Coding initiative showing results

Arkansas student participation in high school computer science classes saw drastic growth for the sixth-straight year as enrollment in those courses topped 9,800 this school year.

The 9,813 students taking computer classes in the Natural State this year is a 22% increase over the 8,044 who took them in 2018-19, according to Arkansas Department of Education data.

While gap between students of color and whites studying computer science has narrowed, there remains a wide gender gap, which the

Arkansas Department of Education hopes to close through outreach and by increasing course offerings in lower grades.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, since taking office in 2015, has made computer science education one of his administration’s primary focuses. Growth in the subject continued even after the state reached the Republican governor’s goal to have 7,500 students enrolled in computer courses by this school year.

“This year marks the end of that timeframe, and we have exceeded our goal by more than 2,000 students,” Hutchinson said Thursday.

“The enthusiasm, creativity, and innovation that we have seen for computer science from our students and teachers continue to amaze me, and I’m confident that this movement will be a catalyst for continued growth in Arkansas.”

Arkansas was one of the first states in the U.S. to embrace computer science education, becoming the first to require public high schools to offer at least one such class in 2015.

Hutchinson has said increased computer science course offerings will foster a more technologically prepared workforce to attract new companies to Arkansas.

This year’s enrollment increase follows five years of the same. In the 2014-15 school year, 1,104 students were enrolled in the courses. Student participation in the courses climbed by an average of 1,741 a year over the next five years, according to the Education Department.

The department’s data captures students enrolled in highschool-level courses. Anthony Owen, the state director of computer science education, said there are a handful of schools offering those classes to eighth-graders, but most of the students included in the data are in high school.

The Education Department has developed computer science standards to be taught beginning in kindergarten. The standards are often integrated in other courses like library media. However, schools are required to teach students a five-week introduction to text-based coding before they leave eighth grade, Owen said.

There are 143,925 high schoolers in Arkansas, and 479,432 in kindergarten through 12th grade, according to Education Department data.

“The continued increase in computer science enrollment numbers reflects the value that students and teachers place on computer science education in Arkansas,” Education Secretary Johnny Key said Thursday. “Not only have our students far exceeded expectations set five years ago, they are paving the way in computer science education for the rest of the country. I am so proud of their hard work, as well as the efforts, time, and commitment from Arkansas’s educators. Together, we are leading the nation in student-focused education.”

Owen said he was extremely happy with the enrollment numbers that were released Thursday. The department’s next focus, he said, will be on reducing the disparity between male and female students studying computer science classes, increasing the number of students taking advanced level classes and ensuring that every high school has at least one certified computer science teacher on campus (some schools still teach computer science classes online).

The gender gap has narrowed some since 2014 when 80% of students in computer science classes were male. This school year, 7,568 (73%) of coding students were male while 2,852 (27%) were female.

This gender gap also exists in post-secondary education and throughout the computer science industry. Owen said the department believes the long-term solution to reducing the gap is by introducing female students to computer classes at an early age. The hopes is those students will have women teachers and exposure to coding, thereby normalizing the idea girls can be just as involved in computer science as boys.

“If we make computer science education a part of early education, it becomes less abnormal to continue that into high school,” Owen said.

The racial gaps are far less pronounced, and the department has made progress in reducing them in recent years. This year, 17.9% of students taking computer science classes were black; black students comprise 19.8% of the student population, according to the Education Department’s data.

That’s an improvement from last school year when 17.5% of computer students were black, while black students made up 20% of the student population.

This year, Hispanics comprised 11.5% of computer science students and 13.5% of the overall student population.

White students accounted for 63.4% of computer students and 60.4% of all students.

Like the gender gap, Owen hopes earlier coding course offerings will also continue to address the remaining racial disparity in computer science education in Arkansas.

The governor has rolled out several stipend programs allowing teachers to obtain computer science certifications or further their computer science certifications.

Owen said he hopes the online computer classes will transition from being a necessity for schools without a certified computer teacher to a program filling in gaps to offer students instead of unique or more advanced courses that some schools may not have the personnel to offer.

The final step for the computer science program is increasing the advanced course offerings and number of students taking them, Owen said.

“That will lead to industry certification, greater skills and really turn out positive results for students looking to further their careers in computer science,” he said.