Why Colorado business leaders want more kids in computer science classes

By Caitlin Hendee, Denver Business Journal | May 5, 2016

Many Colorado business leaders concerned about education have been pushing to arm students with the skills they need to succeed in the workforce (and to become the workers that employers need). And lately, one key focus of that drive is to get more computer science classes into K-12 schools. Nationally, just one in four schools teach computer programming. Out of Colorado’s 485 high schools, students in only 55 of them took an AP Computer Science exam in 2015. And of the 661 out of Colorado’s 254,497 high school students who took the exam last year, just 72 qualified for a free and/or reduced lunch (a common measure of poverty), 67 were students of color and 57 were in rural schools. Only 51 Colorado female students took the AP Computer Science exam last year — less than 0.05 percent of Colorado’s female high school population.

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