Effects of school characteristics on students’ mathematics performances in high schools: does stem education make any difference?

The purpose of this study was to determine how different characteristics of Florida public high schools are related to students’ performances on the mathematics component of Advanced Placement (AP) exams, End of Course (EOC) exams, The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Test (ACT) tests. The study also provides a summary of key findings and details about how students perform in STEM schools on the AP pass rates, EOC percentiles, and SAT and ACT test scores comparing to students in non-STEM schools in the State of Florida. The present study included 343 public high schools in the State of Florida. The sample consists of AP, EOC, SAT and ACT mathematics data for those 343 high schools selected among around 800 public high schools in the State. Selection criteria for the schools is based upon availability of required data. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), Cluster Analysis, and Independent Sample T-test Analysis techniques were used to analyze obtained data. Most stunning result of this study is that STEM and Non-STEM high school students’ performances on above mentioned assessments are not statistically significantly different. That brings a big question about quality and appropriateness of STEM applications for improving students’ understanding of mathematics concepts. Another important finding of the study is that even though student enrollment numbers do not play a role on students’ performances, minority rate, economically disadvantaged student rate and student-teacher ratio have statistically significant effects on students’ performances in both STEM and Non-STEM schools.