Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Claims It Has Enabled Its Partners To 'Double the Number of Black and Latinx Students and Girls Taking AP Computer Science' (chanzuckerberg.com)

theodp writes: In a Monday blog post, the outgoing Head of Education for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Chan Zuckerberg Initiative made the claim that "we've made investments that enabled our partners to double the number of Black and Latinx students and girls taking AP Computer Science." The claim is an apparent reference to the highly-promoted and wildly-successful new AP Computer Science Principles course (dubbed "Coding Lite" by the NY Times), which the NSF and College Board began development on in 2009. Zuckerberg's CZI LLC was created in late 2015.

Comments

how many in total?

[ole_timer]

from 2 to 4?

Yay! Quotas!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, almost 2 out of 3 college students are female...

This is great

[Trailer Trash]

Next, let's work on getting more men into nursing and teaching. Diversity is always good, right?

Right?

Hello?

Re:This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want to get men in to teaching, maybe they need to work on removing some of the stigma that any man interested in children is immediately assumed a pedophile. I was in Manchester recently and saw a park with a sign that literally said men weren't allowed in to it without a child present.
I know I wouldn't ever go into primary school teaching even though I do legitimately have interest in it. In lower grades everybody assumes you're a pedophile and in higher grades if you piss a female student off she can make the claim you had an inappropriate relationship with her and that's enough to ruin the rest of your life, and likely land you in jail, no matter if the claim was true or not.
And to think there's people out there lobbying to always believe the accuser when a false accusation ruins the accused so completely.

Re:Who knew?

[pezezin]

I have lived all my life in Spain, so obviously Spanish is my mother language, and I'm seriously tired of all the idiots who try to promote this supposedly "gender neutral" language, ending words in -@, -x or -os/as. The first two are unpronunceable, the last one is way too cumbersome. I wish they would stop butchering our language.

Re:Who knew?

[fuzznutz]

I have lived all my life in Spain, so obviously Spanish is my mother language, and I'm seriously tired of all the idiots who try to promote this supposedly "gender neutral" language, ending words in -@, -x or -os/as. The first two are unpronunceable, the last one is way too cumbersome. I wish they would stop butchering our language.

If you can convince media personalities in the US from breaking into hyper exaggerated, ultra accented Spanish pronunciation of Spanish names while reporting otherwise in an American accent, we have a deal.

Re:Who knew?

[Octorian]

English is the odd one out here. Almost all the languages in the world have gender nouns.

This is why I get pissed when I see people ranting and raving against what few gendered terms might exist in English discourse. They should be lucky to speak a language that actually has gender-neutral nouns and pronouns.

Just imagine if these people learned about other languages.

Re:Who knew?

[Oswald McWeany]

I have lived all my life in Spain, so obviously Spanish is my mother language, and I'm seriously tired of all the idiots who try to promote this supposedly "gender neutral" language, ending words in -@, -x or -os/as. The first two are unpronunceable, the last one is way too cumbersome. I wish they would stop butchering our language.

It's funny how many things are considered offensive "on behalf of another group of people" when that group of people weren't offended in the first place.

Re:Great

[Hognoxious]

Or more people programming, bringing in different points of view.

Like what? That OOP is inherently unfair because it uses classes?

Re:Great

[iriecolorado]

Different points of view don't come from different skin color or genitals.

AP CS Principles != AP CS A

[reiscw]

I'm an AP Computer Science A teacher (the reason there is an "A" at the end is that there used to be an "AB" course as well that included data structures). That course is equivalent to CS1 at most universities, and that's what you get credit for if you take it (at most places). Java is the language and there's a good treatment of OOP, as well as recursion, sorting/searching algorithms, lists, arrays, and the fundamental stuff. The course that they are describing here is not AP CS A, it's a relatively new course, AP CS Principles. This is a course that's equivalent to a course that many universities create (including two in my metropolitan area) for liberal arts majors (meaning it's a gen ed course). Programming is part of the course, but 25% or less, and the course is intentionally language-agnostic. It's not a bad class (it exposes students to data science as well as programming, which I think is great), but it's not like CS A, which is a "for real" programming class equivalent to a course for freshmen in a CS major. Increasing the diversity in AP CS A is an accomplishment (in my opinion), but increasing AP CS Principles diversity is not very impressive unless you show that the students coming out of it choose a CS-related major (including data science, which is starting to be offered as an undergraduate major).

What concerns me a little bit right now is that many superintendents think they have a solid CS program if they offer AP CS Principles. I don't think you have a solid program until you have AP CS A or an equivalent course in a language like C++ or Python. Describing APCSP as "Coding Lite" may be too generous a description.