Tech's Gender and Race Gap Starts In High School 489
An anonymous reader writes "Diversifying the tech industry is a prominent topic these days, with much analysis being done on colleges and companies that employ software engineers. But exam data shows the gap is created much earlier — it's almost overwhelming even before kids get out of high school. From the article: 'Ericson's analysis of the data shows that in 2013, 18 percent of the students who took the exam were women. Eight percent were Hispanic, and four percent were African-American. In contrast, Latinos make up 22 percent of the school-age population in the U.S.; African-Americans make up 14 percent. (I don't need to tell you that women make up about half.) There are some states where not a single member of one of these groups took the test last year. No women in Mississippi or Montana took it. Seven states had no Hispanic students take the exam: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota. And 10 states had no Black students take the exam: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Utah. In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"
Re:Actually it starts at conception (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of the young men that dropped out of college didn't risk everything since the college they dropped out of was Harvard.
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
1. We know that the number one creator of empathy in children is time with their father.
How do we know that?
Since you asked, here's a citation backing up the GP's assertion: A Qualitative Analysis of the Parental Influence on Psychoemotional Empathy Generation in Juvenile Female Homo Sapiens Sapiens [slashdot.org]
What test? (Score:5, Informative)
etc., etc. if you're wondering what the hell test is being talked about, you'll need to check the actual article to find it's the Advanced Placement computer science exam.
Re:This is the AP Comp Sci exam (Score:2, Informative)
If by "loser", you mean "a wealthy white upper-middle-class upbringing, where mommy and daddy paid for everything", then sure.
Re:This is the AP Comp Sci exam (Score:5, Informative)
Your irrelevant rant only masks the problem, and is counter-productive to real progress. That makes you part of the problem, not the solution.