Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing [Hardcover]

Jane Margolis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2008

Winner, Education category, 2008 PROSE Awards presented by the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.

The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low, according to recent surveys. And relatively few African American and Latino/a high school students receive the kind of institutional encouragement, educational opportunities, and preparation needed for them to choose computer science as a field of study and profession. In Stuck in the Shallow End, Jane Margolis looks at the daily experiences of students and teachers in three Los Angeles public high schools: an overcrowded urban high school, a math and science magnet school, and a well-funded school in an affluent neighborhood. She finds an insidious "virtual segregation" that maintains inequality.

Two of the three schools studied offer only low-level, how-to (keyboarding, cutting and pasting) introductory computing classes. The third and wealthiest school offers advanced courses, but very few students of color enroll in them. The race gap in computer science, Margolis finds, is one example of the way students of color are denied a wide range of occupational and educational futures. Margolis traces the interplay of school structures (such factors as course offerings and student-to-counselor ratios) and belief systems—including teachers' assumptions about their students and students' assumptions about themselves. Stuck in the Shallow End is a story of how inequality is reproduced in America—and how students and teachers, given the necessary tools, can change the system.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Forty years after Brown v. Board of Education, Jane Margolis exposes a barely recognized fact: minority children are still stuck in separate and unequal educational settings. Margolis points out why having high-tech equipment without a system in place to foster critical thinking does little to close the achievement gap in poor communities."
—Geoffrey Canada, President/CEO, Harlem Children's Zone, and author of Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America

"In Stuck in the Shallow End, Jane Margolis and her team explore racial disparities in computer science by studying structural details as well as the belief systems and psychological aspects that influence 'true access.' This book shows that having physical access to computers is not the same as having intellectual access to computer science. Stuck in the Shallow End should be required reading for all educators who care about our children and their futures."
—Indira Nair, Vice Provost of Education, and Professor, Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

"This is a highly compelling book that should be read by everyone interested in the future of science and engineering education in the US."
—Maria M. Klawe, President, Harvey Mudd College

"Stuck in the Shallow End is an insightful, nuanced view into a complex set of problems. In the end, this book gives us hope that there are solutions. Jane Margolis and her colleagues show us the insights that social science can offer us in trying to understand (and meet!) the challenge of broadening participation in computing."
—Mark Guzdial, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

"Stuck in the Shallow End is at once heartbreaking and inspiring. Its close-up look at three high schools shines penetrating light on how well-meaning educators construct social inequality through unquestioned assumptions and everyday practice. At the same time, it also reveals their eagerness to become righteous change agents, if given hope, opportunity, and support. From swimming pools to computer science labs, Margolis and her colleagues have much to teach educators and policymakers about urban schools."
—Jeannie Oakes, Presidential Professor in Education Equity, UCLA

About the Author

Jane Margolis is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. She is the coauthor of the award-winning Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women and Computing (MIT Press).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262135043
• ISBN-13: 978-0262135047
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,164,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars You Don't Need to Be a Nerd To Need to Read This Book September 26, 2008

By Christine Stephenson

Format:Hardcover

This book is a germinal work for anyone who cares about the critical intersections of education, race, and computing. It is shocking and sad and uplifting and it is essential reading for educators, administrators, parents, community leaders, policy makers, and anyone who cares about the future. Margolis and her team show that when it comes to education and computing, the emperor has no clothes. Schools may be filled with shiny new machines but this is no guarantee that students are learning the high level critical thinking skills they require. The writers also lay bare a pervasive and systemic racism that virtually guarantees that even the best and brightest minority students receive nothing more than rudimentary point and click computing education, severely diminishing their abilities to succeed at the post secondary level and to thrive in the increasingly technological world in which we live. Set all of this in a bureaucratic quagmire where actually educating the students (rather than just managing them) is a near impossibility and one begins to feel as though this is a hopeless situation. But this is where Stuck in the Shallow End actually triumphs. In the midst of grim reality it offers hope, showing how researchers, teachers, and administrators can work together to acknowledge and overcome the ingrained inequalities that keep so many of our students from achieving their full potential. And it should also be mentioned that this is not just a thoughtful book, it is also extremely well-written and accessible, even to the most dedicated non-techie.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Important Wakeup Call, Poor Solution Implementation April 2, 2009

By Helene Martin

Format:Hardcover

Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing approaches the delicate issue of race tactfully while making important points about the value of computer science education, the futility of simply "dumping" cutting-edge technology in otherwise under-resourced schools and the importance of dedicated instructors. Jane Margolis and her research team have provided a powerful account of the disparities plaguing high school computer science education but unfortunately make few useful recommendations for overcoming them.

The racial inequality in computing presented in this book seems a lot less subtle than the gender imbalance described in Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. Indeed, it is well known that schools primarily catering to minority students tend to be underfunded, overcrowded, poorly led, weak on academics, and filled with under-qualified teachers. This perpetuates the factors leading to this situation in the first place: minority adults tend to get lower paying jobs, buy cheaper houses producing less in property taxes and be less involved in their children's schooling. Given these challenges, it comes as little surprise that computer science education, or in fact advanced education in any subject, reaches few minorities.

The book is based on three years of data collection in three LA high schools: one nearly exclusively Hispanic, the other predominantly black and the third in a middle-class white neighborhood with about 50% minority attendance.... Unsurprisingly, the school with a wealthier white majority fairs better in terms of access to computing instruction but deeper scrutiny reveals that minority students in the same school are not represented proportionately in computing classes. This doesn't strike me as particularly insightful -- perhaps more telling would have been a comparison of these schools with low-income schools serving primarily white students or with high-income schools serving primarily minority students to see what kinds of tactics are used to better prepare students for computing-intensive careers in those contexts.

The research team's approach to addressing the problem lacks in creativity. They choose to work broadly in the LAUSD to train any instructor interested in offering an AP Computer Science A course. Operating within the confines of the much-criticized AP Computer Science A curriculum limits their opportunities for providing material to "hook" students to computer science and lack of focus on a particular school means they have little control over the true quality of resulting classes.

As a computer scientist passionate about K-12 education, I was deeply disappointed to see how much time was spent exploring what seems like a fairly obvious disparity and how little was done to try innovative curriculum to address it. The AP Computer Science program doesn't work to attract nontraditional students. In fact, it doesn't seem to work to attract anyone -- only 15,049 students overall took the A test in 2007 with a mean score of 2.84 (compared to 69,103 taking BC Calculus with a mean score of 3.72 or 29,005 taking Human Geography with a mean score of 2.58, the lowest mean for 2007). The AB test has been eliminated after the 2009 school year and the A test almost faced the same fate. Wouldn't a reasonable hypothesis be that minority schools don't adopt computer science programs because of the lack of compelling curriculum?

For a reader wondering about the state of high school computer science education, this book offers valuable insights but for someone looking to change the status quo, it fails to provide much support beyond excellent data making the case for action. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a must read book!! September 22, 2008

By Pattie Heyman

Format:Hardcover

This is a must read book! As technology as become so intrinsic to us all, and our society has become ever more multi-cultural, this book is a lens on critical social issues of today---from disparities of opportunity to how segregation happens. For those of you who are not computer scientists (like me!), it could be easy to rule yourself out as a reader of this book, but actually the issued raised in Stuck in the Shallow End are intrinsic to all of our lives. And, who would have thought that you could compare what is happening in computing to the history of segregation in swimming? By, comparing the segregation in these two activities throughout the book, the authors awaken us to social divides all around us that we often take for granted, or just stop seeing. I strongly recommend this book for any and all readers who are concerned with our educational system, with issues of race and equity, and for those who want to learn something really new and important.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars great read on the state of computing education in American high schools! September 22, 2008

By Sarita Yardi

Format:Hardcover

This book is engaging and inspiring. Margolis and her research team spent three years immersed in three high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. As a former student in a similar large, public southern California high school, I distinctly remember seeing the gradual decline of African American and Latino students in the advanced courses from the 7th-12th grade. At the time, I had little understanding of why this happened, and even now, am surprised to learn how many complex factors influenced this decline. The picture hasn't changed much since then. Even now, the National Science Foundation is currently funding a nationwide Broadening Participation in Computing program among researchers to address exactly these questions.

Margolis' book reveals the structural inequalities that influence the low participation among African Americans and Latino/a students in receiving higher ed degrees in computer science. While the lack of
women and minorities in computing and technical careers is an oft-cited statistic, we understand far less about the multiple factors that cause such unequal participation. Margolis' insights into the many hidden causes of why students of certain backgrounds face an increasingly uphill battle is profound, and sometimes shocking.

It is easy to look for surface level explanations for this decline of interest but this book reveals how complex and daunting the equation is. It reveals a number of structural problems in detail: the implications of having so few teachers trained to teach high school Computer Science, how throwing hardware (i....e new computers) doesn't automatically entice students into becoming computer scientists, how teaching computer literacy "cut and paste" skills doesn't teach them to develop advanced computational thinking skills, how the subtle manifestation of racial prejudices discourages students' participation in Computer Science. Margolis does not place blame on teachers, students, parents, school administrations, or any other individual, but shows how underlying structural factors creates this often bleak picture of Computer Science education at the high school level.

While this book focuses on three schools in the LA school district, the takeaways are relevant to educators, researchers, and parents across the country. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to understand many of the underlying problems in high school Computer Science. But even more so, anyone who wants an insightful and readable exploration of the state of high school education in America will find this book inspiring and motivating. Read more ›