Social Class and the STEM Career Pipeline: An Ethnographic Investigation of Opportunity Structures in High-Poverty Versus Affluent High School

  1. Students in high-poverty schools experience concentrated disadvantage- fewer qualified teachers, higher teacher turnover, less demanding coursework, high dropout rates and lower levels of parental involvement.
  2. Forcing high-poverty schools to focus on trying to ensure that students pass harms top-performing students.
  3. The high-poverty school did not offer high-level math and science courses that are needed to feed students into the STEM pipeline.
  4. The students at the high-poverty school lacked the social capital to be adequately prepared for applying to colleges.
  5. Guidance counselors at both schools were providing very little assistance in terms of advocating for STEM.