Underrepresented Minorities and Employment in STEM Fields: An Exploratory Analysis of the Stanford Education Data Archive
As the United States struggles to stay economically competitive, STEM fields – including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – have been a main point of focus in education, policy, and business circles. As the STEM fields grow and STEM education reform takes place, diversity in STEM...
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| Language: | en_US |
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The University of Arizona.
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625024 http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/625024 |
| Summary: | As the United States struggles to stay economically competitive, STEM fields – including
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – have been a main point of focus in
education, policy, and business circles. As the STEM fields grow and STEM education reform
takes place, diversity in STEM has emerged as a top priority, in order to gain perspective and to
allow for total inclusivity. Underrepresented minorities, specifically Black and Hispanic
students, must play a larger role in the growth of STEM innovation, but their struggle to do so
often begins at an early age. To explore determinants of inequalities in STEM success, I use the
Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) data archive, Stanford Education Data
Archive (SEDA), which provides mathematics score gaps between Black, Hispanic, and White
students, as well as a host of other covariates. After creating visuals displaying the data and
running a regression on multiple variables, I find that Hispanic gaps are steadily decreasing over
time and grade, while Black gaps show a generally positive trend. Subsequently, in contrast to
initial assumptions, Hispanic math score gaps did not appear to decrease as STEM employment
increased, while Black math score gaps did appear to decrease as STEM employment increased. |
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