Building a culture of success - New York State high school/college science enrichment program, minority students

New York -- A new report on New York State's Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP) and its college counterpart (C-STEP) shows that these enrichment programs were responsible, in the words of the outside evaluator, for "dramatically raising the academic performance of their students," most of whom are African American, Hispanic, and low-income.

The New York State legislature funded the STEP program in 1986 in response to statistics showing that very few African American and Hispanic students were becoming scientists and doctors. STEP's aim is to groom students for the scientific professions.

"The reason these programs have been so fantastic is that they [have] provided opportunities for youth that they never would have had," says Dr. Marlene Klyvert, a STEP program director.

Klyvert is assistant dean of special programs and associate professor at Columbia University's School of Dental and Oral Surgery. Her STEP program works with students beginning in the seventh grade.

Despite annual funding battles and the apparent indifference to them on the part of a great many schools, STEP and C-STEP are still operating twelve years after their inception, and have chalked up some remarkable successes. In 1995-96, for example, 74.7 percent of C-STEP's 784 graduates were either in graduate school or employed in scientific fields. Two of the students have won the prestigious Westinghouse award for high school science projects.

Klyvert's program runs from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. every day for a month in the summer, plus a year-long program every Saturday. The younger students work on math and science in the morning and spend afternoons on scientifically-related field trips. Older students are paired with research scientists to work on specific research projects.

Jason Morton has participated in the program since the seventh grade and was recently accepted by the University of Southern California (USC) as a premedical student. Klyvert says Morton had been tracked into a non-science curriculum by his school in Yonkers, N.Y., despite his stated desire to become a doctor.

"It's not that [the school was] discouraging, but they were not encouraging," Morton says. "The idea among many minorities is that going to professional school is too much of an effort, it's too expensive. There's a real sense of fear. [The STEP program] instills a sense of courage instead."

STEP introduced Morton to Dr. Barry Honig of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, whom he has assisted on biochemical research projects studying DNA and AIDS.

"Jason is a great kid and clearly got a lot out of the summer," Honig said. "The message of his success is that bright motivated students can gain a lot from a summer experience in a lab where people are willing to invest the time required to get them started."

Deborah Morton, a secretary at Columbia University and Jason's mom, credits the STEP program with helping her son get accepted into USC's pre-medicine program.

"The study skills, the mentors -- the fact that he was able to see professionals engaged in research" were all important, she says.

A Whole New World

STEP introduces students to a world they may never have known, Klyvert says, because schools that serve African American, Hispanic, and poor children often have weak math and science programs -- leading to measurable lags among their students.

"They are so far behind in the sciences that they can't compete with the other students [when they get to college]. There are components of science they never knew existed," says Klyvert.

Jacqueline McCloud, who runs the STEP and C-STEP programs for the Associated Medical Schools of New York -- a consortium of the fourteen medical schools -- says that in many inner-city schools, guidance counselors and teachers discourage students, particularly minority youngsters.

"We have one young man who just finished fourth in his class in medical school who was told [by teachers] there was no way in hell he was going to medical school," McCloud says.

Another problem McCloud has observed is that a good percentage of teachers instructing math and science in the inner-city schools are teaching "out of license," or without degrees in math or science. STEP and C-STEP cannot solve that problem, but they provide an avenue for some students to circumvent it.

In 1995-96, 5,134 secondary students from 804 schools were served by STEP across New York State. Of those, 65.1 percent were in the more rigorous regents mathematics and science classes and 30.9 percent took accelerated, honors, or advance placement mathematics. And the vast majority of students received As and Bs in their classes. Because the state does not collect student course enrollment data by race or gender, it is not possible to compare data exactly. But overall, only 37.8 percent of New York's students took the regents mathematics classes.

"The participation rates of STEP students in demanding, advanced courses far exceed those of minority students who do not participate in STEP programs," the report said.