2020 AP CS Scores: Still Big Gaps In Performance, Participation

theodp writes: As the 8th annual Hour of Code kicked off this week, the College Board released 2020 AP national and state score breakouts for AP CS program participants. As in past years, this year's results still showed striking gaps in performance and participation across gender and ethnicity segments. Passing rates across major ethnic group segments ranged from 39.8%-78.6% for the Java-based AP CS A course, and 52%-83% for the newer "language agnostic" AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) course. Across gender segments, females accounted for 25% of AP CS A scores (16.2K of 64.9K total students) and 33.9% of AP CSP scores (38.6K of 113.9K students). Asian students accounted for 47% of all passing female AP CS A students. Due to pandemic-related school closures, the overall number of students completing AP STEM-related courses in 2020 declined for all subjects except CS. AP CS A, which had an abbreviated taken-at-home final exam, saw a modest 1.5% YOY increase in completions, while AP CSP saw a whopping 21.5% YOY increase in completions, no doubt helped by the cancellation of its end-of-course exam, which was to have counted for 60% of scores (students were instead assessed only by their portfolio submissions).Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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