Underrepresented Minorities and Employment in STEM Fields: An Exploratory Analysis of the Stanford Education Data Archive

As the United States struggles to stay economically competitive, STEM fields – including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – have been a main point of focus in education, policy, and business circles. As the STEM fields grow and STEM education reform takes place, diversity in STEM has emerged as a top priority, in order to gain perspective and to allow for total inclusivity. Underrepresented minorities, specifically Black and Hispanic students, must play a larger role in the growth of STEM innovation, but their struggle to do so often begins at an early age. To explore determinants of inequalities in STEM success, I use the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) data archive, Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), which provides mathematics score gaps between Black, Hispanic, and White students, as well as a host of other covariates. After creating visuals displaying the data and running a regression on multiple variables, I find that Hispanic gaps are steadily decreasing over time and grade, while Black gaps show a generally positive trend. Subsequently, in contrast to initial assumptions, Hispanic math score gaps did not appear to decrease as STEM employment increased, while Black math score gaps did appear to decrease as STEM employment increased