Big rise in AP CS test-takers in Georgia and in US

Below is the message that Barbara just sent to AP CS teachers in Georgia.  Above is the graph of the historical trends.  The rise year-by-year since 2007 is pretty dramatic. (Georgia Computes! started in 2006.)  Note, too, that this rise is despite a decrease in the number of schools offering AP CS.  The teachers’ efforts at recruitment and the yield per teacher has been increasing, and that’s driving the improving numbers.

The very last line of her message is pretty important — AP CS test-takers nationwide crossed the 20K boundary, the point at which the College Board used to say (don’t know if it’s still true) that the AP CS would be breaking even. Last year was 19,390.

Congratulations Georgia AP CS A teachers!  In 2011 the largest number of students ever took the CS AP A exam in Georgia at 884.  This is especially exciting as the number of schools offering AP CS A in Georgia has been declining for years (from 81 in 2007-2008 to 64 in 2010-2011).

 The mean score was 2.61 down from 2.83 the year before.  The number of females was up at 154 (from 118 last year), but that is still 1 less that the maximum which was in 1999.  The number of blacks was 79 which is an increase from the 68 last year but still not anywhere near the max from 1999 at 163. See http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd_sum/2011.html for the original data for each state and the national data.

Other AP exams still are way ahead of CS in Georgia.  I will be really happy when CS gets to these numbers.

Exam           Total   Females   Black

CS                 884      154            79

Calculus AB   7176    3561        1447

Biology          5535    3204        976

Chemistry      3292    1525        505

Statistics        5155    2669        871

Nationally the number of people taking the CS AP A exam also increased to 21,139.