Exposure to Coding for Non-Traditional Students

In the last decade, efforts have been made by many organizations to increase the diversity of the computer science field and technology industry. The College Board has increased its CS offerings, for example, and each year has found that more and more underrepresented students are taking their courses and passing the year-end AP exam, with annual increases as high as 70%. Students who take an AP computer science course are six times more likely than those who do not to major in computer science in college. While the work of the College board should not be diminished, it must be noted that many schools do not offer AP courses, that many schools which do offer AP courses do not offer the AP computer science courses, and in schools that do offer them, the courses are elective. Similarly, in schools that do offer non-AP computer science and technology courses, they are almost universally elective.

At Code For Your Kids, we acknowledge that math teachers have an opportunity to directly address the lack of exposure to underrepresented groups in computer science, because while most computer science courses are elective, our classes are compulsory. We believe that by incorporating a marginal amount of basic computer programming in our classes, we can enrich math education while also giving all students an opportunity to be exposed to computer science. We hope that by increasing the exposure to all of our students, we can encourage a more diverse group of students to consider CS courses in high school, who then have a far greater likelihood of entering the computer science field.