Rural Minorities in Computing Education: A Study of Rural Schools with No CS/IT Courses in Oklahoma

摘要

The Broadening Participation projects in computing education have been changing the landscape of K12 education in the United States. These efforts are laying foundations to change inequity in the computing workforce and the future of the nation. Rural schools, however, have not received significant attention although they are minorities in access to computing education. Reaching out to rural minorities is critical for the health of the public education system in some states where a significant number of K12 schools are located in rural districts. In this work, we present a study of the twelve rural high schools in Oklahoma that have never offered or have discontinued to offer courses in the field of computing education. Our findings show that some rural high schools have no access to computing education due to their geographical disadvantage. Second, well-used statistics such as the ethnic distribution of AP exams taken may not necessarily represent the status of rural students, especially rural White/Caucasian students. Finally, rural schools face lack of curriculum and hardware/software resources significantly more than their counterparts. We hope that this work will promote understanding of rural schools and bring to attention the problems they are facing, which should be reflected in expanding the broadening participation effort to rural areas across the nation.