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Introduction:

In an effort to increase and broaden participation in the field of computer science, many school districts across the country are offering advanced placement (AP) courses in Computer Science at the high-school level. There is concern, however, that cultural, economic, or other barriers may hinder both participation and success in these courses for minority students. The College Board, which administers AP courses and exams, collects data on the number of students taking and passing AP tests from each high school in the country where the program is delivered. The Institute for Computing Education at Georgia Tech has compiled these data for the “Computer Science A” test from 1998 - 2015 and made them available on their website. Using these data, we can examine the state-by-state variation in the participation and success of underrepresented groups.

Specifically, this analysis uses data from the Advanced Placement Computer Science A exam from 2013. The data set includes information on the number of students taking the exam and passing the exam by gender and race (white, black, and Hispanic) for every state in the country. I used the data to answer the following questions:

1. What percent of students taking the AP Computer Science A test in each state are Females? Are Black? Are Hispanic?

2. In each state, what is the pass rate, in percent, among Females? Blacks? Hispanics?

3. In which states is the discrepancy between the total pass rate for that state and the pass rate in that state for underrepresented group the lowest?

For this analysis, I calculated a “disadvantage” score for each group for each state. The value was defined as the passing rate for the group, divided by the passing rate for the state as a whole. If the resulting ratio equals 1.0, then members of the underrepresented group passed at a rate equal to that for the state as a whole. Values greater than 1.0 indicate that members of the underrepresented group passed at a rate higher than that for the state as a whole, and values less than 1.0 show a pass rate lower than that for the state as a whole. I used this statistic to identify and map the ten best states for each of the three groups:

A. Females.

B. Blacks.

C. Hispanics.

4. Country-wide pass rates

Nationwide, the pass rates on the Computer Science A exam for the three underrepresented groups looked like this: