2020 AP CS Scores: Still Big Gaps In Performance, Participation 103
theodp writes: As the 8th annual Hour of Code kicked off this week, the College Board released 2020 AP national and state score breakouts for AP CS program participants. As in past years, this year's results still showed striking gaps in performance and participation across gender and ethnicity segments. Passing rates across major ethnic group segments ranged from 39.8%-78.6% for the Java-based AP CS A course, and 52%-83% for the newer "language agnostic" AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) course. Across gender segments, females accounted for 25% of AP CS A scores (16.2K of 64.9K total students) and 33.9% of AP CSP scores (38.6K of 113.9K students). Asian students accounted for 47% of all passing female AP CS A students. Due to pandemic-related school closures, the overall number of students completing AP STEM-related courses in 2020 declined for all subjects except CS. AP CS A, which had an abbreviated taken-at-home final exam, saw a modest 1.5% YOY increase in completions, while AP CSP saw a whopping 21.5% YOY increase in completions, no doubt helped by the cancellation of its end-of-course exam, which was to have counted for 60% of scores (students were instead assessed only by their portfolio submissions).
Re: Duh (Score:1)
Go home, you hateful prejudiced SJW.
Back to your safe space bubble.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't feed the trolls.
Says the guy whose sig is a troll - IN ALL CAPS.
Re: Duh (Score:4, Informative)
Of course he is gonna defend the system designed to keep minorities down.
mmm. . .if you look at the table linked to in TFS, [staticflickr.com] you'll find that for the CS-A test, 78% of Asians passed, 68.9% of whites passed, and 69.8% of "two or more races" passed.
That system designed to keep minorities down is very selective indeed.
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Take a breath - it's okay if guys don't want to (Score:5, Insightful)
Alrighty, most males still don't choose to be teachers, nurses, hair stylists, and speech pathologists. For whatever reason, more males would rather code. That's okay, really.
93% of dieticians are women. 96% of speech pathologists are.
Fortunately, none of these jobs requires using your genitalia to do the job, so it doesn't freaking matter which genitalia you have. Do what you love.
I've been programming (in the security space) for 25 years, and I've yet to use my penis even once. My mentor, Amie, never used used her vagina to improve the code. My wife has never had the need to use her vagina for medical records work. So we really don't need "people with penises" in the medical records field, or more vaginas writing code - genitals don't write code. Just do what you enjoy doing and are particularly good at.
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Lol
We won't talk about the ten years I spent programming security systems for the porn industry. That's one industry where gender DOES matter for some jobs.
I love it (Score:2)
> Everyone hates doing it.
I love it. I love programming and specifically constantly getting better and better at it.
I love security - figuring out how to hack something is a fun game.
I love teaching programmers - ever since I was a little kid I've wanted to give advice and suggestions for a living.
A few years ago I started telling people that by dream job would be teaching programmers how to write better, more secure software. I gotta run now - I have a meeting about the new program I'm heading up at w
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> Everyone hates doing it.
I love it. I love programming and specifically constantly getting better and better at it. I love security - figuring out how to hack something is a fun game.
And there you have it. Actual Passion. Not many have it, and woe unto the poor children who are pushed in to tha idea that they can find or choose their passion. It's gotten to the point that we're going to have to redefine passion as "mild interest" though.
When in fact, actual passion is like a pillar of flame that drives a person. It's also very hard for others to understand, and sometimes they react angrily if someone expresses their passion.
Watch this! I am passionate and driven about my science a
Re:Take a breath - it's okay if guys don't want to (Score:4, Insightful)
if you get people are are doing CS as a job and not because they really like doing it, you will get much worse performance compared to someone who loves to do it.
In a nutshell, that one sentence explains the past decade.
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if you get people are are doing CS as a job and not because they really like doing it, you will get much worse performance compared to someone who loves to do it.
In a nutshell, that one sentence explains the past decade.
If that's how you describe outsourcing, then sure.
Re: Take a breath - it's okay if guys don't want t (Score:1)
"Hey, did you hear that Billy-Bob transitioned and is now Billy-Jean?"
"Oh Christ!"
"What are you complaining about? Now we only have to pay her 73% of what he was making before!"
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Has anyone considered the contradictions?
SJWs claim that women are equally capable of doing the job, that plenty of qualified women are available to be hired yet don't get hired because they are women, and they also claim that women are paid less for the same level of work.
In a capitalist market, if you could pay a woman less for doing the exact same job to the exact same standard - then why wouldn't you? Companies would be hiring 100% women for the cost savings.
Something doesn't add up.
Re: Take a breath - it's okay if guys don't want (Score:1)
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If you move more people into one field, there will be less available to do jobs necessary in other fields. There are plenty of professional fields which are dominated by women.
And yes, someone who does a day job because it pays the bills will never be as passionate about the job or take as great care as someone who has a genuine personal interest in the field.
Re:Take a breath - it's okay if guys don't want to (Score:5, Insightful)
Alrighty, most males still don't choose to be teachers, nurses, hair stylists, and speech pathologists. For whatever reason, more males would rather code. That's okay, really.
93% of dieticians are women. 96% of speech pathologists are.
And veterinarians are also overwhelmingly women now.
Do what you love.
Repeat that about 500 times, maybe it will sink into their heads. Probably not.
The discredited idea that there is absolutely zero difference in the cognitive process between the owners of different genitalia is the driver of the idiotic idea that if all careers are not a slight majority of women, that sexism and the patriarchy is at work. The idea that a child can find their passion, and then nothing can keep them from it if they only try hard enough tells me that despite my being built like a linebacker, I can decide I'm going to be a 90 pound diva ballerina.
We have been trying to eliminate the "Gender gap" for decades now. It's not even remotely working. I've even worked enthusiastically (at first_ on extensive projects to get women into STEM, ending up forgoing promotions so that women working beside me could be fast tracked. It didn't work. The only way we will ever eliminate it is to force young women into STEM careers whether they want to be in them or not. Then not allow them to quit. Concurrently, we must refuse enttry to those of the "wrong" gender or "wrong" so called race. That'll even things up and cause a disaster at the same time.
In general, males and females simply think differently. It's not a matter of inequality, it's evolution. We'd be extinct by now otherwise. As for racial differences, I'm more inclined to believe that is cultural instead.
Just do what you enjoy doing and are particularly good at.
Exactly. The happy women programmers and engineers I worked with over my career were pretty good at what they did. Unfortunately, there were a few who entered the profession based on narrative that they should because it was the right thing to d, and those poor women were miserable, and eventually just quit for something they were happy at doing.
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...tells me that despite my being built like a linebacker, I can decide I'm going to be a 90 pound diva ballerina.
I'm betting you're built much more like a right guard than a linebacker.
At least I'm not built like a Center.
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Well low male representation is a problem for those fields as well.
I think the issue is that History shows that Computer Scientists has been much more attractive to women than it is now.
However for many women who have entered the Computer Science Field within the past 20 years have seemed to have pressure form both sides, their Female Peers tell them that it is Mens work, and the Males rarely ever put enough effort to make a female working with them feel comfortable and welcomed in the job.
I work in a rathe
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> Well low male representation is a problem for those fields as well.
How so? My speech pathologist never used her vagina while working with me. I might wish she had, but she didn't.
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Well low male representation is a problem for those fields as well.
I dunno - what does a penis bring to the field that the penis does to make the field better?
I think the issue is that History shows that Computer Scientists has been much more attractive to women than it is now.
I can state from personal experience that this is indeed a fact.
However for many women who have entered the Computer Science Field within the past 20 years have seemed to have pressure form both sides, their Female Peers tell them that it is Mens work, and the Males rarely ever put enough effort to make a female working with them feel comfortable and welcomed in the job.
I know that in my case, and the Women engineers that I worked with who are good, the idea that others had control over us by their opinions is laughable. It is saying in no uncertain terms that women cannot abide negativity. Is it really a good idea to claim weakness of character?
As for making women not being made to feel comfortable, the #metoo mov
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Another downside I've seen of the influence of SJWs in software development is that women seem to often receive less honest and direct feedback from others about their work now.
A lack of such feedback reduces the opportunity to learn from others and address your own weaknesses.
Some of these women are probably, ten years into their career, honestly flummoxed by why they are not one of the "top dogs" that others look to for guidance on technical issues because (1) lacking feedback, they haven't grown as much professionally, and (2) they think they are better than they are (after all, they survived layoffs where modestly well respected men were laid off and no one has ever told them that their work isn't perfect).
You are correct.My colleagues and I will laugh at each other, call each other stupid fucks, assholes and idiots. But here's the thing. We will run through a godammed wall for each other. If you want a thrill just listen to a group of scientists arguing with each other, Some of my favorites are "You've made a thesis that at first would appear to be made by an intelligent person.", "Did you major in Creationist theory?" "Maybe there really are stupid questions!" just to name a few. But after it's done they'll
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the Males rarely ever put enough effort to make a female working with them feel comfortable and welcomed in the job.
They don't do that for their male colleagues, why should women get special treatment?
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Similar experience here, really enjoyed working in diverse teams.
Dieticians have Unions (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with diversity and everything to do with driving down wages.
By the same token... (Score:2)
I'll bet you've never used your skin color or your religion to program either.
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Indeed.
Although my religion reminds me of some applicable things:
Be honest with the people I work with, including customers
Treat co-workers with dignity and respect
Do a good job
Etc
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I've been programming (in the security space) for 25 years, and I've yet to use my penis even once.
You're doing it wrong.
As an "ethnic"... how is that surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like being the kid of a parent that barely spoke the language of my country and didn't receive the education in his home country was exactly improving my chances for my own education.
That's not the system's fault, is it?
Aside from the general lack of opportunities. But that is the same for everyone.
And just not being interested in CS , but pushed in anyway by the so-called feminists who imply all day that the social jobs most women are interested in are somehow inferior, and those that most men like, are somehow superior, yet act like they are the saviors of women. Even those who still didn't think they were so weak as to need saving... despite being impicitly told so all week , via "strong women" roles in the media. (And not the actually appealing Orphan Black type.)
(I'd say caring for our children, sick and elderly comes waayyy before CS in terms of importance for humanity. The only problem is that we aren't paid based on how much we improve humanity, but on how much we are useful as tools for leeching on it without working.)
I know, I know... get with the line... act p.c, or you're not "social". Excuse me, I'm more *actually* social than you hateful SJWs will ever be!
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And just not being interested in CS , but pushed in anyway by the so-called feminists who imply all day that the social jobs most women are interested in are somehow inferior, and those that most men like, are somehow superior, yet act like they are the saviors of women.
Having been in STEM over 30 years, I've observed the same thing. From the 70's, when the first wave of women came in, and there was actually quite a few engineers and mathematicians. There were some good ones I worked with. Many just quit after a while, often to become a housewife and raise kids.
Then through the 80's and 90's, when the Gender studies started instituting some draconian rules that caused men to lean way out, and upset the women we worked with because former male friends stopped interacting
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Lawyers, nursing, veterinarians, social work, pop culture singers, and then STEM.
Kind of interesting lawyer is at the top there. The kind of logical thinking required to be a good lawyer is not that different from what's needed in STEM.
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Lawyers, nursing, veterinarians, social work, pop culture singers, and then STEM.
Kind of interesting lawyer is at the top there. The kind of logical thinking required to be a good lawyer is not that different from what's needed in STEM.
My best guess is that the legal profession is more glamorous. We see ads for lawyers on TV, there are lots of television shows featuring lawyers. Also a serving justice issue. And although the average wage per degree isn't as high as people think, the lawyers at the top make a good deal of money. STEM doesn't get much respect outside of it's community, and for many is considered as bad based on political views.
I haven't read the study (Score:1)
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> but I don't think "ethnic" means recent "immigrant" here.
But it can. The set "ethnic" can mean immigrant perfectly well.
>And, well, black folk are kinda screwed and we know why
Well, we know why the grandparents were screwed around, but not the current generation. Various other ethnic groups were also affected in the same manner, but showed vast gains in the last 70 years in financial outcome.
> Also our drug war is pretty well targeted at them
No, the drug war is targeted at drug dealers. And us
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And, well, black folk are kinda screwed and we know why. They were excluded from large segments of the economic booms in the 50s and 60s but not from the crashes of the 70s and 80s. There was a little relief in the 90s, but not enough to make up for lost ground.
So how the heck did all these Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, who suffered decades of Communism and corruption, end up above white people in the economic spectrum? And don't tell me they weren't discriminated against in the US. They are.
Also our drug war is pretty well targeted at them (crack cocaine and pot) because Nixon wanted to disrupt their communities for political gain and "Tough on Crime" politicians wanted to exploit racist sentiments to win elections.
In many Asian countries, if you were caught with drugs, you are executed. We are not "Tough on Crime" by any stretch of the imagination.
Re: I haven't read the study (Score:2)
Also our drug war is pretty well targeted at them (crack cocaine and pot) because Nixon wanted to disrupt their communities for political gain and "Tough on Crime" politicians wanted to exploit racist sentiments to win elections.
You are probably too young to remember, but minority leaders BEGGED states to increase the sentences for crack cocaine, because it was literally destroying their neighborhoods. Then, a few years later, the community leaders forgot that they asked for the stiff sentences, and complained about locking up so many of their children...
Why? (Score:2)
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You can't know you want to code if you don't have a computer in the home.
89.1% of Asians, 84.8% of White and about 68% of Black and Hispanic homes have a computer.
If your family doesn't have a car, you're not likely to be a great mechanic. If your family doesn't have a camera you're unlikely to fall in love with photography.
Also in my experience CS folks didn't get into it for a love of computer science, they got into it because they fell in love with video games. We need to expand our marketing of video g
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We need to expand our marketing of video games to women so that they also want to make games and then end up working in IT managing a database instead.
Have you been living under a rock? Did you completely miss the Wii/DS? Games have been heavily marketed toward women and girls since the early 2000s.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
It's a long stretch to go from video games targeting women to that same woman choosing to administer a database!
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Initeresting how the first generations of Comp Sci people got started then.
Schools have computers. Hell, phones are computers now, and you move that aspect into the statistics you're quoting, I think that the picture changes drastically.
Your family not having a car means absolutely nothing. Doesn't stop you going out and buying one if that's where your desire takes you (rasperry pi for about $50 makes a computer far better than I learned on back in the 80s). And on photography, people fall in love with i
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Women, by and large, seem to express an interest more in what makes a biological system tick (thus the over-representation in medicine, vetinary science, biology etc.). Men tend to have a different focus (what makes these chemicals do stuff, what makes things go bang etc.), which marks their over-representation in physics, chemistry, computing, engineering and so on.
Actually I think women are more interested in the social aspect of work. Generally speaking, they don't like spending all day not talking to anyone whereas men are perfectly fine with that.
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That 'may' have been true in the 80's but now-a-days you are very wrong. Cell phones are computers, Video games are computers. You might not have a chance to develop skills, but there are plenty of people who learn to code @ 18 because they think it would be cool to write video games or phone apps. Not every nerd needs to start @ 12 like I did.
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Cell phones are computers, Video games are computers. You might not have a chance to develop skills,
So utterly worthless in preparing you to study Computer science since you aren't actually learning anything.
I have a toilet in my house, but if I had no way to actually try and fix it I wouldn't learn anything about how toilets work it would just be this strange white object of curiosity.
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Educators are begging women and other underrepresented groups to take CS courses but they still arent doing it. There is a TON of funding to get them in, but they still dont. Everyone in the CS courses WORSHIPS them and they ground they walk on, and everyone there is treating them like GODS. So why arent they doing it? Treat them the way you treat white men (without preference, and to a high standard), and maybe they will want to do it as much as the white men want to do it.
I firmly believe that the way they are treated is according to the feminist narrative that if you don't treat them like goddesses, they will leave. It's a weird idea that feminists have that women are weak and cannot withstand any adversity.
It couldn't be that in general, women are not very interested in CS? The ones that are interested are just like the guys who are interested. The one's that aren't will never be.
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It couldn't be that in general, women are not very interested in CS?
James? James Damore? Is that you? Your question upsets feminist orthodoxy and has been judged "offensive". Report immediately to your nearest re-education facility for further conditioning.
(Please wear protective gear to minimize injury from the hate mob you'll encounter along your way)
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It couldn't be that in general, women are not very interested in CS?
James? James Damore? Is that you? Your question upsets feminist orthodoxy and has been judged "offensive". Report immediately to your nearest re-education facility for further conditioning.
(Please wear protective gear to minimize injury from the hate mob you'll encounter along your way)
Indeed, they don't like a view that dismantles their narrative. I have the added advantage of having spent many years working with women who very actively worked to get more women interested in STEM. We tried, we brainstormed, we had programs. They didn't work. And for all of the whackadoodle reasons given by so many, like my favorite, classes working on image manipulation algorithins that used the face of a woman that happened to be a model was somehow causing young women with a claimed passion for STEM to
Forget it (Score:1, Offtopic)
I know the nationalist fools and anti-globalists hate it every time I say it .. but why can't we acknowledge reliance on immigrants and foreign tech? -- 40% of Nobel prizes awarded to Americans went to immigrants who were born and educated elsewhere. Here's a sample:
Space program - Nazls from GErmany (though Robert Goddard's contributions cannot be dismissed)
Nuclear energy and nuclear weapons - refugees from Europe (fleeing the Nazls)
COVID Vaccine- immigrants from Hungary and elsewhere https://www.statnews [statnews.com]
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I'm not seeing any names from Latin America.
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Oh sorry I didn't know I had to cater my examples to educate the ignorant racists in the audience, but here goes:
Baruj Benacerraf - Venezuelan immigrant - 1947 Nobel prize in Medicine .. 1995 Chemistry Nobel prize
Mario Molina - Mexican immigrant
César Milstein - Argentina - Nobel prize in medicine , 1984 invented monoclonal antibodies (the kind that Trump took when he got Covid)
Bernardo Alberto Houssay - Argentina - 1947 chemistry nobel
Luis Federico Leloi - grew up Argentina - 1970 Nobel in Chemistry
Th
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i don't feel like typing out more than this because it's not gonna change a racist's mind is it? I mean, what examples would it take?
The check mark number counting crowd is committed to racism.
Oddly enough, the far left Social Justice crowd is just as racists as the people in the KKK. They just have different groups they get excited about.
Race is the ultimate social construct. I'll admit race exists when humans on earth can't mate because of genetic differences, and when we decide that Black horses and Brown horses are different races.
Which is not to deny that despite human races being nonexistent, that there aren't a buttload o
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Mod the man up !!
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I think the US, if it survives long enough, is heading for a situation where it's hard to identify the race/ethnicity of the vast majority of people as more and more of the population is from mixed racial/ethnic backgrounds. I wonder what the SJWs focusing on race/ethnicity will focus on then.
You bring up an interesting point. While the US is considered exceptionally racist, and gawd knows we have a lot - we have a huge number of different ethnicities all living among each other. Many countries that consider themselves superior on matters of race are pretty homogenous.
Of course some now seem to think that the same thing will happen with gender, but that's a biological dead-end and most males and females will always be fairly easy to identify (and those that aren't generally won't be very successful at passing on their genes). Perhaps SJWs, deprived of the racial claims, will focus on male/female differences (while ignoring that there ARE differences).
Yes, get too far from the genetic gender norm, and you tend to not reproduce.
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Where is Egypt located? Or did you miss that from the list? MOSFET -- co-invented by Egyptian scientist, 1999 Nobel prize .. also I didn't mention Ahmed Zewail (for pioneering femtochemistry), Egypt) Of course you probably already knew these, and there are more examples if you want to talk about STEM contributions but I am not going to waste my time listing them. I am erring on the side of faith in humanity and assuming that whatever mental institution you're in has not blocked Google so you can find out f
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Who is ignoring it? No one has a problem with legal immigration to the US. The US was built on legal immigration.
No one? Seriously? You're waxing a bit rhetorical I hope, because there are a lot of groups that want the US to be what they call "white" only.
Re: Forget it (Score:2)
Oh stop, "white only" groups number in the hundreds or possibly thousands of Americans, and in no way represent mainstream thought in America.
At any point in time we have about 1 million immigrants in America that came into the country legally and are following our rules - then there are tens of millions that snuck across the boarder, do not obey our immigration policy, and many people take offense at that. That doesn't make them 'white only' - it makes them 'law and order' Americans.
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Oh stop, "white only" groups number in the hundreds or possibly thousands of Americans, and in no way represent mainstream thought in America.
You're having an argument that I'm not making. I was responding to
No one has a problem with legal immigration to the US. by gaxiy7905
That is categorically not true. Google "stop all immigration" and see what you get. Whether it's mainstream or not, there are plenty of people who want no immigration at all. Argue with them about it.
Opportunity (Score:2)
As a school board member I visited one of our vocational schools. Something one of the instructors said has stuck with me. He said, " we get dinged when a student doesn't pass or drops. However, isn't that the point of school, to determine if you really want to spend the rest of your life in this vocation?".
That may or may not account for the numbers above but it certainly is food for thought. We are all different. Whether it's gender or culture or race is irrelevant when it comes to learning something we
we need more vocational schools and not college (Score:2)
we need more vocational schools and not college germany got it right but the US got college for all with unlimited loans
Direction of change? (Score:2)
females accounted for 25% of AP CS A scores (16.2K of 64.9K total students) and 33.9% of AP CSP scores (38.6K of 113.9K students).
How can I tell if that number is good or bad, without knowing how it compares to past years?
If that number is going up, then that's a good thing. If it's down. we need to figure out why and try to get more involvement.
But just the number standalone, doesn't mean much. It may be less than 50% but in past years it was also a lot less than 25%...
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If that number is going up, then that's a good thing. If it's down. we need to figure out why and try to get more involvement.
But just the number standalone, doesn't mean much. It may be less than 50% but in past years it was also a lot less than 25%...
The number that is important is how many women make a career and keep it. I've seen what I guess you would call quota women STEM who were pushed along from high school onwards, weren't remotely happy, and left to do other things that would upset the checkmark crew. A waste of time and money, although it often wasn't theirs, because they got the full ride through college. The most amazing case was the engineer who ended up quitting to open a day care center. I liked her, she was a sweetie, but like daily cry
That number is kind of irrelevant (Score:1)
The number that is important is how many women make a career and keep it
That number is the ultimate goal, but is irrelevant compared to the numbers seeking to enter education at the ground floor.
The number of women with a career is limited by the number that have the training to enter that career. If you improve that, the numbers of women that keep CS careers will naturally increase as well.
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The number that is important is how many women make a career and keep it
That number is the ultimate goal, but is irrelevant compared to the numbers seeking to enter education at the ground floor.
I think the number is important because there are more cases than the one I mentioned, where a woman wasted many years of her life, getting an education for free, then throwing it all away for a "traditional woman job".
She was pushed along as part of a "We must have more Women in STEM when she was obviously not suited for the work, her free ride might have been better served by giving it to a different person - quite possibly a woman who was actually interested in an engineering field. A woman who is mis
Ahh, but is it a waste (Score:2)
where a woman wasted many years of her life, getting an education for free, then throwing it all away for a "traditional woman job".
I would maintain there is no job these days in which a CS degree would not make someone way more productive and useful for ANY job.
There is never a waste of CS training, no matter what they go on to do.
her free ride might have been better served by giving it to a different person
Except I don't think this is the case, because almost everyone inclined to like CS will find it and
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where a woman wasted many years of her life, getting an education for free, then throwing it all away for a "traditional woman job".
I would maintain there is no job these days in which a CS degree would not make someone way more productive and useful for ANY job.
There is never a waste of CS training, no matter what they go on to do.
To be certain, I'm talking about a STEM career - an engineer. She wanted nothing to do with her degree or engineering any more. She was happy changing diapers.
In the end, my point is that people, men and women, should be allowed and encouraged to pursue their life's work as they see fit.
To decide that we need X percentage of women in say Computer science because of reasons is check box behavior.
The extent with which this and other women were unhappy with what they were educated to do tells me they h
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It wouldn't even tell you if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
If representation of women in a field was going up, you need a long term retention in subject for it (is it something they enjoy doing?).
The actual metric to check that say 'good or bad' would be what portion of people wanting to work in a field were able to work in that field and qualified to do so (so checking unemployment statistics against posts advertised over time). If you find that a particular group is specifically under-represented in t
Even worse in China (Score:2)
In China, almost 100% of those passing their version of the test were Asian.
Re: Even worse in China (Score:2)
Racist. You know China has like 68 different ethnic groups. Btw, that's only psuedo-sacasm, I don't have enough time to compile the full sarcasm.
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Racist. You know China has like 68 different ethnic groups. Btw, that's only psuedo-sacasm, I don't have enough time to compile the full sarcasm.
Is "Asian" one particular group? We've always been taught that is is a reference to people from a section of the world, not the social construct of "Race".
Or have you become as so many, so racist that you consider ethnicity as race?
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Depends. A fair bit are ethnic groups because their religions come from places outside Asia. So they are more native people who have philosophies and ideologies that have roots outside China. This again is the problem with race, it attempts to explain something about culture while missing the nature that culture spreads beyond pure procreation. This is why by and large studies that were about race are better replaced by studies that look at socio-economic status.
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If 45% of the population of Chinese students were Asian but were 100% of the passing scores, yes that would be a problem.
The problem isn't that black students aren't 50% of the test takers, the "problem" is that black students are 15% of Primary and Secondary students but only 4.2% of passing AP test takers
The problem is similarly that Hispanic students make up 27% of the student body but only 13.7% of passing test takers.
That's 1/3rd and 1/2 representation in a very important skillset to be a successful wo
Enough with the bullshit about gender equality (Score:5, Informative)
Studies have been done on this and they have found that societies with the highest gender equality have the lowest female participation in STEM [sciencedaily.com].
The dirty and obvious reason is that you have a combination of two factors coming together in places like the USA and Scandinavia that don't apply in the Middle East, India, Bangladesh, etc. They are natural gender differences and in our society masculinity is not the measure of all things. The feminine enjoys a very high status that is frankly bordering on superior the masculine these days.
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They are natural gender differences and in our society masculinity is not the measure of all things. The feminine enjoys a very high status that is frankly bordering on superior the masculine these days.
Depending on the metric, women are quite superior to men. Which is why I find the modern feminist push to make women into ersatz men is completely backward.
A woman should do and be be what she wants to be based on her individual mentalities and abilities. But demanding that women be somehow exactly the same as men, that they must work at "jobs" as men do is missing the ship.
I believe that many women, after they discover that the workplace that men inhabit isn't the land of milk and honey they've been to
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The feminine enjoys a very high status that is frankly bordering on superior the masculine these days.
Only bordering on? Just imagine a man and a woman arguing. Whose fault is it?
According 99% of the world, it's the man's fault.
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I suspected all along... Java is sexist. (Score:2)
The table shows that females had a consistently higher passing rate than males on the principles test across all races, but showed a lower passing rate on the test with Java (except Asians).
But seriously, what is the point of this? Why does this "matter?" We have been doing all sorts of things to try to attract underrepresented demographic groups to CS/SwE/IT for more than 20 years. It does not seem to be working very well. Is it really that important? Yes, we absolutely should let everyone know that they a
Re:I suspected all along... Java is sexist. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a powerful idea in the education system that all kids should be equal. Thus, the brightest and dimmest in the class should do the exact same work, pass the exact same test, and be able to get into Harvard. The simplest means to achieve this goal is make everything simpler and easier until every child passes, because more people passing being educated is a good thing.
This thinking seems right, and is horribly wrong too. Equality of opportunity is different than equality in education.
A good education understands every kid is different, and works to help each student succeed. For education, the goal should be to help every kid succeed in a way that is appropriate for them.
News Flash! (Score:2)
News Flash!! Stupid people do worse on tests than smart people.