

No Girls, Blacks, or Hispanics Take AP Computer Science Exam in Some States - wallflower
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2014/01/girls_african_americans_and_hi.html

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cgriswald
This is a strange article. It leads with a somewhat incomplete headline and
misleading intro paragraph, but eventually "comes clean" with a bit more
explanation.

Yes, Wyoming had no female, hispanic, or African-American test takers. It also
had no test takers of any kind.

Mississippi had only one test taker. Yet, according to the article, Ericson
was "surprised" that none were African-American since African-Americans make
up 37 percent of the population (still making them a minority). She was
apparently not surprised that the White majority was not represented in the
tests. The sole test taker was hispanic.

Montana also had no hispanic or African-American test takers. Yet, it only had
11 test takers and stastically one would expect 0 hispanic and African-
American test takers given the demography of Montana.

Basically everywhere the exam was taken in reasonable numbers, females were
respresnted, but underrepresented in terms of demographics. Ericson does not
specificy if the numbers had grown from previous years. Interestingly, many
were from girl-only schools. (To me this suggests in the absence of certain
social pressures, girls are more likely to take computer science courses.)

And unsurprisingly, in places where relatively few hispanics live (at least in
terms of offical demographics), few or no hispanics took the test.

What I find disappointing about the article is that by excluding "interesting
facts" about white male test takers, we don't really know the significance of
the passing rates of the hispanic test takers (although we do learn that
African-Americans had the lowest pass rates).

The "interesting" thing about Mississippi is that _Mississippians_ are
underrepresented, regardless of race or color. And I'd go so far as to say
that's really the only interesting thing for _any_ of the states which had
fewer than 100 people take the test.

