The Whole Story Behind Low AP CS Exam Stats 325
theodp writes "At first glance, the headline in The Salt Lake Tribune — Very Few Utah Girls, Minorities Take Computer Science AP Tests — appears to be pretty alarming. As does the headline No Girls, Blacks, or Hispanics Take AP Computer Science Exam in Some States over at Education Week. Not One Girl Took The AP Computer Science Test In Some States warns a Business Insider headline. And so on and so on and so on. So how could one quibble with tech-giant backed Code.org's decision to pay teachers a $250 "Female Student Bonus", or Google's declaration that 'the ultimate goal of CS First is to provide proven teaching materials, screencasts, and curricula for after-school programs that will ignite the interest and confidence of underrepresented minorities and girls in CS,' right? But the thing is, CollegeBoard AP CS exam records indicate that no Wyoming students at all took an AP CS exam (xls) in 2013, and only a total of 103 Utah students (xls) had reported scores. Let's not forget about the girls and underrepresented minorities, but since AP CS Exam Stats are being spun as a measure of CS education participation (pdf) and equity, let's not forget that pretty much everyone has been underrepresented if we look at the big AP CS picture. If only 29,555 AP CS scores were reported (xls) in 2013 for a HS population of about 16 million students, shouldn't the goal at this stage of the game really be CS education for all?"
Reminds me of that joke headline from the '80s (Score:2, Funny)
Its the mormons (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, whom to H8? (Score:5, Funny)
Nerds are only openly hostile toward the world at large because it was openly hostile to us first.
Re:So, whom to H8? (Score:4, Funny)
I blame the nerds for driving everyone else out of certain fields with their naked and open hostility towards: women, minorities, political groups, windows users, console players, facebook users, sports fans, people who haven't read Ender's Game and those who display emotions outside of forums posts and D&D games.
You forgot the worst group of offensive subhumans: people who like to use PascalCasing for field and method names.