Educational Inequality and Opportunity
Over the past half-century, patterns of educational attainment have changed in ways that are important for our understanding of the role of education as an outcome and an antecedent of life course events and trajectories. As the single most important determinant of health disparities and of labor force inequality, understanding the pathways through which education produces such profound outcomes over the entire life course is imperative. Education begins very early in the life course and is a multifaceted experience that consumes the early decades of life. Through schools, education plays a central role in shaping childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. While stratification within the educational system is well-documented, the processes that produce the disparities and the best policies to ameliorate them are poorly understood. Yet, education remains the primary vehicle for intergenerational mobility, thereby impacting generations of present and future Americans. Further, because education is malleable through policy levers, and together education and health dominate domestic public expenditures, effective policy will be achieved only by understanding the precise pathways and mechanisms that link education to work, health, and family over the life course. PRC researchers are conducting path-breaking research on these crucial issues. Work in this area speaks to three main issues: educational content and schooling processes; diversity in educational pathways; and educational systems and policy. Moreover, PRC researchers are at the cutting edge of innovation in statistical modeling and measurement of educational processes and outcomes.This research is supported by grants from various sources. An interdisciplinary, policy-oriented approach is enabled by the diverse academic backgrounds and non-academic, real-world experience of the university faculty members, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students comprising the research group.
Area Projects
Selection into PK-3 Programs
Principal Investigator:Aprile D. Benner
Funded by: Foundation for Child Development
Prekindergarten (PK) education has long been considered a possible mechanism for promoting young children's development and reducing disparities among groups. Extensive research suggests participation in high-quality PK programs boosts young children's development, but initial benefits often fade over time. PK-3 initiatives are one proposed remedy for such challenges, as they seek to support children's development through educational alignment across early educational contexts. Although studies of PK-3 suggest an overall effect on children's development and highlight program activities that seem to hold particular promise, it is also possible that observed effects of PK-3 might be at least partially explained by selection processes, the primary focus of this project. The current study seeks to identify what types of schools and communities are most likely to implement PK-3 programs and activities as well as the characteristics of the children and families most likely to be enrolled in PK-3 programs. Here, we ask whether it is that advantage begets advantage (i.e., are educational contexts with more advantaged student populations more likely to implement PK-3 programs and practices) or does PK-3 play a compensatory role in children's lives, with more disadvantaged schools implementing such programs/practices? The study also examines the extent to which PK-3 effects on children's developmental competencies may be influenced by selection. If we find, for example, that PK-3 programs are most likely to serve disadvantaged students in the most under-resourced schools, it may be we are actually underestimating the promotive effects of PK-3. Understanding the possible contributions of selection is key to educational policy. By identifying who is most likely to participate in and benefit from PK-3 programs and practices, we can adjust PK-3 recruitment and implementation strategies to better support the learning and development of the youngest children in the educational system.
The High School Transition and Later School Dropout
Principal Investigator:Aprile D. Benner
Funded by: Spencer Foundation
The U.S. is facing a dropout crisis, and the cost to the country is high-individuals who dropout of school have poorer life prospects, including greater unemployment/underemployment, higher rates of drug use and incarceration, and greater health problems. Although often conceptualized as a discrete event, in actuality, dropout is a continuous process that occurs over time. Students may encounter challenges across their school careers, for example failing a high-stakes test or being retained in grade, or they may experience disruptions when making normative school transitions, such as moving from middle to high school. One question for practitioners, researchers, and policymakers is how to intervene to better ensure students experience fewer educational disruptions. This mixed-methods project focuses on a normative but potentially disruptive turning point in students' lives-the high school transition-seeking to better illuminate the types of interventions schools implement to ease transition challenges. I focus specifically on what services or constellations of services promote successful high school transitions, both in the short-term (e.g., grades, attendance in 9th grade) and the long-term (e.g., college-preparatory activities, drop out). Given that the demographics of the dropout population reflect larger patterns of race/ethnic and socioeconomic stratification in American society, I place particular attention on whether transition activities target more at-risk segments of the student population and whether there are differential effects of intervention success based on student or school characteristics. The transition to high school is a critically-timed intervention point. Research suggests that grade retention is higher in 9th grade than any other grade level and that students most often make the decision to dropout by 10th grade. As such, interventions that better support the high school transition, particularly with regard to academic and psychosocial adjustment, may ensure that students' trajectories do not take a downward turn toward dropout.
Social Demographics, Marginalization, and Adolescent Substance Use
Principal Investigator: Aprile D. Benner
Funded by: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Substance use during adolescence is an oft-studied phenomenon, but this research generally fails to take an ecological perspective on etiology. Schools are a primary context of socialization during adolescence, and understanding how school composition matters for substance use is critical for prevention efforts. Promoting school diversity has been a major legislative goal, but the unintended public health consequences of such policies are often ignored-diversity has empirically established academic benefits, yet it is not without its challenges, particularly regarding the socioemotional well-being of children and adolescents whose lack of demographic "fit" with their schools puts them at risk for social marginalization. Whether this demographic misfit (i.e., having few same-race/ethnic or same-socioeconomic peers in school) is risky for substance use has yet to be explored, although both theory and empirical evidence suggests that it might. The general goal of this project, therefore, is to examine whether, why, and when students who do not have a critical mass of same-race/ethnicity peers or peers of similar SES in school are more likely to drink and use drugs. Here, I use data from Add Health to explore three specific areas of inquiry. First, I will identify adolescents who are at the numeric margins of their schools both racially/ethnically and socioeconomically and compare their substance use to that of adolescents who have greater representation of same-demographic peers. Such research will highlight the potential unintended health risks of major academically-focused school reforms. Second, I will test two mechanisms by which marginalization might influence substance use: a) whether marginalization initiates feelings of misfit that, in turn, contribute to adolescents' substance use and b) whether the link between marginalization and substance use is stronger for students in schools and peer groups in which substance use is more normative. Third, the project will explore the extent to which the marginalization threshold (defined as 15% or more same-demographic peers) effectively captures the critical mass necessary for protection against substance use and lack of fit. Although the National Academy of Education recommends the 15% same-demographic peer threshold to protect against the harmful effects of marginalization, their report acknowledges that this estimate needs empirical validation. As a departure from previous, small-scale studies that explore the critical mass question, this project uses a large, nationally representative sample to empirically identify the critical mass needed to protect against social marginalization. Early substance use and abuse exert pernicious effects across the life course, and this project has the potential to expand our understanding of the implications of school composition for such risky health behaviors. By elucidating the mechanisms by which marginalization affects substance use, the project will highlight critical points of intervention, and by identifying the contextual antecedents of early substance use, the project will inform educational policy efforts that seek to better promote the full academic benefits of diversity in America's public schools.
Math Teacher's Pedagogical Practices: Effects on Linguistic Minority Students' STEM Preparation and Participation
Principal Investigator: Rebecca Callahan
Funded by: American Educational Research Association
Increasingly, successful participation in adult society is determined by completion of some post-secondary education, especially as it pertains to the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. At present, linguistic minority young adults participate in higher education and enter into STEM careers at lower rates than their native English-speaking peers (Fry, 2002; NCES, 1998). Whether this is due to aptitude or pedagogy and preparation is an empirical question. Linguistic minority students in U.S. schools must not only master academic content, but they must do so in a language unfamiliar to them. Faced with the challenge of simultaneously learning language and content, linguistic minority students in particular may benefit from interactive pedagogical practices as opposed to a lecture-based approach. This study uses data from the NCES Educational Longitudinal Study 2002-2006 (ELS) to determine the types of pedagogical practices that linguistic minority students experience in high school math courses, and how pedagogical practices influence linguistic minority students' academic achievement outcomes, STEM preparation and participation in higher education. Fortunately, not only are the pedagogical practices these students experience measurable, but they are also malleable through educational policy. Exploring the relationship between pedagogical practices and STEM achievement for linguistic minority students will contribute to educational policy designed to increase their participation in the STEM pipeline.
Education as a Developmental Phenomenon
Principal Investigator: Robert L. Crosnoe
Funded by: William T. Grant Foundation
The broad motivation for this five-year project is to provide a meeting ground for developmental and educational research in the quantitative study of adolescence. Reflecting this motivation, this project is structured by a general conceptual framework that is translated into four specific components. In the general framework, education is viewed in developmental terms by exploring the intertwining of adolescents' individual trajectories with their social convoys within larger contexts. The four components derived from this general framework consider: 1) the intertwining of academic trajectories and intergenerational social convoys, in the form of the associations between adolescents' math/science pathways and their trajectories of parental involvement and teacher-mentoring during high school, 2) the context-specific nature of this intertwining between academic trajectories and intergenerational social convoys, as captured by variations in these associations by level of economic disadvantage in the family and the school, 3) the intertwining of academic trajectories and intragenerational social convoys, in the form of the associations between adolescent's position in their math/science course-sequences and the academic norms of their close friends, coursemates, and schoolmates, and 4) the context-specific nature of this intertwining between academic trajectories and intragenerational social convoys, as captured by variations in immigration-related differences in math/science pathways by the three levels of peer norms. To pursue these four components, growth curve and multi-level modeling techniques will be applied to multi-source survey and school transcript data from two nationally representative studies of American adolescents: the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88-92) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth).
As a whole, this project explores academic experiences at the nexus of institutional structures, interpersonal relations, and demographic populations in order to pursue an ecological, developmental understanding of education and to identify mechanisms for addressing inequalities in the educational system and larger society. Thus, it balances conceptual goals-cross-pollinating human development and education, taking dynamic approaches, considering adolescence as a foundation of long-term experiences-with applied objectives-focusing on academic and interpersonal factors that are relevant to both individual functioning and societal inequality while also being amenable to policy reform.
Early Social Settings and Pathways to Economic Opportunity in Uncertain Times
Principal Investigator: Robert L. Crosnoe
Funded by: William T. Grant Foundation
What are the policy amenable settings of childhood and adolescence that influence how American youth enter college and/or work? Answering this question has become increasingly important as economic restructuring magnifies returns to higher education and delayed labor force entry, especially among working/middle class youth whose futures are more reactive to economic fluctuations. This project, therefore, links the school/work pathways in young adulthood that have different future prospects to longitudinal configurations of school, family, and activity settings across childhood and adolescence. It will do so by adding data to and analyzing the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which has followed a predominantly working/middle class birth cohort through 9th grade and contains rich multi-method setting data. Funds have been requested or already secured from various sources to collect survey and transcript data at the end of high school (2009 modal year) and two years later. William T. Grant funds will add to this enterprise by supporting the collection of high school course catalogs, the merging of data from national schools and colleges databases, and development of weights to address sampling biases. Latent class analysis and multinomial regression will be applied to the final data set, as will tools that promote causal inference by addressing measured and unmeasured variable bias (e.g., instrumental variables, propensity scores, robustness indices). Data will be made public, and results will be disseminated to diverse audiences. This multidisciplinary policy-oriented study is aligned with the Foundations' interest in the social settings that promote positive youth development.
The Dynamic Nature of Classroom Quality in the PK-3 Years
Principal Investigator: Robert L. Crosnoe
Funded by: Foundation for Child Development
Universal pre-K (UPK) is a major policy agenda in the U.S. that is fueled by concerns about race/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in educational attainment and supported by extensive evidence that early educational intervention is one of the highest-return strategies for reducing these disparities. As this agenda gains momentum and is implemented in more and more states, its potential to realize its promise is vulnerable to one reality of early education-the benefits to children from disadvantaged segments of the population of pre-K enrichment may be lost if these children transition from pre-K into low-quality elementary classrooms. PK-3, which calls for explicit and concrete alignment among pre-K, kindergarten, and the primary grades, is an early education approach intended to remedy the problems posed by this quality fade.
The purpose of this project is to dig into the fade in classroom quality between pre-K and subsequent elementary school grades by examining how it varies across multiple process-focused dimensions of classroom quality, by demographic risk factors targeted by UPK policies, and as a function of various strategies for achieving alignment during the PK-3 years. More specifically, cross-sectional data (encompassing pre-K, kindergarten, and first-third grades) and longitudinal data (following children from pre-K to kindergarten) will be collected through classroom observations, teacher interviews, and school records in the public pre-K program in the socioeconomically and race/ethnically diverse school district in Austin, TX. Growth curve modeling techniques will be applied to the data from approximately 100 classrooms-derived from the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) coupled with other protocols designed to measure curricular content and structural/physical environment-to track trajectories of classroom quality across the modal sequences of classrooms within schools that children in the Austin pre-K program take after they leave pre-K classrooms. These models will control for school, classroom, and teacher characteristics. They will be analyzed to determine differences in trajectories across groups defined by demographic status (low-income English language learners, low-income non-English language learners), alignment strategies (i.e., vertical vs. horizontal, as defined by holistic ratings based on teacher reports of coordination/contact with peers within and across grades), and organizational arrangements (e.g., whether pre-K programs are housed within their "parent" elementary schools or on Austin's unique all pre-K campus).
Race/Ethnicity, Poverty, and the Connection between Child Health and Early Education
Principal Investigator: Robert L. Crosnoe
Additional Investigators: Shannon E. Cavanagh, Cynthia Osborne, Co-Investigator
Funded by: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
This project investigates the degree to which higher rates of health problems among race/ethnic minority children of all economic strata and among poor children from all race/ethnic populations prior to the start of elementary school put them at an academic disadvantage once elementary school has begun. Because health is a policy amenable developmental factor and the transition to elementary school is a critical intervention point in the educational career, such research provides leverage in attempts to address the persistent, overlapping race/ethnic and economic gaps in educational attainment in the early life course that forecast increasing inequalities in social mobility, morbidity, and mortality in adulthood. Drawing on a classic theoretical perspective that targets the development processes surrounding the transition into elementary school as fundamental to demographic disparities in educational attainment, this project puts forward and tests a conceptual model positing that the poorer physical and mental health of African-American and Latino/a children (controlling for economic status) and of economically disadvantaged children (controlling for race/ethnicity) in the pre-school years contribute to their lower rates of academic achievement in school. Importantly, this project will also explore the mechanisms underlying the academic risks of early health problems and identify aspects of family organization, pre-school programs, elementary school classrooms, and home-school partnerships that protect against these academic risks in general and in traditionally disadvantaged populations in particular. A team of population scientists working with senior consultants from medicine, developmental psychology, and social work will conduct this research. Specifically, this team will apply multi-level, growth curve, and propensity score techniques to two NIH-funded data sets the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, which oversamples the disadvantaged side of the socioeconomic spectrum of American families, and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which oversamples the more advantaged side and then supplement this quantitative investigation with analysis of qualitative data to be collected from teachers and parents in a low-income, racially diverse elementary school. This interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded, mixed-methods investigation is specifically designed to elucidate the role of child health in the reproduction of overlapping systems of race/ethnic and economic stratification in ways that directly inform social policy.This project delves into a timely and significant public health issue: the contribution of the connection between health problems and academic struggles in early childhood to the race/ethnic and economic stratification of American society. The main goals are to determine a means by which demographic inequalities are transmitted across generations in ways that affect population rates of morbidity and mortality and then to identify potential policy-amenable remedies to this process.
Education and Alcohol Use in Adolescence and Young Adulthood
Principal Investigator: Robert Crosnoe
Additional Investigators: Chandra Muller and Paige Harden
Funded by: National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
Drinking among high school and college students has long been a major public health concern in the U.S. As a key dimension of the connection between education and health, which has fascinated social and behavioral scientists for years, this link between secondary/postsecondary education and alcohol use is theoretically important. Focusing as it does on institutional settings that historically have been viewed as amenable to policy intervention, this link also points to ways that that such theoretical activity can be applied. Although the potential impact of educational experiences on youth drinking has been studied frequently, it is not well-understood in many ways that have implications for informing intervention. Following the "developmental" spirit of the R21 mechanism, therefore, this project draws on extant data to look into insufficiently known aspects of the education-drinking link and, in the process, support future primary data collections that focus on the most important aspects of the education-drinking link while addressing current data limitations. First, the specific dimensions of high school academic statuses and settings that matter to adolescent drinking, as well as the mechanisms underlying these associations, need to be better assessed and identified. This project draws on a unique data set-the integration of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative study of health behavior in the early life course, and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study (AHAA), which adds rich school transcript and textbook data to Add Health. This integrated data set allows the study of drinking to be informed by important innovations in educational theory and measurement, including more accurate renderings of: (a) adolescents' positions in the academic hierarchies of their schools, (b) the characteristics of their fellow students that they take classes with throughout school, and (c) the cognitive skills (e.g., critical analysis) that they develop through coursework and can draw on in health decision-making. Second, the extent to which the education-drinking link varies across stages of the life course will be considered by drawing on postsecondary AHAA data, the hypothesis being that the importance of the academic and social settings of colleges to the drinking of young adults will depend on their academic and social histories as adolescents in high school. Third, drawing on the genetic samples and DNA data of Add Health, this project will assess the degree to which both latent and specific genetic influences are confounded with the education-drinking link and whether they condition/trigger the effects of educational experiences on drinking in adolescence and young adulthood. The investigatory team includes sociologists and clinical/developmental psychologists who have experience in research on drinking, education, or both, including working with Add Health/AHAA and using advanced statistical techniques and genetically informed designs. The goal of this R21 is to explore fresh approaches to old questions about the education-drinking link in a cost-effective strategy that allows future, larger-scale data collections to be more effectively designed.
Preschool, Home, and School Contexts as Determinants of the Impacts of Head Start
Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Gershoff
Additional Investigator: Aletha Huston
Funded by: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Head Start is the largest federal program providing an enriched early childhood education for children from low income families. A substantial body of non-experimental and quasi-experimental research has linked Head Start participation with (often modest) gains in children's developmental outcomes. Yet research to date has failed to examine how variability across Head Start centers is associated with variability in children's developmental outcomes, and how the quality of home and school environments experienced after Head Start might sustain, or curtail, the impacts of Head Start over time. To address this knowledge gap, the proposed project goes beyond questions of simple impact to consider the conditions and contexts which make Head Start more or less effective. Specifically, we will examine the extent to which the structure and quality of Head Start centers, parenting behavior and the home environment, and the structure and quality of elementary schools might mediate or moderate program impacts over time. Our interdisciplinary team (from the fields of human development, education, economics, and social work) will utilize two large, national Head Start studies--one of which used an experimental design--to address the following aims:
Aim 1: To identify to what extent, and by what processes, aspects of Head Start quality promote children's cognitive development, social-emotional skills, and physical health;
Aim 2: To determine the role of parents in creating and sustaining positive long-term impacts of Head Start on children's cognitive development, social-emotional skills, and physical health; and
Aim 3: To examine the extent to which subsequent school experiences moderate the persistence of Head Start effects on children's cognitive development, social-emotional skills, and physical health.
The project involves secondary data analysis of two large, federally sponsored data-sets, namely the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, 1997 Cohort (FACES-97), and the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS). Each study included a nationally representative sample of 3- and 4-year-old low income children attending Head Start, along with one control group of children on waiting lists for Head Start in the HSIS. Research questions will be addressed using a combination of multiple regression, piecewise regression, latent class growth analysis, and multiple group analysis. Of particular interest will be interactions between treatment condition in the HSIS and center quality in the preschool year and school quality in the elementary school years.
Emerging Educational Inequalities in Health: New Health Events and Social Relationships
Principal Investigator: Elaine Hernandez
Faculty Sponsor: Robert Hummer
Funded by: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Educational inequalities in morbidity and mortality are wide and growing, in spite of goals to eliminate them. People with more education are better positioned to avoid deleterious health effects when they are given new health information. Over time, as people act upon novel information differentially, educational inequalities in health outcomes emerge. Although research has been devoted to observing trends in education and health, less is known about the process by which they are produced. An emerging literature has attempted to understand how novel health information and technological advances influence people to behave differently depending on their socioeconomic status. Given the dearth of data on individual health knowledge levels, though, most often research is limited to observing changes in behavior after recent advances in biomedical research or exogenous shocks of health information. How can we understand the process by which educational inequalities in health emerge at the individual-level? The overall objective of this research is to understand how educational inequalities in health are produced among individuals, using a new approach: It focuses on people's health behaviors after they learn that they are pregnant or diagnosed with a chronic illness for the first time. Early decisions about health behaviors during these periods may serve to stratify later health behaviors among people of varying educational backgrounds. To understand how people behave differently after a new health event, this research proposes an innovative approach by focusing on the role of social relationships. It anticipates that these relationships provide people with new health information and influence their decisions about health behaviors. This conjecture builds upon a bedrock of sociological and public health research, which emphasizes the importance of social ties for both health and medical decision-making, as well as more recent research, which indicates that individuals' social ties influence their health behaviors. To assess the influence of social relationships on the formation of educational inequalities in health among people experiencing new health events, this research will take four approaches, and use data from nationally-representative surveys and qualitative interviews including the following: 1988 U.S. National Maternal and Infant Health Survey and the 1991 Longitudinal Follow-up; the Health and Retirement Study; the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health; and the Relationships and Health Habits study. First, it will examine whether there are educational differences in nulliparous women's prenatal behaviors that are replicated during subsequent pregnancies. Second, it will focus on education differences in early health decisions among people recently diagnosed with an illness. Third, it will test whether social network processes of social learning and social influence differ by education and influence health behavior. Finally, for each set of analysis, it describes how the processes differ by race, ethnicity and gender. In sum, this research is significant because it aims to understand the origins of educational inequalities in health at an individual-level. It takes an innovative approach by merging this with demographic models of the diffusion of health information across social networks to understand how network processes influence health behaviors differently by education-level.
CAREER: Language Brokering and Child Adjustment in Mexican American Children
Principal Investigator: Su Yeong Kim
Funded by: National Science Foundation
This study will examine developmental outcomes for children of Mexican immigrants, a high-risk population with high rates of poverty and low levels of educational attainment. The project aims to understand the mechanisms involved in improving the academic performance of children of immigrants, a growing and significant percentage of America's children, who represent the future of the U.S. workforce. It also focuses on the developmental period of adolescence, a period of transition in which children are susceptible to developing socio-emotional problems that can compromise school performance. This research has the potential to identify risk factors that can be used to inform future preventive intervention work with children of immigrants. Finally, this project will train undergraduate and graduate students who have been traditionally under-represented in the sciences, particularly those of Mexican origin; deliver a curriculum to educate students about the role of immigration, ethnicity, and race in informing child development; and provide workshops, training sessions, and newsletters to educators on the role of language brokering in children's academic functioning.
Education Production and Peer Networks Among Out-of-School Children in India
Principal Investigators: Leigh Linden
Funded by: National Science Foundation
We propose to investigate the education production function in the context of an informal community based model of instruction targeted at out-of-school children in India. Using the planned expansion of the program, we propose to conduct a three part randomization that will allow us to distinguish the effects of student, teacher, classmate, and non-class peers on student achievement while also generally evaluating the effectiveness of community based class model.
The evaluation design comprises three randomizations. First, from one hundred communities we will randomly choose sixty-six in which to provide the intervention. In the treatment communities, we will randomly choose from the out-of-school children who indicate an interest in the program a subset to receive the treatment. To generate variation in the coverage of students peer networks, we will also varying the fraction of out of school children that we treat in these communities. Finally, we will randomly assign students to classes and teachers to classes to allow measurement of the effects of teacher and classmate characteristics. We will track interested children in 100 communities (6,000 children) for two years. Student performance will be measured through tests, attendance rates, and subsequent enrollment rates.
Postsecondary Pathways into STEM for Students with Disabilities
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Funded by: National Science Foundation
The "Postsecondary Pathways into STEM for Students with Disabilities" is designed to investigate the effects of high school context, social and academic processes and experiences, and institutional context on pathways to postsecondary STEM success and completion of students with disabilities in STEM.
Data analyses will be conducted using information from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) of 2002 and the 2004-2009 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS); these datasets follow a nationally representative sample of students as they transition from high school into adulthood and post-secondary settings. This research will focus on the diverse postsecondary educational pathways of students with and without disabilities and will address the following three question sets:
I. College Preparation and the Transition into Postsecondary Education or Work:
The first line of inquiry will estimate the effects of high school outcomes such as graduation, course- taking, grades, test scores, and social-psychological factors on the transition into STEM postsecondary education and work. Special attention will be paid to differences among students with disabilities depending on disability type, socioeconomic status, gender, and race/ethnicity.
II. Postsecondary Pathways into STEM:
The second line of investigation will look at the effects of college preparation, early college experiences, and institutional characteristics on students' postsecondary pathways into STEM. The researchers aim to identify and predict students' successful pathways through postsecondary into and through STEM fields of study.
III. Postsecondary STEN Attainment:
The third line of the study will investigate the impact of postsecondary experiences and institutions on the completion of STEM degrees. The research will evaluate differences in persistence and time to STEM degree or certification between students with and without disabilities. Transcript data will be used to ascertain differences in STEM literacy. Ultimately, the researchers will seek to identify the policy-relevant factors that promote successful postsecondary degree completion among students with disabilities.
This project will be evaluated by an independent evaluator utilizing a logic model detailing the anticipated activities, outputs, outcomes and impact of the research. Dissemination activities will target researchers, practitioners, and advocates. Peer-reviewed journals will also advance dissemination to researchers, faculty, employers, and other stakeholders.
Collaborative Research: Feasibility Study of Dissemination of Knowledge from STEP Type 1 Projects
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Funded by: National Science Foundation
The goal of the NSF STEP program is to increase the number of undergraduate STEM degrees, particularly among underrepresented groups. The STEP Type 1 program funds projects at both baccalaureate and associate's degree-granting institutions to implement strategies "aimed at adapting and implementing best practices" (NSF STEP Program Solicitation) to meet the STEP program goals. Our research will work with recently funded STEP Type 1 projects to create a model for the collection and dissemination of common data across STEP Type 1 grantees. By leveraging multiple projects with similar aims and overlapping strategies we will enhance the impact of each individual project and gain additional insights relevant to the broader researcher and practitioner communities from the set of projects. This project will produce a model for leveraging data and findings from Type 1 STEP projects to establish a feasibility model for best practices in coordination and dissemination of knowledge to the larger higher education research, policy and practice communities. In doing so, we will broaden the impact of the STEP program and articulate the strategies institutions of higher education can use to increase STEM degrees.
Collaborative Research: Students with Learning Disabilities: STEM Pathways in the Social Context
Co-Principal Investigators: Chandra Muller and Rebecca Callahan
Funded by: National Science Foundation
Improving young adults' preparation to enter into STEM fields is crucial for the economic well-being of our nation; students with learning disabilities face a special set of social and academic needs in their pathways towards STEM preparation. A rich body of literature focuses on the STEM preparation of adolescents as a whole, however we know far less about the processes and pathways of students with learning disabilities. Focusing on college preparatory STEM achievement outcomes, we explore the effects of high school context, social and academic processes, as well as variations by demographic subgroup (racial, ethnic and linguistic minority, gender, class) among the population of students with learning disabilities. The need to increase diversity in participation in STEM fields can be addressed by tapping in to traditionally underrepresented groups, such as students with learning disabilities who may possess many talents yet also face unique barriers.
STEM in the New Millennium: Preparation, Pathways and Diversity
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Additional Investigators: Kelly Raley; Catherine Riegle-Crumb
Funded by: National Science Foundation
This study will use multiple contemporary longitudinal, nationally representative datasets to study the educational pathways into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers, beginning in high school and before and extending into early adult careers. We argue that there are several factors that have not been previously adequately addressed in the literature on STEM pathways. First, high school indicators of STEM achievement and the convergence of these indicators may be crucial for understanding success in higher education and in the labor force. Further, understanding how the contexts of postsecondary institutions themselves foster students’ persistence and achievement in STEM as well as an accumulation of STEM knowledge and skills independent of degrees earned are key components of our study. Finally, we focus on the connection between STEM education and the labor force, broadening the usual treatment of this pathway as a linear relationship between degree attainment and entry into a STEM occupation, and focusing on labor force participation in non-STEM occupations that may require STEM literacy. Our study will provide insights into increasing the participation and success of all college students in the STEM fields that are of value to both policymakers and postsecondary institutions.
Education and the Transition to Adulthood
Principal Investigator: Chandra Muller
Additional Investigators: Kelly Raley; Catherine Riegle-Crumb; Robert Hummer
Funded by: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
This project will add detailed information on postsecondary education for the National Longitudinal Study of Youth of 1997 (NLSY97) respondents, culled from transcripts and other administrative records of test scores and postsecondary enrollment histories. Postsecondary transcripts will be collected and coded according to a well-established taxonomy used by researchers, policy makers, and administrators alike. These newly collected data, plus a large number of variables that summarize and describe students' postsecondary experiences and outcomes will be made available as part of the publicly distributed NLS data set. The NLSY97 is the premier nationally representative longitudinal data set for studying the transition from high school to work and into adulthood. In several key domains (employment, schooling, marriage and cohabitation, government program participation, migration), the NLSY97 includes month-by-month status variables for all respondents. This postsecondary transcript study provides invaluable detailed chronological information about students' enrollment patterns across post-secondary institutions, the courses they took (including the content of the courses) and their performance in those courses. The data produced from this study will provide vital information about the complex interplay of family, education, work and health across the life course. This information is key to understanding the pathways through which education-based health disparities are produced.
This large and complex study will involve two major phases and a multidisciplinary research team. The first phase involves the collection and coding of approximately 7,500 postsecondary transcripts from about 4,800 NLSY97 respondents. The second phase will produce constructed variables and data files for public dissemination. These constructed variables are essential to stimulate wide use of the postsecondary education data. In addition to producing public access data, investigators will conduct workshops in a number of settings and provide detailed documentation to introduce the data to multidisciplinary users in both research and applied settings, and encourage their use.
Beyond Blackboards: Integrated Methods for STEM Education and Workforce Development
Principal Investigator: Richard Crawford (Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Additional Investigators: Chandra Muller, Anthony Petrosino, Co-Principal Investigators
Funded by: National Science Foundation
The University of Texas (UT) Cockrell School of Engineering is joining with Skillpoint Alliance, a Central Texas education and workforce development agency, and Round Rock ISD, a rapidly growing district serving a diverse population of more than 40,000 students, to deploy an integrated approach to engaging middle school students, teachers, counselors, administrators, parents and caregivers in activities that improve awareness and understanding of a range of STEM career and college pathways. The project builds on the successful DTEACh program that provides teachers professional development in engineering education using design and empowers educators and caregivers to engage students in STEM activities that guide them toward considering careers in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The program comprises five essential steps: training teachers; providing after-school programs for students; training counselors, administrators and other educators; offering intensive summer camps for students; and reaching out to caregivers. The project supports teachers with multiple professional development opportunities and field experiences, coaching sessions with master teachers, support from UT engineering students and industry mentors, and numerous other resources. Evaluation of the program's impact on students depends not only on student-reported interest in STEM subjects and careers, but on assessment of student performance in STEM subjects and analysis of their high school course selections. Evaluation of the program's impact on teachers focuses on an assessment of participants' curricula and pedagogy and impact on teacher networks. The project produces research tools and research findings that build the knowledge base about approaches, models, and interventions with middle school students from underrepresented and economically-disadvantaged populations and their teachers - the population most likely to increase United States capacity in the STEM workforce, including ICT fields.
Evaluation of Sally Ride Science Curriculum Training Project
Principal Investigator: Chandra L. Muller
Additional Investigators: Catherine Riegle-Crumb
Funded by: Sally Ride Science
This project is an evaluation of the effect of a 3rd-8th grade teacher training academy program. The goal of the Sally Ride Science Training Academy is to impact teachers' attitudes, beliefs and knowledge about science career possibilities for girls. Ultimately the program hopes to encourage more gender-neutral beliefs regarding science and science careers in students with the training given to the teachers. The goal for the research is to examine the impact of the academy on these target populations and evaluate the success of the program's expected outcomes.
Feasibility Study of a Follow-up Study of the High School and Beyond (HSB) Respondents
Principal Investigator: Chandra L. Muller
Additional Investigators: Sandra Black
Funded by: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
This study will position the research team to develop a plan and priorities for a larger follow-up of HSB respondents. The knowledge gained from the larger follow up of HSB sample members will help to articulate the mechanisms that produce the strong relationships among social origins, noncognitive skills, education and work, retirement and quality of life in later life. A clear understanding of these mechanisms will enhance our capacity to identify policy levers and design policies to (1) promote working longer, (2) improve the quality of work life for those 50 years of age and older, and (3) identify important sources of heterogeneity in the associations between education, work and later life outcomes.
Demographic Diversity in Childrens's Behavioral and Emotional Development
Principal Investigator: Nina Wu
Faculty Sponsor: Robert Crosnoe
Funded by: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
This project involves theoretically grounded research on the co-occurrence of internalizing and externalizing behaviors among children, with a focus on demographic disparities in such co-occurrence. Doing so in a nationally representative framework will inject much-needed awareness of population heterogeneity into theoretical perspectives on developmental psychopathology. Accomplishing the aims of this proposal will help inform educational and health policy by providing research-based evidence about those most in need of intervention (defined by race/ethnicity, gender, and immigration status), and when (timing), where (mechanism and buffering), and how such intervention may be delivered for maximum effectiveness. The project aims will be accomplished by using the The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort and a wide range of longitudinal quantitative methods, including growth curve modeling, mediational models, and logistic regression. Furthermore, in an effort to tackle the selection problems inherent to in non-experimental studies of health, propensity scores will be coupled with post-hoc robustness indices to quantify the vulnerability of results to observable and observable confounds. More specifically, this project will identify the prevalence and timing of childhood trajectories of internalizing and externalizing behaviors, investigate gender, race/ethnic, and immigration-related disparities in the over-time patterns and timing of children's co-occurring behaviors, examine how such co-occurrence is connected to problematic family processes in different demographic groups at different timepoints, and identify school settings that may buffer against family risks contributing to the co-occurrence of the two behaviors across groups. To pursue these aims, the investigator will work under the guidance of a sociologist in an NICHD-funded population center and a trained clinical child psychologist. By identifying critical intervention points for young children's co-occurring behavioral and emotional problems that can have long-term consequences for health and other life course trajectories, determining which segments of the population are at heightened risk, and connecting family problems leading to child maladjustment with potentially compensatory school resources already subject to established policy interventions, this project will promote finer-grained prevention and intervention programs. At the same time, it will give valuable interdisciplinary training to a promising young scholar with a future in population health and developmental research.
