Fast Facts

PLTW Reaches Students of All Backgrounds and Genders Increasing Aptitude and Retention for All

• PLTW works. When surveyed, 80% of the high school seniors in the program indicated their primary area of study after high school would be in engineering, technology or computer science.

• PLTW courses attract a much more diverse population than engineering programs in colleges and universities.

• Native American and Hispanic students, traditionally underrepresented in math and science courses nationwide, are proportionately represented in PLTW.  African American students are not proportional to the schools’ overall enrollment but the proportion in PLTW has increased in each of the last three years.

• The proportion of female PLTW students (17%) reflects the national proportion of female students attracted to college engineering programs.

• Male and female achievement levels on end-of-course exams are equal in all courses.

• PLTW serves schools at all levels of affluence and is proportionally represented in the poorest schools.

• The grade distribution on the final assessments is almost perfectly Gaussian with a mean of 70% showing that the tests are both challenging and well calibrated to assess the full range of student abilities.

• Observations by independent entities have shown that PLTW increases student aptitude in STEM fields and increases retention rates in college engineering programs.

• University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that students who take PLTW courses tend to miss fewer school days and achieve higher test scores in non-STEM subject areas.

Project Lead The Way – Wisconsin
Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) 1025 N. Broadway, Milwaukee, WI 53202
414.277.7238
Copyright 2010-2012