Would you be willing to share your ideas on what can be done at the beginning of the pipeline?
Also, immediate suspension for kids who bully academically-inclined students for 'acting white'. Not only is it a racially charged statement that probably has no place in school (or so progs would tell us), but it seems levied exclusively against the kids who need education the most.
Also, it is time to retire this stereotype that every non-white kid who is academically inclined is being bullied for acting white at school all the time. I get the most grief from white kids about "acting white" growing up. From fellow black kids it was pretty rare - 1-2 times. Mostly other kids were more inclined to help uplift me.
The US is a long way from having its entire white population in the upper middle class: http://www.nccp.org/media/releases/release_34.html
There are a million different reasons someone may not want to do that or may be encouraged against it, but you'd have to look at every individual and culture to find out why. It may not even turn out to be a bad thing. What if someone wants to become a chef or athlete instead, is that a problem?
What about exposure to the field and introducing computational thinking into earlier pars of the education system? Not necessary making kids program as their first exposure, but exposing them to computational concepts (maybe start with power of twos when learning multiplication, or control-flow-logic for writing a story....).
Honestly I don't think any culture in the west has ever been truly supportive of becoming a STEM person. Until very recently is was extremely derided in even white American culture as being "for nerds".
A more positive exposure to technology at an early age can only be a good thing. I think we'll still find very few people want to become engineers due to the required workload and that will be ok.
I loved the show Numbers because it was a show about how math helped detectives solve crimes. Way more interesting than just doing algebra about speeding trains.
I think sometimes there is an idea that everyone has the same problem and your problem is universal.
For example I heard about a hackathon for black and latino kids. And the ideas that came out of it were really different. One app was a social networking platform for private school kids to connect with other black private school kids to talk about their experiences and vent. Another idea was a payment app to send money to Mexico without having to go to Western Union or whatever.
There is a startup in Oakland that has an app to help people who are caught up in the criminal justice system to keep track of court appearances and hearings and stuff so they don't need to go to jail for bogus stuff like missing a court appearance.
Technology has the opportunity to enable and transform - if we make sure everyone has access.
Still, it can be changed: in China studying is increasing social value much more than in Europe / US for example.