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.