In May 2014 at the all-girls Emma Willard School in upstate New York, nearly a third of the school's 300+ students were preparing for their final Advanced Placement (AP) exams. But exactly three were studying for the AP Computer Science exam—and they weren't doing so on campus. The school (full disclosure: my alma mater) completely eliminated its computer science program in 2009.

Emma Willard is an expensive, private boarding school, one that's academically focused with a high college attendance ratio. If computer science is the new liberal art, a school like Emma Willard would seem a likely poster child. But Emma Willard's computer science offerings have actually dwindled in recent years from a full-size programming track to a mere intro course to nothing at all. These days, if an Emma Willard student wants to strike out on her own in computer science education, the school will comp her for a session in the Online School for Girls. As fake as the title sounds, it's entirely real—available classes include an intro to programming, iOS app development, and preparation for the AP Computer Science exam. Roughly two girls in a school of more than three hundred opt to take this route every year.

Before the classes' elimination, student enrollment slid, too, from ten students to five and then down to a scant two or three each year. Despite the national discussions around coding, STEM careers, and diversity, girls at Emma Willard simply did not appear interested enough in computer science to sustain a program. The school's former computer science department head and AP Computer Science teacher now works as a Web developer at a different boarding school.

School staff doesn't know quite what to make of the situation. Computer science is "the language of so much of what we do," said John Ball, the school's assistant head for academic affairs and a teacher of economics and AP Physics. Ball described the lack of computer science as a demand problem, not a supply problem.

"Right now it's not attractive—I don't know why," he said. "We have to do a better job."







Beyond Emma Willard, the AP Computer Science tests aren't doing incredibly well overall. Enrollment for the Computer Science A exam nearly doubled from 2003 to 2013, from 14,674 students to 31,117, and the proportion of students who score a 4 out of 5 or better has gone from 43.2 percent to 49.6 percent.

However, the College Board, which administers the AP tests, eliminated the more advanced Computer Science AB test over that same time period. Those covered material like recursive data structures and binary trees. Enrollment in the AB test went from 7,071 students in 2003 to 5,105 in 2009, the year it was discontinued. Of all the AP subjects offered in that time period, this was the only test that showed a net decline. (Even music theory increased from 7,894 to 15,438. And more people took a studio art test than the computer science exam in 2013.)

Considering this, it's no surprise that Emma Willard isn't alone in losing its computer science program. Colleges including the University of Florida and Albion have cut their programs in the last few years. The Computer Science Teacher's Association noted that, from 2005 to 2009, the number of schools offering AP Computer Science classes dropped by 35 percent, and the number of schools offering pre-AP courses declined 17 percent.

Emma Willard appears representative of an attitude replicated across many schools and their positioning of computer science. Today, despite clear real-world relevance, the subject is more often viewed as an elective, a club, or an after-school activity than as a core subject. The message seems to be that not everyone needs to know about computers. And that may be one of the reasons why computer science still has such a diversity problem.

The average computer science class

Currently, the way computer science is taught as a standalone subject at a high school or college goes something like this: first, students learn a few lines of code to establish how we talk to computers. (Typing "print ‘hello world!'" gets the computer to respond "hello world!") Thus, communication is established. Next, students start breaking down simple problems, like adding numbers or storing values to variables (x = 2, y = 3, z = x + y).

Eventually they work their way up to building simple tools, like a coin-flipping simulator. After a while, they may teach that simulator to store its results and learn some important lessons about randomness. There will likely be a digression on how microprocessors work and how to convert numbers to binary. There are some obvious links to math and science here, but usually math is used as a way to understand computer science, not the other way around.

Computer science remains a standalone AP test and a standalone college major despite the fact that computer-assisted data processing, programming, modeling, and many other applications are used in fields from physics to art. So critics of the current approach wonder: are we marketing computer science classes all wrong?

While computer science is related to math in that it involves using known rules to solve a problem, math is typically using a known system to derive an answer: plot the quadratic equation, solve for 0, divide 40 by 8, and so on. Computer science, on the other hand, is the process of creating a system that solves problems. It brings students to the level of the mathematician who, for the first time, figures out how to process the relationship between the lengths of the sides of a right triangle, or how to find the area under a curve. They are making a thing that, given a certain scenario, can take any combination of inputs and turn out an answer.

As Mother Jones writes, simple literacy, the ability to create or process words, used to be a class distinction. Now, we think of it as a basic educational offering. The same thinking can be applied to the problem-solving skills that go with learning to build a computer program.

Back in 2005, the Computer Science Teachers Association followed this logic and wrote a white paper calling for computer science to become mandatory rather than elective for most students. Ten years later, computer science can now count as a math or science credit at many schools (for 70 percent of the US population, according to code.org), but it's not often an independent requirement.

Faced with apparent disinterest in computer science, many schools that used to offer full tracks have now pushed it to the margins. Multiple nonprofits and businesses have sprung up around this and offer computer science training outside of school, many of them specifically targeting diverse students. These include Black Girls Code, CodeNow, Girls Who Code, Codeacademy, and code.org, which has positioned itself like DARE but for coding with its "Hour of Code" celebration.

Continued research may help schools decide how to prioritize computer science. As the New York Times points out, there are few, if any, studies that have looked at how studying computer science or learning to code affects one's ability to think. There are plenty of studies on whether Sudoku or memory games make you smarter (they don't), if reading more increases your vocabulary and comprehension (it does), or if spatial thinking makes you better at math and science (it also does).

Computational thinking hasn't gotten this treatment, but the College Board seems to believe that there's merit to teaching far more people how to think like programmers—and it's preparing a new test to do so, with an explicit focus on drawing in a wider array of students.