For women in HS CS, get them in the door! They are more than capable of taking it from there!
The below chart shows the “relative strength” between women and men of the “conditional probability” between each layer of the HS CS pathway:
These layers correspond to the CAPE (Capacity-Access-Participation-Experience) framework developed by Carol Fletcher and Joyce Warner at The University of Texas at Austin. The following diagram shows how the CAPE framework maps to the metrics provided by the 2021 State of Computer Science Education Report:
This post also uses data on AP CS Exam pass rates available from Barbara Ericson’s Computing for Everyone blog to add another layer to the top of the pyramid.
The following table interprets the opening chart of the relative strengths between women and men of the conditional probabilities between each CAPE layer:
| Metric | Value | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Relative Strength Female/Male FCS School Attendance Ratio |
100% (estimate) |
Women are just as likely as men to attend a high school with foundational computer science (FCS) course |
| Relative Strength Female/Male FCS Uptake Ratio |
47.3% | Women are 52.7% less likely than men to enroll in an FCS course |
| Relative Strength Female/Male AP/FCS Uptake Ratio |
98.4% | Of students enrolled in an FCS course, Women are 1.6% less likely to take an AP Exam than men. Approximately five times as many students enroll in an FCS as take an AP exam. |
| Relative Strength Female/Male AP Pass Rate |
103.1% | Of students taking an AP CS exam, women are 3.1% more likely to pass the exam than men. (AP CS P: 105.7%, AP CS A 97.1%) |
While there are nuances to these metrics mentioned in the reports available from the CSEd Analytics page, the results are very stark. Few women students choose to take any CS in high school. But once they do decide to take CS in HS, women are just as successful as men are (or more so).
These results match my personal experience teaching computer science at Ingraham High School, a public multicultural high school of about 1300 students in north Seattle. Despite my best efforts and the occasional breakthrough, I could only expect about 30% women even in my introductory classes. Yet the women students who took my CS courses did as well as the men. Some were also among my most outstanding students. These results also match the personal anecdotes of many teachers I have encountered as a CSTA member.
A few states have begun to reverse this nationwide trend of relatively low numbers of women in HS computer science courses. The following states have women/men relative strength FCS uptake ratios greater than 60%:
| State | RS Female/Male FCS Uptake Ratio |
Z-score |
|---|---|---|
| Mississippi | 90.9% | 2.81 |
| South Carolina | 88.1% | 2.63 |
| Maryland | 71.2% | 1.66 |
| Alabama | 67.6% | 1.45 |
| Illinois | 64.9% | 1.29 |
| Louisiana | 62.0% | 1.12 |
I believe that the main factor behind the relatively low number of women enrolled in HS CS nationwide is choice. Both Mississippi and South Carolina have graduation/college entrance requirements with CS. But computer science is an elective in most states, and high school students have many elective choices that a teenage mind may find more relevant.
Further, in less affluent school districts, schools can only offer a small number of electives in a semester. Adding a CS course means removing an elective elsewhere. At Ingraham, I sometimes humored that I could massively raise the percentage of women taking CS if only our school administration would eliminate environmental studies, psychology, marketing, AND cooking. Eliminating some art, music, and foreign language electives would further increase the number of women taking my CS courses.
But I like and respect my colleagues at Ingraham and believe that their courses also deliver significant value to students – although not as much as my CS courses. So how can I increase enrollment – especially the enrollment of women – in my relatively full classes without taking from the livelihood of my fellow teachers?
Where do the students who are “funding” a CS class come from? A new CS program or course will “displace” students and teachers, whether it is an elective or a requirement. While some disruption of the school course catalog is probably a good thing, policymakers, education administrators, and teachers interested in greatly expanding HS computer science education should consider the displacement of existing courses and staff in their expansion plans.
Please visit the CSEd Analytics page for the underlying data and reports behind this blog post and more information. The attached reports will also show how your state compares to others in critical CSEd metrics. The next post in the #CSEdAnlytics series will investigate how Black students fare in HS CS education.