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Access focuses on whether or not students have the opportunity to learn CS.
Access focuses on whether or not students have the opportunity to learn CS.
To investigate access, we will use data to answer the following questions:
1) Who is recommended to continue on to take computer science at the high school level? Since many students who are recommended do opt to take CS, we use the extent to which students elect to take CS at the high school as an indicator of recommendation.
2) Are there disparities in access to advanced CS courses based on the students' pathways through our school system?
3) How do these results compare to 2021?
Below, you will find three sets of data sets organized by grade band. In addition, you will find data sets comparing the 2023 results to 2021 and data sets about pathways through our system.
Key Conclusions (about the Class of 2023):
Within our high schools, approximately 28% of Conard students and approximately 31% of Hall students took at least one class in computer science. An impressive 67% of Reach students took a class in computer science as well. All high schools' female populations are underrepresented in computer science. This is included here to show the extent to which students ended up accessing CS.
Of all middle schools, Bristow students were most likely to opt into at least one high school computer science class. 46% of Bristow students chose to take at least one CS class. Within our middle school population the most underrepresented population are our females. Compare each elementary school's representation by demographic here.
Of all elementary schools, Norfeldt Elementary School and Morley Elementary School are responsible for the highest percentage of students continuing on to take at least one computer science class at the high school level. 55% of the Class of 2023 who attended Norfeldt ES went on take at least one CS class. 54% of the Class of 2023 who attended Morley ES went on to take at least one CS class.
Charter Oak was the only school (elementary OR middle) with a representative number of females who opted into CS at the high school level.
Compare each elementary school's representation by demographic here.
Comparing these results to 2021 was revealing. We looked at the percentage of students in the Class of 2021 who opted into taking at least one CS class and compared that to the percentage of students opting in to at least one CS class for the Class of 2023. We hoped to see gains across the district. We were not disappointed, overall.
Between 14-36% more students in each elementary school were opting in to computer science. Morley and Bugbee showed the greatest gain with 36% and 29% more students, respectively, opting to take CS in the Class of 2023.
Our middle school results were more mixed. The largest gain was Bristow, with 14% more students opting to take CS in the Class of 2023 from Bristow than the Class of 2021 with Bristow as the source middle school. We had a high number of increase from students "Not in District" at the middle school level suggesting that perhaps students were choosing West Hartford in part because of our computer science course options.
Finally, we looked at student pathways through the system. We only show results where the number of students in each pathway was 15 or higher, so not all pathways are shown in our results. In each pathway, again we note that our most underrepresented population in computer science is our female population. The only exception to this is Charter Oak.
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