Dive Brief:
- College Board and Code.org are collaborating to create instructional material, training and funding for schools to add two new courses, Exploring Computer Science and AP Computer Science Principles, to their schedules.
- The duo is primarily aiming to address issues of low diversity in computer science courses.
- College Board will encourage the use of Code.org materials for use in the new AP Computer Science Principles class, and it will also provide funding for educator training from Code.org instructors.
Dive Insight:
Diversity in tech and computer science-related jobs is an issue, and the gap starts in the classroom. There is a drastic difference in the number of minority students taking AP computer science courses versus their white peers. Code.org has been following this issue for a while and reported in the past that only 3,000 of the 3.5 million students who took the AP Computer Science exam in 2012 were black or Hispanic.
This data is supported by a recent article in Education Week that broke down the demographic of AP computer science test takers in 2014. According to the stats, some states didn't have a single minority student taking the AP computer science exam. Montana was particularly bad, without a single minority or female test taker.
Earlier this month, Intel also announced a partnership with Oakland Unified School District that will see it pump $5 million over five years into computer science courses and training within two of the district's high schools. The goal of the alliance is to send 600 students to college to study computer science so they can one day get a job at Intel or a similar tech company.
