Black/White Relative Strength CS Education Metrics Dashboards 2021

The Black/White relative strength CS education metrics for 2021 originally described in the post Blacks in HS CS: Blame AP Envy! are re-VISIONed using Tableau below. All of these statistics are based on data provided in the 2021 State of CS Education report published by Code.org, CSTA, and the ECEP Alliance and data on the 2021 AP CS exams from Barbara Ericson’s Computing for Everyone blog.

Note that the metrics previously published on the 2020-21 school year used combined AP CS exam data from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years. However, as AP data for 2020-21 became available in Fall 2022, these re-VISIONS use this cleaner and better synchronized data. Although using the 2021 AP results affect the metrics reported in the post Blacks in HS CS: Blame AP Envy!, they do not affect the overall conclusion. While nation’s HS are doing a relatively good job introducing CS to Black students in high school, they are generally not providing an adequate pathway for these students to succeed at college-level computer science.

This blog post focuses on the following metrics:

Metric	2021 Nat Avg	Interpretation
Black/White Relative Strength CS School Attendance	92.7%	Blacks are 7.3% less likely as Whites to attend a high school with a CS course
Black/White Relative Strength CS Uptake Ratio	106.2%	Blacks are 6.2% more likely than Whites to enroll in a CS course in schools that offer CS. Data available for 37 states.
Black/White Relative Strength AP/CS Uptake Ratio	44.6%	Of students enrolled in an CS course, Blacks are 45.4% less likely to take an AP Exam than Whites. Data available for 37 states. Approximately five times as many students enroll in an CS class as take an AP CS exam.
Black/White Relative Strength AP All Uptake Ratio	46.8%	Of students in a HS offering CS, Blacks are 53.2% less likely to take an AP CS Exam than Whites. Logically, this is the product of the CS Uptake Ratio and the AP/CS Uptake ratio. However, this data covers the 51 states reporting whereas the CS Uptake Ratio and AP/CS Uptake Ratio is available for only 37 states.
Black/White Relative Strength AP Pass Rate	46.6%	Of students taking an AP CS exam, Blacks are 53.4% less likely to pass the exam than Whites.