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Despite $30M Tech Push, Half of US States Had Fewer Than 300 AP CS Test Takers
theodp writes: As President Obama was 'taught to code' last December, Politico reported that the $30 million tech-financed campaign to promote computer science education was a smash success. And indeed it has been, at least from a PR standpoint. But Code.org and its backers have long spun AP Computer Science test metrics as a true barometer of CS education success, and from that standpoint, things don't look quite so rosy. The College Board raved about "massive gains in AP Computer Science participation (25% growth) AND scores" in a June tweetstorm and at its July conference, where AP CS was declared the '2015 AP Subject of the Year.' But a look at the recently-released detail on 2015 AP CS scores shows wide differences in adoption and success along gender and ethnicity lines (Asian boys and girls, in particular, set themselves apart from other groups with 70%+ pass rates). And, for all the praise the NSF lavished on Code.org for 'its amazing marketing prowess', half of the states still had fewer than 300 AP CS test takers in 2015, and ten states actually saw year-over-year declines in the number of test takers (if my math is correct — scraped data, VBA code here).
Even well articulated racist speech is 'troll' around here. If you are that edgy, you should hang out at the popular SJW forums where the new brand of trendy racism is politically correct and progressive.
The fact that there are still differences between genders and ethnicity means that we need to target those groups more
I agree. And that's why I'm launching an initiative to get more men into elementary education. While things are improving in fields like CS, the gender ratio of men in elementary education has remained stagnant at only 13% for decades. The fact that men are far over-represented in dangerous manual labor jobs, like mining and commercial fishing, shows the deleterious effect of having missed out on the professional opportunities afforded them by a career in this field (with a $53,590 average annual salary). And I think it's about time we did something about it!
And I'm absolutely sure that I can count on the support in this effort of all my liberal friends, who have lead the charge to improve the gender ration in CS and other fields. After all, as they've told me so many times, they're all about equality and fairness.
SO WHO'S WITH ME?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I think a good chunk of STEM parents hitting the magic middle age mark during their kids' schooling are living examples of why not to study STEM subjects. I'm sure there are a fair number of developers and IT workers who have been forced to train their replacements and tossed out, all while their kids are watching. I know not everyone experiences this, but when you're 18, if you hear about a field having no future, do you flock to it even if it's fun or interesting?
The only truly safe routes if you want steady employment are medicine on the high end and trades on the low end. Medicine is safe because doctors were smart enough to form a trade organization to limit entrants, set standards, bribe Congressmen, etc. Trades are safe because they're not outsourceable, and in union states, operate on a guild/apprenticeship system. Law used to be safe, but the Bar Association started doing things that IT employers are doing, such as allowing offshoring and pumping up law school enrollment to increase supply and reduce salaries. The legal profession used to be a guaranteed meal ticket, regardless of where you graduated from -- now it's a closed club requiring you to be in the top of your class at a top 5 law school to get a lucrative job and make back your investment.
I still think it's time for tech workers to form a trade guild before it's too late to rescue the profession. Companies hate paying high wages for uneven-quality work. And because tech workers refuse to associate, they're able to pass favorable immigration laws and push agendas like "everyone can code." I feel that computers are essential now, and it's time to get out of the wild west phase of the profession...sure it's great to innovate and try new stuff, but when programming languages, platforms and frameworks get thrown out every year, nothing stable ever gets built. As an experienced worker who learned from a lot of other experienced pros on the way up, the loss of entry level (apprentice-level) work to offshoring bothers me because that's where your next generation of talent comes from -- not coder academies and forcing disinterested high school students into AP CS classes.
If everyone had a job that they desired (or even liked) the US economy would collapse.
You know the saying "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life"? The whole saying should include "because they're not going to pay you for doing something you love". Oh yeah, I can hear people saying "rabble rabble I do what I love rabble you're stupid if you don't rabble rabble". You guys are the vast vast minority. If everyone were like that, well, the number of Excel fetishists in the population would rise to truly disturbing levels.
Work, in summary: You perform services for pay that you would not otherwise do. And if you DO like it, never tell your employer. They'll stop giving you raises because you're less likely to quit a job if you like it.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
yep. Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid. However, I do not want to clean up code of diversity hires just because because some idiot SJW thinks the percentage of people in any given field needs to match the population.
And I no longer want to clean up code written by those in more privileged demographics who were only hired because many people with more ability were not given similar opportunity to become skilled in software development. The more skilled developers I can choose from while hiring my coworkers the better my life will be.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke