEM majors with a focus on students’ family SES. This study examinedwhether there is systematic association between students’ family SES and their enrollment in STEM majorsand if so, what the direction and magnitude of the association is. The overarching research question that guided this study was: Do the enrollment in STEM majors vary for students with different family SES background? Specifically, this study addressedthe following research questions: (1) Is students’ family SES related to their decision of whether to enroll in a STEM major in college? (2) Does the enrollment decision in STEM fields vary for students with different college investment levels? and (3) Does the enrollment decision in STEM fields vary at institutions with different scales and levels of STEM major offerings?
Macrosystem Analysis of Programs and Strategies to Increase Underrepresented Populations in the Geosciences
– Key approaches identified in the literature to advance participation of underrepresented populations in the geosciences include: mentoring, peer support networks and community building, bridge programs, pedagogies, undergraduate research experiences, institutional climate and culture, specific geoscience education programs.
– In mentorship of underrepresented students, interactions of minority students with their research mentor can result in increased likelihood of graduate school pursuit and in choosing a career in scientific research.
– A faculty member’s commitment to fostering the student’s academic success results in positive mentor relationship outcomes regardless of the racial similarity between mentor and mentee.
– As it pertains to the geosciences in particular, positive student outcomes of mentoring have been demonstrated in geoscience-specific programs.
– Macrosystem perspectives of peer support networks and community building efforts play an important role in fostering student engagement and retention in STEM majors and positive student outcomes.
– Many positive student outcomes are associated with bridge programs, including increased interest in the geosciences, relationship building between student and faculty members, development of research skills, knowledge gained regarding careers in STEM and the geosciences, knowledge gained about the college application process, and increased self-efficacy.