Objective 2

For us to understand STEM education in northern region of New Mexico, we would need data on schools and school districts. In order to begin the process of collecting STEM education data, we submitted a data request to the Public Education Department (PED) via email. The data we requested included which STEM courses are offered at the schools in the northern region and data on student enrollment for these courses from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.

Additional Data Researched

• Student Enrollment Demographics by School District (2018-2019 and 2019-2020 PED data)

• Student Math & Science Proficiencies by School and School District (2018-2019 PED data)

• School District Rural or Non-rural status (2019 National Center for Education Statistics data)

• Educator Demographics & Experience by School District (2018-2019 PED data)

This data was compiled into Google spreadsheets for analysis and ArcGIS mapping. Once our PED data request was fulfilled, we analyzed the relationships between datasets.

Relationships Investigated

STEM courses offered versus rural or non-rural status of school districts

Relationships between the amount of STEM courses offered by school districts and the non-rural/rural status of school districts were inferred on. This was done to compare the availability of STEM courses between school districts and investigate which districts, rural or non-rural, have more access to these STEM courses.

Math and science proficiencies versus student ethnicity/race enrollment demographics

Relationships between math and science proficiencies and ethnicity/race demographics by school district were inferred on to determine if poorer proficiency scores correlated with larger percentages of typically underrepresented minorities in STEM.

Educator diversity and experience versus student ethnicity/race enrollment demographics

Relationships between educator diversity experience and ethnicity/race demographics by school district were inferred on to determine if educator demographics resembled student demographics. This metric was intended to evaluate students’ accessibility to diverse pools of educators.

We then utilized the evaluative framework to measure the accessibility, availability, and equity of STEM education in northern New Mexico based on data trends we found to be relevant to our identified components.