Existing literature on the impact of Common Core State Standards in Math has shown little benefit, but it has not examined variation in outcomes based on implementation strategies, student subgroups, or outcomes other than test scores. We use a difference-in-differences approach with school fixed effects to compare outcomes in pre- and poststandards years across schools with different levels of participation in professional learning around the standards in the middle grades in Chicago. Postimplementation, there were significantly greater improvements in student reports of standards-aligned instructional practices, math grades, pass rates, and test scores in schools with more extensive professional learning around the standards, among students with low and average initial achievement. Relationships were largely not significant for students with high initial achievement. We discuss why Chicago might have seen positive results, including the district emphasis on professional learning around the practice standards and differential impacts based on student prior achievement.

Social scientists have dispelled teen pregnancy's public characterization as inherently pathological and instead frequently study teen reproductive practices as the result of either socioeconomic and cultural constraints or individual processes of identity construction. Through semistructured interviews with 15 young Hispanic mothers in southern New Mexico, I consider both macro-level contexts and individual-level identification processes in understanding teens' reproductive decision making. Highlighting narratives of sexual and reproductive passivity in the region's impoverished colonias, I describe how young women in these communities explained their pregnancies as the result of what I have termed sterility cuentos, their boyfriends' false stories of sterility. I go on to tease apart the contradictory narratives of girls in metropolitan Las Cruces who called their pregnancies accidents despite wanting and planning to become pregnant. Through thematic narrative analysis, I argue that teen pregnancy can be thought of as part of a larger adolescent identity project in which teens in particular social locations reproduce, negotiate, and/or reconstruct various axes of

Colleges across the United States have shown a commitment to advancing diversity in the STEM fields by creating programs aimed at improving outcomes of women and/or racially and ethnically minoritized students. However, most existing literature focuses on the successes of singular college programs rather than comparing these STEM interventions across the higher education landscape. This systematic review investigates the literature on diversity-focused “STEM intervention programs” (SIPs) at the postsecondary level. We categorize key features of these programs and their outcomes, and we look at which program components have the most empirical support. We examine 82 articles that reported on SIPs with disaggregated outcomes, coding each initiative’s features and outcomes. Across these articles, we found six common program components, with most programs including more than one component, and five common program outcomes. Just 53 articles tested differences in outcomes of participants relative to a comparison group. This subset of research found support for the effectiveness of all coded components for improving student outcomes, though studies of multi-component programs did not parse the relative contributions of each component. Based on these findings, we conclude multi-component interventions that create a welcoming environment and focus on the successes of minoritized students help redress existing institutional shortcomings and are a promising step towards diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM. However, more rigorous quantitative studies are needed to empirically assess the effectiveness of individual SIP program components.

The Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards encourage substantial shifts in teaching, but how to enact change is not specified. This mixed-methods exploratory study shows how different implementation supports were related to teachers’ use of standards-aligned instructional practices in the Chicago Public Schools. It provides comparative evidence that professional learning opportunities were strongly related to instructional practices, whereas curriculum and instructional resources had more modest and mixed relationships. In particular, collaboration with colleagues around instruction had consistently positive relationships with instructional practices in math and science, and these relationships were as strong among teachers who perceived many barriers to standards implementation as those who did not. We discuss implications for education leaders as they make decisions about how to best support teachers in standards-aligned math and science instruction.

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