Catherine Riegle-Crumb

Questioning a White Male Advantage in STEM Examining Disparities in College Major by Gender and Race/Ethnicity

The authors analyze national data on recent college matriculants to investigate gender and racial/ethnic disparities in STEM fields, with an eye toward the role of academic preparation and attitudes in shaping such disparities. Results indicate that physical science/engineering (PS/E) majors are dominated by men, but not, however, disproportionately by White men. After accounting for high school preparation, the odds of declaring a PS/E major are two times greater for Black males than for White males, and Black females are closer than White females to closing the gap with White males. The authors find virtually no evidence that math attitudes contribute to disparities in choice of a PS/E major. Finally, in contrast to PS/E fields, biological sciences draw relatively equitably from all groups.

The Path through Math: Course Sequences and Academic Performance at the Intersection of Race‐Ethnicity and Gender

Using new national data from Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA), this article examines high school math patterns for students of different race‐ethnicity and gender. Compared with white males, African American and Latino males receive lower returns from taking Algebra I during their freshman year, reaching lower levels of the math course sequence when they begin in the same position. This pattern is not explained by academic performance, and, furthermore, African American males receive less benefit from high math grades. Lower returns are not observed for minority female students, suggesting that more attention to racial‐ethnic inequality in math among male students is needed.

The Social Dynamics of Mathematics Coursetaking in High School

This study examines how high school boys’ and girls’ academic effort, in the form of math coursetaking, is influenced by members of their social contexts. The authors argue that adolescents’ social contexts are defined, in part, by clusters of students (termed “local positions”) who take courses that differentiate them from others. Using course transcript data from the recent Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study, the authors employ a new network algorithm to identify local positions in 78 high schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Incorporating the local positions into multilevel models of math coursetaking, the authors find that girls are highly responsive to the social norms in their local positions, which contributes to homogeneity within and heterogeneity between local positions.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same? Prior Achievement Fails to Explain Gender Inequality in Entry Into STEM College Majors Over Time:

This article investigates the empirical basis for often-repeated arguments that gender differences in entrance into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors are largely explained by disparities in prior achievement. Analyses use data from three national cohorts of college matriculates across three decades to consider differences across several indicators of high school math and science achievement at the mean and also at the top of the test distribution. Analyses also examine the different comparative advantages men and women enjoy in math/science versus English/reading. Regardless of how prior achievement is measured, very little of the strong and persistent gender gap in physical science and engineering majors over time is explained. Findings highlight the limitations of theories focusing on gender differences in skills and suggest directions for future research.This article investigates the empirical basis for often-repeated arguments that gender differences in entrance into STEM majors are largely explained by disparities in prior achievement. Analyses use data from three national cohorts of college matriculates across three decades to consider differences across several indicators of high school math and science achievement at the mean and also at the top of the test distribution. Analyses also examine the different comparative advantages men and women enjoy in math/science vs. English/reading. Regardless of how prior achievement is measured, very little of the strong and persistent gender gap in physical science and engineering majors over time is explained. Findings highlight the limitations of theories focusing on gender differences in skills and suggest directions for future research.

Racial-Ethnic Differences at the Intersection of Math Course-taking and Achievement

Despite increases in the representation of African American and Hispanic youth in advanced math courses in high school over the past two decades, recent national reports indicate that substantial inequality in achievement remains. These inequalities can temper one’s optimism about the degree to which the United States has made real progress toward educational equity. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS), the authors find that the math achievement gap is most pronounced among those students who take the most demanding high school math classes, such as precalculus and calculus. The authors explore the roles of family socioeconomic status and school composition in explaining this pattern. Findings suggest that among those students reaching the advanced math high school stratum, Hispanic youth from low-income families and African American youth from segregated schools fare the worst in terms of closing the achievement gap with their white peers. The authors discuss potential explanations for the achievement differences observed and stress the need for more research that focuses explicitly on the factors that inhibit minority/majority parity at the top of the secondary curricular structure.

Peer Group Contexts of Girls’ and Boys’ Academic Experiences

Girls have caught up with boys in math course taking in high school but reasons for taking math still differ by gender. This study, therefore, investigated gender differences in the linkage between peer relations and math course taking by applying multilevel modeling to a nationally representative data set that includes peer networks and school transcripts (N= 6,457 American 9th to 11th graders, aged 13-19). For all adolescents, math course taking was associated with the achievement of their close friends and, to a lesser extent, their coursemates. These associations tended to be stronger toward the end of high school and weaker among adolescents with a prior record of failure in school. Each of these patterns was somewhat more consistent among girls.

Exploring Bias in Math Teachers’ Perceptions of Students’ Ability by Gender and Race/Ethnicity

This study explores whether gender stereotypes about math ability shape high school teachers’ assessments of the students with whom they interact daily, resulting in the presence of conditional bias. It builds on theories of intersectionality by exploring teachers’ perceptions of students in different gender and racial/ethnic subgroups and advances the literature on the salience of gender across contexts by considering variation across levels of math course-taking in the academic hierarchy. Analyses of nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS) reveal that disparities in teachers’ perceptions of ability that favored white males over minority students of both genders are explained away by student achievement in the form of test scores and grades. However, we find evidence of a consistent bias against white females, which although relatively small in magnitude, suggests that teachers hold the belief that math is just easier for white males than it is for white females. In addition, we find some evidence of variation across course level contexts with regard to bias. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on the construction of gender inequality.

Those Who Choose and Those Who Don’t: Social Background and College Orientation

Empirical research on the decision to attend college is predicated largely on the assumption that students make conscious, utility-maximizing decisions about their educational careers. For many students this may not be the case; in fact, the authors find that a large share of students assume from a young age that they will attend college, exhibiting what might be called a college-going habitus. Consistent with critical arguments about how social class is reproduced, the authors find that white, native-born children of college-educated parents are more likely to take college for granted than their less advantaged peers. Students with a college-going habitus are more likely than others to apply to a four-year college by spring of their senior year in high school. Although social origin accounts for some of the association between habitus and college application, both advantaged and disadvantaged students appear to benefit from a college-going habitus.

A Life Course Model of Education and Alcohol Use

Working from a life course perspective, this study examined the paradoxical association between academic status and drinking across the transition to young adulthood with multilevel modeling and a nationally representative sample of young people from the Add Health data project (n = 6,308). Taking academically advanced courses in high school was associated with lower rates of current drinking and binge drinking during high school (grades 9–12) but higher rates of both after high school (age range: 20–26). This positive longitudinal association between academic status and drinking was explained partly, but not completely, by educational, family, and work circumstances in young adulthood. The association was less likely to occur among students who attended high schools in which high achievement was the norm. Thus, the association between academic status and drinking behavior reverses across the transition to young adulthood, especially in certain types of peer environments within the educational system.

Shifting gender effects: Opportunity structures, institutionalized mass schooling, and cross-national achievement in mathematics

Prior research shows that stratification of future adult opportunities influences stratification in the academic performance of students. This perspective is used to generate hypotheses regarding the sources of cross-national gender differences in mathematics performance. These hypotheses are tested using multivariate and multilevel analyses of adult opportunities for women and cross-national differences in mathematics performance by gender. This future opportunity perspective is expanded to take into account the historical incorporation of women in modern nation-states through institutionalized mass schooling emphasizing egalitarian ideals. Results indicate a cross-national shift in the direction of less gender inequality in overall school mathematics performance. However, gender inequality is more evident in the advanced 12th grade mathematics. The results of a more specialized analysis of the advanced 12th grade mathematics are compared with the earlier findings regarding mathematics performance.