Inclusive STEM-focused High Schools

Inclusive STEM high schools seek to broaden STEM opportunities by enrolling interested students from diverse backgrounds without imposing aptitude or prior achievement requirements and to provide all their students with STEM courses and real-world experiences to inspire and prepare them for a STEM college major. Under a 2017-2020 grant from the National Science Foundation, Digital Promise conducted a large-scale, longitudinal study of the effectiveness of inclusive STEM high schools in Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio. We found that attending such a school increased the odds of completing key STEM courses (including calculus or precalculus) in high school and of being very interested in one or more STEM careers for low-income, under-represented minority, and female students as well as for students overall. Analysis of postsecondary records for the Texas cohort found that graduates of these schools were significantly more likely to be in a STEM bachelor’s degree program two years after high school graduation.