Estimating the responsiveness of college applications to the likelihood of acceptance and financial assistance: Evidence from Texas

This paper investigates the impact of Texas’s Top Ten Percent Rule—which grants automatic to any public college in Texas for Texas high school graduates who graduate in the top decile—and subsequent targeted recruitment programs initiated by Texas’s flagship universities. Using data on SAT test-takers in Texas from 1996 to 2004, we find that the Top Ten Percent Rule affects the set of colleges that students consider, and the targeted recruitment programs are able to attract the attention of students from poor high schools that were not traditional sources of students for the flagships in Texas.     

STEM Doctoral Completion of Underrepresented Minority Students: Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Participation in the Doctoral Workforce

This article is a result of the analysis of student-level enrollment records from twenty-one research universities in the United States, and it contributes to a more robust understanding of timely completion of STEM doctorates by underrepresented minority students. Using multivariate logit regression models, findings indicated that Hispanic/Latino and students from other underrepresented groups complete at higher rates than do their Black/African American counterparts. Findings also indicated that prior master’s degrees and institutional participation in doctoral completion programs positively correlate with STEM doctoral completion. We conclude by offering insights and recommendations for graduate schools about how to increase the STEM doctoral attainment rate of students from underrepresented groups.     

Applying early decision: Student and college incentives and outcomes

Colleges’ early decision (ED) admission policies require accepted students to commit to attend the school without comparing outside options. With data from two liberal arts schools we find evidence that students with higher willingness and ability to pay and lower measured ability levels are more likely to apply ED. Applying ED raises the probability of acceptance by 40 percentage points. We address the potential selection of students into ED, including estimating an upper bound of 46 percentage points following Altonji, Elder, and Taber (2005). One college appears to use the ED process to screen applicants with high SAT scores and female applicants, thereby avoiding the potential adverse selection of applicants in the regular decision process. Finally, even conditional on higher socioeconomic status and other observable characteristics, applying ED is correlated with higher financial aid packages, perhaps because the college's financial aid resources are higher earlier in the admission process.     

Can you leave high school behind?

In recent years, many states, including California, Texas, and Oregon, have changed admissions policies to increase access to public universities for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. A key concern, however, is how these students will perform. This paper examines the relationship between high school quality and student success in college. Using administrative data from the University of Texas at Austin, we take advantage of the unique policy environment provided by Texas's Top 10% automatic admissions law, which has not only increased the diversity of high schools in the state that send students to the university, but also provides an admission criteria based on a sole observable characteristic: high school class rank. We find that high school characteristics do affect student performance, and these effects seem more pronounced for women and low-income students. In addition, there is little evidence that the effects of high school characteristics decay over students’ time in college.     

Patterns and Factors of High School Dropout Risks of Racial and Linguistic Groups

This study examined the dropout trajectories of racial and linguistic minority students and explored the effects of students' contextual factors on their high school dropout risks. Our motivation was to identify the dropout patterns of Black, Hispanic, and Hispanic English language learner (ELL) students, who have comparatively high dropout rates, and to suggest ways to promote high school completion. We employed a survival analysis using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The results showed that the 3 minority groups displayed significantly higher dropout risks than the White group. The overall pattern of dropout risks increased over time, with the dropout rates of the Black students high in the 1st and 2nd years of high school and the highest dropout rates for Hispanic ELL students in their senior year. A gender difference was found among the students, with male students having higher dropout risks than female students. It was also found that students' positive relationships with their teachers were associated with lower dropout risks.     

Hidden Currents in the STEM Pipeline: Insights From the Dyschronous Life Episodes of a Minority Female STEM Teacher

In this article, I use the idea of dyschrony to describe the multiple disjunctures experienced in a Hispanic woman's life as she struggled to gain full membership in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) community. Despite having earned a doctoral degree in chemistry and a teaching position in a STEM school, she was cognizant of how gender and race had marginalized her and her minority female students, making them feel like border members of the STEM community. She had formed a solidarity group within the STEM school. As I apply the construct of dyschrony to analyze the in-depth interviews with the teacher, I illuminate tensions in the STEM pipeline and suggest that one should be critical about the promise of social mobility. The forming of solidarity groups may contribute to positive experiences of minority girls in STEM schools. Dyschrony may be used as a helpful analytic construct to unpack the forces contributing to minority women's struggles in STEM fields and understand why they might leave.     

The effect of a middle grades STEM initiative on students’ cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes

This study is an evaluation of a STEM initiative in one school district with five participating middle schools. I used two quasi-experimental methods including instrumental variables and inverse propensity score weights to test the effect of the initiative on students’ cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. Overall, students at STEM schools demonstrated lower science achievement (p < .05). Subgroup analyses showed that Limited English Proficient students at STEM schools demonstrated increased reading achievement and fewer unexcused absences (p < .001). Black students demonstrated increased grit (p < .01), and Hispanic students demonstrated increased control and relevance in learning (p < .001).     

Equity in college physics student learning: A critical quantitative intersectionality investigation

We investigated the intersectional nature of race/racism and gender/sexism in broad scale inequities in physics student learning using a critical quantitative intersectionality. To provide transparency and create a nuanced picture of learning, we problematized the measurement of equity by using two competing operationalizations of equity: Equity of Individuality and Equality of Learning. These two models led to conflicting conclusions. The analyses used hierarchical linear models to examine student's conceptual learning as measured by gains in scores on research-based assessments administered as pretests and posttests. The data came from the Learning About STEM Student Outcomes' (LASSO) national database and included data from 13,857 students in 187 first-semester college physics courses. Findings showed differences in student gains across gender and race. Large gender differences existed for White and Hispanic students but not for Asian, Black, and Pacific Islander students. The models predicted larger gains for students in collaborative learning than in lecture-based courses. The Equity of Individuality operationalization indicated that collaborative instruction improved equity because all groups learned more with collaborative learning. The Equality of Learning operationalization indicated that collaborative instruction did not improve equity because differences between groups were unaffected. We discuss the implications of these mixed findings and identify areas for future research using critical quantitative perspectives in education research.     

Does Student Effort Respond to Incentives? Evidence from a Guaranteed College Admissions Program

This paper studies the effects of guaranteed college admission on student effort and achievement. In 1997, Texas enacted the “Top Ten Percent” law, which guarantees admission to any public college for students in the top ten percent of their high school class. In practice, eligible students become aware of their admission status at the end of their junior year in high school—more than 1 year prior to attending college. We use data from a large, urban school district and regression discontinuity methods to test for effects on effort. Our preferred estimates show that students who barely qualify for the admissions guarantee earn marginally lower grades and take fewer advanced courses in their senior year compared to students who do not qualify for guaranteed admission and learn their status in the final senior year term. We find qualitatively similar results when limiting our sample to finer bandwidths, although the estimates are imprecise.     

The Association Between a Community College’s Teacher Education Program and the 4-year Graduation Rates of Black and Hispanic Teacher Education Students

ABSTRACT

In response to a shortage of qualified Black and Hispanic teachers, community colleges (CC) have developed certificate programs and Associate of Arts degrees in teacher education to address shortages of minority teachers in the nation’s classrooms. We examined one CC’s effectiveness in transferring Black and Hispanic students to university teacher education programs and the association with Black and Hispanic students graduating with a bachelor’s degree. We compared enrollment and transfer student data for the 2003 community college teacher education program cohort to graduation data for native-to-university students of two 4-year universities. Data were analyzed using chi square and phi coefficients. The CC Black and Hispanic students graduated at the same rates as the native-to-university students and higher than their peers of the same races, regardless of major, who began at 2-year colleges at the national level. We encourage CC teacher education programs to invest resources to increase enrollment of Black and Hispanic students to address the growing need for minority teachers to serve in urban communities.     

The Pursuit of Excellence: An Analysis of the Honors College Application and Enrollment Decision for a Large Public University

Honors colleges housed in public universities began only in the last half century, but have become nearly ubiquitous over the last 20?years. This paper, using recent data from the oldest stand-alone honors college in the country, is the first to study how the application and enrollment decisions of honors college students differ from the general population of students considering a large public university. Overall, the empirical results suggest that honors college applicants and enrollees are drawn from the right-tail of its host institution??s ability distribution, independent of residency status. Nonetheless, honors-college applicants are still more likely to enroll in selective and liberal arts institutions than the general pool of admits to a large public university, which is only partially offset by the effect of honors-college admission. It follows that honors colleges enroll academically stronger, but not the strongest, admits to a large public university.     

The Operation of Bureaus of Educational Research–With Particular Reference to Wisconsin

ABSTRACT

Advanced mathematics and science coursetaking is critical in building the foundation for students to advance through the STEM pathway—from high school to college to career. To invigorate students’ persistence in STEM fields, high schools have been introducing applied STEM courses into the curriculum as a way to reinforce concepts learned in traditional mathematics and science classes and to motivate students’ interests in a long-term pursuit of these areas. The author examines the role of taking applied STEM courses early in high school on taking advanced mathematics and science courses later in high school. The results suggest a positive link between early applied STEM coursetaking and later advanced mathematics and science coursetaking—one that is delineated by specific type of applied STEM course and by individual-level demographic characteristics. The findings of this study thus support policymakers and practitioners’ efforts to expand the STEM curriculum beyond traditional subjects. Continuing to do so may be one way to expand the number of students persisting in STEM.     

A deeper dive,a wider pool: Preschool benefits sustain to first grade on a broader set of outcomes

The current study provides new evidence on the sustained benefits of preschool attendance on a broader range of skills—both academic and executive functioning (EF)—than many prior studies have examined. Using propensity score methods, we predicted children's (N = 920, M age at 1st = 6.5 years) literacy, language, math, and EF skills in kindergarten and again at first-grade (2020–2021) based on whether they had attended public preschool (school-based pre-k; Head Start) versus no preschool. In our race-ethnically diverse sample of children (48% Hispanic/Latinx; 21% Black; 14% White; 9% Native American; 9% multiracial) from low-income families, preschool attenders showed advantages on English literacy, English language, and math in kindergarten, which mostly persisted into first-grade. Preschool did not boost EF in kindergarten or first-grade.     

Entry to University in the United States: The role of SATs and Advanced Placement in a competitive sector

This paper briefly explores the US secondary education system, concentrating on the variables that affect students' entrance into university and the effects of increased competition for places in the most highly selective universities. The SAT (formerly known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test) programme is highlighted, since it comprises the most common form of national standardised assessment for university bound students. With the recent increase in competition for the most highly prized university places, and growing numbers of US students entering university, another national assessment programme is gaining popularity—the Advanced Placement (AP) Program—which is then analysed.     

Phenomenological understanding of Black counselor education students at Predominately White Institutions,Historically Black Colleges and Universities,and Hispanic Serving Institutions

The experiences of Black counseling students at Predominantly White Institutions are well documented. Using a transcendental phenomenological environmental research design, we explored how 12 Black counselor education graduates experienced their respective institutions across three types of academic institutions—Predominantly White Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions. Three salient themes emerged—(1) exposure, (2) real-life exposure, and (3) cultural oasis. The researchers also discussed implications for counselor education programs and future research.     

Unmasking the Inequitable Discipline Experiences of Urban Black Girls: Implications for Urban Educational Stakeholders

There is a large body of research examining the discipline experiences of Black males (Lewis et al. in Souls: A Critical Journey of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 2009; Skiba et al. in The Urban Review, 34, 317–348, 2002); however, less is known about the types of behavioral infractions Black female students exhibit and the discipline sanctions imposed for Black girls for such infractions. As a result, the purpose of this study is to examine the type of discipline infractions exhibited by Black female students enrolled in an urban school district and to explore whether the pattern of discipline infractions and sanctions imposed for Black girls disproportionately differs from all female students, but more specifically White and Hispanic females. Results suggest that Black girls are overrepresented in exclusionary discipline practices and Black girls reason for discipline referrals differs significantly from White and Hispanic girls. Based on these findings, recommendations are provided for urban educational stakeholders.     

Rural Students in Washington State: STEM as a Strategy for Building Rigor,Postsecondary Aspirations,and Relevant Career Opportunities

In rural settings, leaving for college can mean a young person's first step in leaving home forever (Sherman & Sage, 2011). That presents a serious challenge for college recruiters as they ask parents from Indian reservations or close-knit Hispanic or rural farming communities to allow their children to consider postsecondary opportunities. In this article, the authors discuss impediments to college-going that rural students face and shine a light on several efforts in central Washington State that help students connect to job opportunities in fast-growing, lucrative STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers in the region. Beyond inviting STEM professionals to job fairs, these efforts can expand opportunities for collaboration between STEM professionals and rural schools and teachers. Such opportunities might include enriching the K–12 curriculum with locally relevant problems of science, using local STEM professionals to collaborate on learning projects, and possibly engaging students to contribute to national databases and studies. These programs represent one way to highlight the real-world application of postsecondary education, encouraging students to pursue STEM college programs and careers.     

#Resilience is not enough for Black women in STEM: Counterstories of two young Black women becoming a STEM person

Both K-12 schools and STEM disciplines are embedded in White supremacy and exclusion, making it that much harder for Black women to maintain an interest and sense of belonging in STEM. Through a Critical Race Feminism methodology, we tell the counterstories of our two co-authors, two Black women, over the course of their lives. Through these counterstories (stories that run counter to normative stories of STEM as male and White), Kelli and Samantha show us how they negotiated and maintained a sense of belonging in STEM even through moments of self-doubt in their STEM trajectory. These negotiations allowed them to carve a space for themselves within STEM. A key finding from these counterstories was the resilience both women developed through their participation in counterspaces and support from family and teachers that helped them develop pride in their STEM identity trajectories. Our study adds to the research on Black women's journeys in STEM by describing resilience strategies that our authors were forced to develop in response to White supremacy and how they were able to maintain their STEM identity by creating a counterstory that allowed them to maintain their sense of belonging within STEM. And yet, we conclude by asking if resilience is enough since both women questioned their authentic and valued place in their respective STEM disciplines because of the dominant storyline of STEM as White and male. Their stories reveal the deeper truth that change is needed in STEM to empower students of color to see themselves as not just tolerated but valued members of the discipline.     

Texas Community College Graduation and Persistence Rates as a Function of Student Ethnicity

In this investigation, the graduation and persistence rates of Texas community college students by ethnic membership (i.e., White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian) for the 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 academic years were examined. Statistically significant differences were present between the 2000 and the 2010 graduation and persistence rates for all four ethnic groups. Trends were also revealed for the graduation and persistence rates for all ethnic groups between the 2000 and the 2010 academic years. Results were congruent with the results of other researchers concerning differences in the graduation and persistence rates between White students and their Black and Hispanic counterparts.