Communications of the ACM
Ethnic, Gender Imbalances Plague Computer Science Education
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The Obama administration's Computer Science for All initiative aims to universalize computer science education for K-12 students. But computer science education has ethnic and gender imbalances, said Melissa Moritz, deputy director for STEM initiatives at the U.S. Department of Education, at a panel discussion at the New America Foundation.
Still a rarity at schools across the United States, computer science classes are disproportionately unavailable to low-income students, according to Moritz, who argued that biases — conscious or unconscious — deter many minority and female students from pursuing the field that is accounting for more wage growth in the U.S. economy than any other sector.
"Most of the kids who do not get to participate in computer science are kids of color, kids in low-income communities and girls. And there's a number of reasons for that," Moritz said. "First, it's not offered in their school. Second, we also have to look at who is either encouraged to take it, either explicitly or implicitly."
From CIO
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