What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?

This paper provides a comprehensive categorization of extracurricular clubs (e.g., robotics, STEM, and business clubs) in hundreds of American high schools and examines how socioeconomic factors—such as race, income level, pupil-teacher ratio, and school size—affect the quantit...

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Main Authors: Amy Tang, Yang Wang, Chunqiang Tang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2024-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10788686/
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author Amy Tang
Yang Wang
Chunqiang Tang
author_facet Amy Tang
Yang Wang
Chunqiang Tang
author_sort Amy Tang
collection DOAJ
description This paper provides a comprehensive categorization of extracurricular clubs (e.g., robotics, STEM, and business clubs) in hundreds of American high schools and examines how socioeconomic factors—such as race, income level, pupil-teacher ratio, and school size—affect the quantity and variety of these clubs. We reveal that robotics clubs have become the most prominent extracurricular activity in promoting electrical and computer engineering, as well as STEM fields at large, outperforming even math clubs, with 38.9% of schools hosting them. Although schools across different socioeconomic backgrounds all manage to offer robotics clubs, school demographics do affect the total number of clubs a school provides. Nevertheless, successful schools are capable of expanding their extracurricular offerings despite these constraints. Specifically, within schools of similar demographics, the top 25% offer 8.8 times more clubs than the bottom 25%.
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spelling doaj-art-eb2e0251e0154f65bcdb6ce84c650ab82025-08-20T01:58:15ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362024-01-011219038919039910.1109/ACCESS.2024.351469410788686What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?Amy Tang0https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1178-6916Yang Wang1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9721-4923Chunqiang Tang2https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0133-4800Lynbrook High School, San Jose, CA, USADepartment of Computer Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USAMeta Platforms, Menlo Park, CA, USAThis paper provides a comprehensive categorization of extracurricular clubs (e.g., robotics, STEM, and business clubs) in hundreds of American high schools and examines how socioeconomic factors—such as race, income level, pupil-teacher ratio, and school size—affect the quantity and variety of these clubs. We reveal that robotics clubs have become the most prominent extracurricular activity in promoting electrical and computer engineering, as well as STEM fields at large, outperforming even math clubs, with 38.9% of schools hosting them. Although schools across different socioeconomic backgrounds all manage to offer robotics clubs, school demographics do affect the total number of clubs a school provides. Nevertheless, successful schools are capable of expanding their extracurricular offerings despite these constraints. Specifically, within schools of similar demographics, the top 25% offer 8.8 times more clubs than the bottom 25%.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10788686/American high schoolextracurricular clubssocioeconomic statusSTEMrobotics
spellingShingle Amy Tang
Yang Wang
Chunqiang Tang
What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?
IEEE Access
American high school
extracurricular clubs
socioeconomic status
STEM
robotics
title What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?
title_full What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?
title_fullStr What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?
title_full_unstemmed What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?
title_short What Influences the Availability of STEM and Other Extracurricular Clubs in American High Schools?
title_sort what influences the availability of stem and other extracurricular clubs in american high schools
topic American high school
extracurricular clubs
socioeconomic status
STEM
robotics
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10788686/
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