More than 3,000 educators have come to San Diego for the second annual STEM Symposium. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. The Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation is hosting the event for its second year.
This year’s theme is closing the gender achievement gap in STEM studies and professions. According to Education Week, boys and men still far outnumber girls and women in STEM studies and professions.
Advanced Placement testing in 2011 shows that 80 percent of computer science test takers were boys, while 77 percent of those taking the physics exam for electricity and magnetism were boys. Eighty percent of the student body of Advanced Placement STEM courses is made up of boys.
Lupita Cortez Alcala is the California Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, and she helped to organize the symposium. She said the rise in awareness about the gender gap mirrors the rise in awareness about STEM in general.
“Folks don't realize there’s been a gap. But it's being brought to light because everyone is talking about STEM,” Alcala said. “Now suddenly people are saying, "hum, how are boys and girls represented in these fields?”
An achievement gap drawn along ethnic lines is as dramatic as the gender gap. In March of this year Education Week analyzed data from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection department and discovered achievement discrepancies separating Latino and African-American students from white students.
According to Education Week, black and Latino students only made up 26 percent of students studying anything in STEM, while they made up 40 percent of the student body in schools offering the programs.
James Martinez is a lecturer at California State University Channel Islands. He said cultural differences can be part of the reason why Latino students are not as involved in STEM subjects at school when compared to their white counterparts. Martinez said that Latino parents view their child's education differently.
“In general they have a lot of respect for school, and they want to be more hands off,” Martinez said. “'The school takes care of my child in terms of education. We take care of the child when it comes to home things.'”
Martinez also said that solutions to inequity, like the gender and ethnic achievement gaps in STEM, involve teaching people to challenge the status quo.
“There needs to be a message that says, 'yes you can question a teacher, you can question a principal, you can question a process, you can question a curriculum,'" he said.
Organizers hope students, parents and educators can all be brought together to close the gender and ethnic gaps in STEM studies.
