Intellectual Merit: This is a study of the sequence of educational choices and outcomes leading women and men to a college major in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subject: high school STEM courses taken, learning and performance measured by grades and state examinations, and eventual college major. Research questions center on factors that, based on sociology of gender theory, are expected to affect students' decisions to major in a STEM area in college, and to affect women and men differently, including high school structure and culture, the gender composition of teachers and peers, curriculum, school-college connections, and size.
The objectives are to identify factors that increase women's propensity to major in STEM fields, how these factors vary by race, language ability, immigrant status, and poverty, and how the transition from high school to college may serve to ameliorate gender inequities. The student- and school-level data on several cohorts of the large and diverse New York City (NYC) public high school student population and the subset that goes to the City University of New York (CUNY) is unique by its size, diversity, the wealth of variables available, and its longitudinal nature that allows for a hierarchical linear model (HLM) analysis using students and high schools as separate levels. Large sample sizes and access to gender, race, immigration, and poverty measures at the student level, provide ample power for substantive subgroup analyses.
The methodology moves beyond single outcome analysis, including test scores on several subject examinations, high school course taking in several subjects and college majors. The HLM framework links these together and the various individual- and school-level influences on these variables are analyzed. The interaction of educational institutions and student-level heterogeneity are a focus. Rather than assume that high schools affect participation in STEM in the same way for all students, the diversity of NYC high schools and students is used to estimate interaction effects of high school environments on various student subgroups. This method produces a more nuanced set of results than was previously possible using methodologies that assumed a single effect for women and men of all subgroups.
Broader Impacts: The broader impacts center on the contribution to understanding how high school reforms can foster greater female participation in STEM. Disadvantaged women (who tend to be overrepresented in large urban school systems) in STEM, especially those who make it into public colleges, are understudied and would greatly benefit from policy reform. Despite the geographic focus on NYC, women pursuing STEM in large, diverse school systems, and working and middle class students in public colleges are exactly the populations which policy reforms are expected to benefit the most, and they are understudied because of lack of data. CUNY, with senior and community colleges, of varying levels and requirements, and programs for students from the struggling to the gifted, is representative of many college situations that students encounter elsewhere. This research will also enlighten the nationwide debate on improving college access and success though community colleges. Through a partnership with the NYC Department of Education and wide outreach and communication, the study?s findings will advance the ongoing discussion about how districts might impact the gender gap in STEM.
