[Edu-sig] today's focus - high school females and the AP exam

[Wesley J. Chun]

The main motivation of my post today is something I heard on the radio
this morning regarding the lack of females in the computing industry.
Specifically, the report cites that only 17% of high school students
who take the Computer Science Advanced Placement exams in high school
are females.  Also, women earn only 28% of bacheor degrees in CS and
make up only 20% of all IT professionals.

The article is based on a recent report made by the American Associa-
tion of University Women.  In this report, those girls surveyed indi-
cated they were not "anxious or phobic about technology.  They are
disinterested in the computer culture....  Girls are saying, 'We can
do these things, but we don't want to.'"  Apparently, girls were
turned off by all the violent computer games and the male adolescent-
dominated culture.  Girls were found to use computers for specific
tasks such as e-mail, "while boys have underdeveloped social skills."
I don't know *where* they could've gotten *that* from!!  :-)

Anyway, I was fortunate to have found an online version for you here:

http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/front/docs/girls041100.htm


Also, I dug around some more and unearthed an outline of what the ACM
believes as the model for computer science high school curriculum:

http://www.acm.org/education/hscur/


I also found an older NSF article that contains other facts regarding
high school females and the AP CS exam.  Their figures are based on
the College Board reports in 1996 which cite that females made up 20%
of the 1st semester exam takers (the 'A' exam) and 12% of the full
year exam (the 'AB' exam).  here is the specific paragraph:

    Of the subjects offered for AP exams, 12 are science or
    mathematics subjects. Women constituted over half of the
    test takers in psychology and biology. These subjects were
    followed by calculus AB (47% female) and chemistry (42%
    female). The science subject in which women were least
    likely to take an AP exam was computer science, where
    women accounted for only 20% of the computer science A
    and 12% of the computer science AB test takers.
    (See appendix table 2-17.)

The full article is here:

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf99338/access/c2/c2s4.htm

If you are only interested in the "appendix table 2-17" containing
the specific figures, here is the link to the Excel file:

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf99338/append/c2/at02-17.xls

-wesley