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The Impact of College- and University-run High School Summer Programs on Students’ End of High School STEM Career Aspirations

Descriptive statistics:
– Students of color were more heavily represented among high school summer program participants, relative to their counterparts in the control group.
– There was no statistically significant difference in parents with four-year college degrees between participants and nonparticipants.
– Students who participated in a high school STEM summer program were significantly more likely to have STEM tutoring, compared with nonparticipants.
– On average, summer program participants reported significantly higher SAT mathematics scores and took more mathematics courses than nonparticipants.
– Students who participated in a high school STEM summer program were more likely to have STEM career aspirations at both the beginning and end of high school.

Logistic Regressions:
– Students who reported STEM career aspirations at the beginning of high school had much greater odds of reporting STEM aspirations at the end of high school relative to their peers who did not.
– Males had 2.2 times greater odds of reporting end of high school STEM career  aspirations relative to their female counterparts.
– The number of mathematics courses a student completed in high school was also a significant predictor of end of high school STEM career aspirations. A one course increase was associated with 1.2 times greater odds of reporting end of high school STEM career aspirations.
– Students’ SAT math scores were also statistically significant. A 100 point increase in SAT mathematics score was associated with a 26% increase in the odds of reporting end of high school STEM career aspirations.
– Students who participated in a high school STEM summer program had 1.4 times the odds of indicating end of high school STEM career aspirations relative to those who did not participate in a summer program
– Students who participated in a high school summer program that showed them the real-life relevance of STEM had odds that were 1.8 times those of students who did not participate in a program.
– Students who indicated that they participated in a summer program that did not show them the real-life relevance of STEM were statistically no different from students who did not participate in a program at all in terms of their end of high school STEM aspirations.
– There were no statistically significant interaction terms.

Inequality in Reading and Math Skills Forms Mainly before Kindergarten: A Replication, and Partial Correction, of ‘‘Are Schools the Great Equalizer?’’

– When the authors use the new test scores, they find that variance is substantial at the start of kindergarten and does not grow but actually shrinks over the next two to three years. This finding, which was not evident in the original Great Equalizer
study, implicates the years before kindergarten as the primary source of inequality in elementary reading and math.
– Total score variance grows during most summers and shrinks during most school years, suggesting that schools reduce inequality overall.
– Changes in inequality are small after kindergarten and do not replicate consistently across grades, subjects, or cohorts. That said, socioeconomic gaps tend to shrink during the school year and grow during the summer, while the black-white gap tends to follow the opposite pattern.
– Socioeconomic gaps tend to shrink during the school year and grow during the summer, while the black-white gap tends to follow the opposite pattern.
– Inequality in basic reading and math skill originates mainly in early childhood, before kindergarten begins.

Building Better Bridges into STEM: A Synthesis of 25 Years of Literature on STEM Summer Bridge Programs

– The authors identify 14 distinct bridge program goals that can be organized into three categories: academic success goals, psychosocial goals, and department-level goals.
– Academic success goals include: Remediation- Providing Students with Foundational Knowledge in a STEM Domain, Improving Student Content Knowledge in a Discipline, Maximizing Student GPA, Increasing Student Retention, and Increasing Student Graduation Rate from College.
– Psychosocial goals include: Increasing Interest in the Major, Improving Student Sense of Belonging, Increasing Student Sense of Preparedness, Increasing Student Self-Efficacy, Networking with Students, and Networking with Faculty.
– Department-level goals include Recruiting Students to the Major and Enhancing Diversity in the Major
– The authors’ recommendations include: encouraging bridge developers and evaluators to publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, reporting unsuccessful iterations to help develop more successful future programs, reporting more information about the details of implementing bridge programs (including costs and resources, recruitment and selection, size, curriculum development, and follow-up information), and aligning bridge goals with measured outcomes.