America's Coming Geek Gap

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/01/charts-ap-computer-science-2013

by knowtheory • 13 years ago

16 14 13 years ago

motherjones.com

jpwright• 13 years ago

Using the AP Computer Science exam as a proxy for all computer science education is seriously shortsighted.

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

Precisely this.

In fact, measuring computer science education entirely through formal means is shortsighted in general, due to the nature of CS itself and how it's learned.

But especially the AP CS exam, which is essentially little more than a Java course ("The Perils of JavaSchools", indeed), is hardly indicative of anything.

jtbigwoo• 13 years ago

The numbers in this article are certainly frustrating to someone who loves computer science. However, even if a kid was certain that they wanted to major in computer science in college, I'd still tell them to take AP English before AP CS. Why? Because almost every college degree program requires an English class or two and most colleges allow AP exam scores to count for college credit. The kid could get a general class out of the way save some money or perhaps use that time to explore an advanced class or an interest outside their major.

heurist• 13 years ago

The point the author is trying to make is that we should have provide more programming classes in high school, which people have started pushing for... but the problem is there are not as many high school teachers qualified to teach AP computer science as there are for humanities. If they are qualified they can probably earn more working in software than through teaching.

minimax• 13 years ago

I encourage the people reading this to check out the spreadsheet† this is based on. When the author says:

Last year, not a single girl took the college-level coding test in 2 states

Actually looks like that's three states based on the data, but in those cases the total number of test takers was only 1 (Mississippi), 11 (Montana), and 0 (Wyoming).

Another interesting thing is that the percentage of female test takers varies pretty widely. I found it surprising that in Tennessee and Arkansas, close to 30% of test takers were women, which puts those states right near the top of the list for female participation rates.

†http://home.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/556

krakensden• 13 years ago

Just remember: if you want to fix that, you're a racist

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/stop-thinking-that-codi...

On a more serious note, here is a list of complaints about education in America:

1) Teachers are remarkably anti-math in culture. This has an obvious set of effects.

2) The radical decentralization of responsibility means that all districts get ripped off on everything they have to purchase.

3) The radical decentralization of responsibility combined with wealth segregation means that poor children get poorly educated.

4) People who are nominally progressive think that gentrification is terrible instead of our first chance in fifty years to get wealthy people to pay for the education of poor children. So we're going to waste it and kick all the poor people out to the exurbs instead.

5) School boards are the worst possible case for democracy. They are too local for newspapers to cover. No one understands what they do. They regularly make terrible decisions, and are unaccountable because no one knows about it. Sometimes it's Scopes monkey-trial nonsense, sometimes it's corruption, sometimes it's just being a money-sink.

6) Higher education is promoted in a miserably hypocritical manner. If you're sending student loan money home to keep the lights on you shouldn't be getting a history major, not if you don't know the next step. If you tell someone who is sending student loan money home to keep the lights on that they shouldn't worry about their major, you should go to a special hell, where they can't mail you your pension. The defense of this is usually absurd bullshit about the importance of broad liberal education, and romantic notions about the pursuit of knowledge. A remarkable demonstration of arrogance and privilege from people who make their living denouncing the arrogance of privilege. Encouraging people to spend years of their life and go five figures into debt so that you can feel good about aristocratic conceits from old europe is awful.

Anyway, the point is, K-12 education is systemically broken, and American education as a culture is opposed to a world in which the 'coming' geek gap was fixed.

gaius2• 13 years ago

Even today it makes my blood boil how companies like RM and Viglen sold junk to schools at vastly inflated prices - and yet somehow managed to push out the superior machines, the BBC Micro and the Archimedes, in favour of their ridiculous bullshit. It had to be backhanders and sleaze. Who in the real world even used the 80186?! No-one...

rosenjon2• 13 years ago

I was curious after reading this, so I Googled sample questions from the AP Computer Science exam.

https://www.tracy.k12.ca.us/sites/clunetta/Java/practice/pra...

The last question on the test is this:

The method mixup is defined as follows: String mixup(String word) { if (word.length() == 1) return ""; else return mixup(word.substring(0, word.length() - 1)) + word.charAt(word.length() - 1); }

What is the value of the string returned by mixup("IDEAL")?

a) IDEAL b) IDEA c) LEAD d) LEDA e) DEAL

I don't program much in Java, so maybe I'm missing some gotcha, but shouldn't the answer to this be "L"? The recursive mixup call will go: IDEA... IDE... ID.. I, at which point the final return value will be "".

So the value of the returned string will be "" + "L" therefore returning "L"?

In any case, the point of looking at this was to get some sense of whether a kid would even want to take AP Comp Sci. My concern with this, knowing how most of these subjects get taught in school, is that teachers would teach to the test, therefore sapping all of the fun out of programming. Knowing some of this stuff by heart is potentially valuable I suppose, but kind of operates in a vacuum, as practically you have a ton of resources at your disposal when programming (ie Google, Stack Overflow, API references, etc). This rote memorization of things could actually turn kids off of computer science instead of drawing them in.

rosenjon2• 13 years ago

nevermind, i see, it's DEAL. I didn't carry the mixup calls all the way down. I guess the "mixup" function call should be a hint.

gaius2• 13 years ago

The author knows nothing of geeks. Clue: we didn't get our (programming) educations in school. We got it in our and our friend's bedrooms hunched over BBC Micros and Atari STs.

forgotAgain• 13 years ago

I think this more reflects the rise of an industry to help high schoolers get into college. Taking AP tests is pushed as a means of increasing your acceptance chances. It's also pushed by local school districts to show they're raising their game as far as getting kids into college.

The increase has come in certain tests because those tests a) require less new infrastructure expense b) are easier to teach, and c) are of greater general interest.

FredDollen• 13 years ago

Schools can't attract competent STEM teachers because the pay is so low. It makes no sense that an English teacher should get the same pay as a STEM teacher.

STEM teachers should get at least a 50% skills differential in pay.

actsasbuffoon• 13 years ago

The average high school teacher only made $54k in 2011. Even with a 50% differential it would be a far cry from what can easily be found in the private sector. I think that pretty much confirms your point; how many developers with enough experience to teach are going to take a 50%-75% pay cut to teach? The answer is very few.

avbloom• 13 years ago

Great article surfacing a really important issue. I think a good beginning would be a shift in culture. I'd like to see more hacking/making tech culture supported and celebrated in schools from kindergarten through college. Such a shame that Yale didn't rejoice at what its students did with its course catalogue: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/16...

America's Coming Geek Gap

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