Barely Any Women, Minorities Or Wyoming Residents Took the AP Computer Science Test Last Year
By Jordyn Taylor | BetaBeat – Mon, Jan 13, 2014

Nobody in Wyoming took the AP computer science exam.
The demographics of the 2013 AP Computer Science exam’s test takers have been released, and the results are pretty depressing, tbh.
30,000 students took the AP Computer Science exam in 2013, which is great, because those kids might actually be able to find jobs one day, when everything is made of robots. But on the downside, less than 20 percent of test takers were female, and Hispanic and African-American students accounted for only eight and three percent of test takers, respectively. Ugh.

The rest of the article will tell you that few students in the U.S. take this test. Nonetheless, many issues underlay the above statistics. Schools are attempting to get more girls and minorities interested in math and computer science. The degree to which they fail reflects feminine preferences that are well-researched, as well as social and other factors. The minority picture remains less researched and murkier. While only eleven AP computer science exams were administered in Mississippi, Montana and Wyoming in total, the absence of any female, Hispanic and African-American test-takers in those states naturally sets off alarm bells.

Eduhonesty: Counselors and teachers know the money flows toward science and engineering. In many high schools, most of the math teachers are female. We push girls and minorities toward science, math and technology.

Why do our efforts often fail? Studies document that many girls prefer more social careers, careers that encourage conversation and social interaction. The key word is interaction. Problem-solving for the sake of problem-solving only appeals to a small subset of our students. Most students solve problems for grades and/or praise, working to keep teachers and parents happy. Some of these pleasers may decide to pursue math and science careers for the money.

Here’s the problem no one can solve: Social sciences may not pay well. The job prospects may be bleak. But social sciences are both much easier and more fun to study than math, science or engineering for the vast majority of students. On campus, students know that liberal arts majors have more free time than their engineering counterparts, sometimes ridiculously more free time. More than once, I’ve heard phrases from liberal arts majors like, “yeah, I did all the reading for the class the week before the final,” or even, “I never did the reading. You could pretty much figure out test answers without the reading.” This is true in high school as well as college. Creative writing is much easier than Calculus. Graphic Design is much more fun (for most) than AP Statistics.

What can we do to attract women and minorities to science, math and technology? One idea I favor is loan forgiveness. We need petrochemical engineers. Why not provide better loan rates, along with programs for loan forgiveness, for students who study in these areas?

Beyond that, I hope the government will mostly stay away from this issue. We can provide students with the information they need to make good choices. But in the end, when “Johnny” decides he has too much homework in his chemistry classes and switches his major to Gender Studies, there’s not much to be done. If there were, the paying parents of America have done it already.

I am sure this is not merely a school issue. This is a Google Docs issue. To quote Wikipedia, Googledocs “is a freeware web-based office suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service. … It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users live.”

Sounds great, right? Often Google Docs is great. I make a PowerPoint presentation. I share it with a group. Presto! Everybody has a copy, right there on their own Google Drive, called My Drive. Interconnectedness takes one more giant leap forward.

Here’s my problem. Teachers share. Oh, do we share. I am buried in helpful files. I am not sure I could teach this many spiffy lessons in four years, let alone the next four months. These new files are obscuring vital administrative files which get lost in the flotsam and jetsam of other people’s desire to be helpful. I try to arrange and organize the files, but how many hours has that taken? And given the number of files I am organizing, how often will I lose files beyond all normal retrieval?

Eduhonesty: I am feeling a little overconnected right now.

One of my laughs for the week:

I ran into a former colleague, an excellent science teacher. I asked her how she was doing. She’s fine except her district moved her into a different position. She’s teaching English now.

Ummm… I respect this woman greatly, but English is not her first language.

“How’s that going?” I asked.
“I don’t know how to teach no English,” she answered, laughing.

I hope she was being ironic. I pray she was being ironic. The scary part is that I’m not sure.

Eduhonesty: This woman will do at least an adequate job. She’s a hard-working professional who cares about the kids. But this placement is silly. English teachers should be native speakers of the language who have passed a rigorous qualifying test. I’d take nonnative speakers who can pass that same test. I don’t believe my colleague could pass the test I visualize. The same is true for a fair number of bilingual teachers of my acquaintance. The ability to speak Spanish does not prepare anyone to teach English.

Sigh. She ain’t gonna do much harm, I guess. If she don’t know too much hard English, she does know how to use a textbook and present a lesson. She’s actually very bright. I can’t say the same about the people in her district office who were in charge of placing the professionals within their schools.

If I sound like the phones have taken control of the classroom, I’m exaggerating. My current school mostly has control of those phones. Many schools do. I had to give one and only one phone warning last week and the girl in question immediately put her phone away. Fear of having a phone seized is a powerful deterrent to its use.

But I still want the issue out in the open for discussion. For one thing, the phones go home and kids can then spend their whole afternoon — and sometimes night — on their own personal phone. They are endlessly texting, chatting and playing games. They are tweeting, posting selfies to their Facebook accounts, emailing those selfies to friends, and taking random pictures of snacks, dinners and just about anything else. Where does the homework fit in this picture? When will the reading happen?

Eduhonesty: That last question is the real kicker: When will the reading happen?

We learn from reading. We don’t learn from being taught to read. Almost everybody is taught to read. That education has very little benefit, though, if a kid never picks up a book.

The push toward healthy lunches may be having an unintended effect. I have no research. I cannot document a thing. Still, I may be on to something here.

Here is what I know: I am on a diet. I am trying to lose Christmas weight. I bought the school lunch this week because it was perfect. I got a small piece of baked chicken, some unflavored rice, and a choice of fat-free veggies and fruit. Perfect. The whole thing probably wasn’t 250 calories. I’m not sure it was even 200 calories.

Other menu options for the month look equally suitable for my diet. Lean Cuisine could not do better. A nice fresh apple, raw carrots, a cooked vegetable without oil, butter or even salt, and baked, low-fat something-or-another.

Eduhonesty: That lunch was pretty scary. Can an adolescent function on that little food? Especially since they often throw some or all of it away, I am concerned. You have to be on a diet or a bit of a health nut to eat overcooked, unsalted, fat-free green beans.

Are other districts serving similar lunches? I’m afraid they might be. With the government push toward fresh, healthy food, districts are forced to budget to get that fresh food onto plates. I’m sure it’s more expensive than pepperoni pizza. So the district serves one piece of baked chicken. Or one scoop of low-fat, overcooked, whole-wheat spaghetti in slightly-diluted red sauce. The chicken may get eaten, at least.

When I was 15, I frequently ate 500 or more calories for lunch without a thought. I probably needed 500 calories. Most kids need that much food and athletes may need more.

I wonder if we are underfeeding our students in the name of good nutrition?

We’ll call him Rafael. He did not do a single problem on his last assignment. Instead, he drew Thor’s hammer on the back of the sheet, with lightening bolts coming out of the hammer. The Rafaels make many teachers despair, as they pursue their personal agendas, ignoring the math swirling about them.

I love Rafael. He won’t be in my class next semester and I am going to miss him. I know he’ll miss me too. I don’t think too many people in his world are backing up his plan to make superhero movies. As far as I am concerned, we might as well support our Rafaels. They won’t quit drawing hammers because we explain that auto repair is more practical. I recommend double majors to students like Rafael, emphasizing the need to make a living until the big break comes.

Rafael’s grade will be OK. Much of the time I caught his hammer-drawing efforts in time. He did enough to get by, in the tradition of Rafaels everywhere.

Eduhonesty: I enjoy working with this kid because he has a dream. One of the best parts of teaching is supporting the random dreams that somehow grow up between the cracks of the broken sidewalks in our poor neighborhoods. This kid plans to go somewhere. I’m glad to have had the chance to believe in him.