Reginald S. Lee

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Pathways: High School Science and Math Coursework and Postsecondary Degree Attainment.

This article examines how high school science and mathematics course-taking creates pathways toward future baccalaureate degree attainment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors in Florida 4-year universities using Burkam and Lees (2003) course-taking categories developed using national student datasets. This study finds that even though women, overall, complete high-level courses, they do not complete the highest level science and mathematics courses. Even women who did complete high-level science and mathematics are less likely than men to obtain STEM degrees. Black and Hispanic students complete lower level high school courses, but Black and Hispanic students who did take high-level courses are as likely as White students to pursue STEM degrees. Findings suggest that gender disparities in STEM occur because women are less likely to pursue STEM, but racial disparities occur because fewer Black and Hispanic students are prepared for STEM in high school.

Multilevel Modeling: A Review of Methodological Issues and Applications

This study analyzed the reporting of multilevel modeling applications of a sample of 99 articles from 13 peer-reviewed journals in education and the social sciences. A checklist, derived from the methodological literature on multilevel modeling and focusing on the issues of model development and specification, data considerations, estimation, and inference, was used to analyze the articles. The most common applications were two-level models where individuals were nested within contexts. Most studies were non-experimental and used nonprobability samples. The amount of data at each level varied widely across studies, as did the number of models examined. Analyses of reporting practices indicated some clear problems, with many articles not reporting enough information for a reader to critique the reported analyses. For example, in many articles, one could not determine how many models were estimated, what covariance structure was assumed, what type of centering if any was used, whether the data were consistent with assumptions, whether outliers were present, or how the models were estimated. Guidelines for researchers reporting multilevel analyses are provided.

Accountability in a Postdesegregation Era: The Continuing Significance of Racial Segregation in Florida’s Schools:

In the wake of both the end of court-ordered school desegregation and the growing popularity of accountability as a mechanism to maximize student achievement, the authors explore the association between racial segregation and the percentage of students passing high-stakes tests in Florida’s schools. Results suggest that segregation matters in predicting school-level performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test after control for other known and purported predictors of standardized test performance. Also, these results suggest that neither recent efforts by the state of Florida to equalize the funding of education nor current efforts involving high-stakes testing will close the Black-White achievement gap without consideration of the racial distribution of students across schools.

How Do Propensity Score Methods Measure Up in the Presence of Measurement Error? A Monte Carlo Study

Considering that the absence of measurement error in research is a rare phenomenon and its effects can be dramatic, we examine the impact of measurement error on propensity score (PS) analysis used to minimize selection bias in behavioral and social observational studies. A Monte Carlo study was conducted to explore the effects of measurement error on the treatment effect and balance estimates in PS analysis across seven different PS conditioning methods. In general, the results indicate that even low levels of measurement error in the covariates lead to substantial bias in estimates of treatment effects and concomitant reduction in confidence interval coverage across all methods of conditioning on the PS.

Pedagogy and Preparation: Learning to be an Engineer

The curriculum and how engineering professors present it are arguably the most important components of engineering students’ undergraduate experience. How well students learn, understand, and apply the curriculum largely determines their success in the academic enterprise. Indeed, the importance of improving engineering curriculum has garnered national attention.

Program Climate: Engineering Social and Academic Fit

Departmental culture refers to the fundamental ideologies, assumptions, and values espoused by members of an organization. Department climate is student perceptions of “what it is like” to be in the department in terms of practices, policies, procedures, routines, and rewards. Additional aspects of climate include feeling a sense of belonging, identifying with other members, and feeling comfortable in one’s environment. Climate originates from a psychological framework, specifically industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology, and culture has anthropological roots as described in chapter one (Glick, 1985). Constructs related to climate refer to experiential descriptions of what happens in the department while culture examines why this climate exists (Ostroff, Kinicki, & Tamkins, 2003).

Parent Resource Centers: An Innovative Mechanism for Parental Involvement in School Choice Decisions

ABSTRACT This qualitative investigation reports on the use of Parent Resource Centers (PRCs) as a mechanism for parental involvement in public school choice decisions. Interviews with parents and staff at seven PRCs in Florida revealed that PRCs employ multiple strategies to communicate choice information to parents: community-, school- and media-based outreach; outreach to hard-to-reach parents; and collaboration with other agencies. Personalized assistance and provision of choice materials are also highlighted as useful strategies. Results indicate that there is low level of awareness about school choice options among parents and thus clear and consistent communication of choice information is needed. While PRCs hold promise for increasing parental engagement in school choice, structural and systemic barriers to exercising choice decisions such as transportation and collaboration between schools and PRCs should be addressed. Methodologically, this study illustrates the power of triangulating data from parents and PRCs to illuminate our understanding of how parents make choice decisions.