Why so few African American and Latino/a students study computer science: updated edition of a book that reveals the dynamics of inequality in American schools. The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low. 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 and coauthors look 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. They find an insidious “virtual segregation” that maintains inequality. The race gap in computer science, Margolis discovers, is one example of the way students of color are denied a wide range of occupational and educational futures. 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. Since the 2008 publication of Stuck in the Shallow End, the book has found an eager audience among teachers, school administrators, and academics. This updated edition offers a new preface detailing the progress in making computer science accessible to all, a new postscript, and discussion questions (coauthored by Jane Margolis and Joanna Goode).

Why so few African American and Latino/a students study computer science: updated edition of a book that reveals the dynamics of inequality in American schools. The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low. 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 and coauthors look 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. They find an insidious “virtual segregation” that maintains inequality. The race gap in computer science, Margolis discovers, is one example of the way students of color are denied a wide range of occupational and educational futures. 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. Since the 2008 publication of Stuck in the Shallow End, the book has found an eager audience among teachers, school administrators, and academics. This updated edition offers a new preface detailing the progress in making computer science accessible to all, a new postscript, and discussion questions (coauthored by Jane Margolis and Joanna Goode).

An investigation into why so few African American and Latino high school students are studying computer science reveals the dynamics of inequality in American schools. 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.

Understanding and overcoming the gender gap in computer science education. The information technology revolution is transforming almost every aspect of society, but girls and women are largely out of the loop. Although women surf the Web in equal numbers to men and make a majority of online purchases, few are involved in the design and creation of new technology. It is mostly men whose perspectives and priorities inform the development of computing innovations and who reap the lion's share of the financial rewards. As only a small fraction of high school and college computer science students are female, the field is likely to remain a "male clubhouse," absent major changes. In Unlocking the Clubhouse, social scientist Jane Margolis and computer scientist and educator Allan Fisher examine the many influences contributing to the gender gap in computing. The book is based on interviews with more than 100 computer science students of both sexes from Carnegie Mellon University, a major center of computer science research, over a period of four years, as well as classroom observations and conversations with hundreds of college and high school faculty. The interviews capture the dynamic details of the female computing experience, from the family computer kept in a brother's bedroom to women's feelings of alienation in college computing classes. The authors investigate the familial, educational, and institutional origins of the computing gender gap. They also describe educational reforms that have made a dramatic difference at Carnegie Mellon—where the percentage of women entering the School of Computer Science rose from 7% in 1995 to 42% in 2000—and at high schools around the country.

How to rebuild higher education from the ground up for the twenty-first century. Higher education is in crisis. It is too expensive, ineffective, and impractical for many of the world's students. But how would you reinvent it for the twenty-first century—how would you build it from the ground up? Many have speculated about changing higher education, but Minerva has actually created a new kind of university program. Its founders raised the funding, assembled the team, devised the curriculum and pedagogy, recruited the students, hired the faculty, and implemented a bold vision of a new and improved higher education. This book explains that vision and how it is being realized. The Minerva curriculum focuses on “practical knowledge” (knowledge students can use to adapt to a changing world); its pedagogy is based on scientific research on learning; it uses a novel technology platform to deliver small seminars in real time; and it offers a hybrid residential model where students live together, rotating through seven cities around the world. Minerva equips students with the cognitive tools they need to succeed in the world after graduation, building the core competencies of critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication, and effective interaction. The book offers readers both the story of this grand and sweeping idea and a blueprint for transforming higher education.

The reviews are in! This Is Where It Ends, the #1 New York Times bestseller and one of the Best Books of the Decade (Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, BookRiot), "could break you." "I am speechless." "The saddest book I have ever read." "Literally tore my heart out." Go inside a heartbreaking fictional school shooting, minute-by-terrifying-minute. Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun... 10:00 a.m.: The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve. 10:02 a.m.: The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class. 10:03 a.m.: The auditorium doors won't open. 10:05 a.m.: Someone starts shooting. Over the course of 54 minutes, four students must confront their greatest hopes, and darkest fears, as they come face-to-face with the boy with the gun. In a world where violence in schools is at an all-time high and school shootings are a horrifyingly common reality for teenagers, This Is Where It Ends is a rallying cry to end the gun violence epidemic for good. Praise for This Is Where It Ends: A Buzzfeed Best Young Adult Book of the Decade A Paste Magazine Best Teen Book of the Decade A Book Riot Biggest YA Book of the Decade A Professional Book Nerds Best Book of the Decade A Bustle.com Most-Anticipated YA Novel A Goodreads YA Best Books Pick A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist for Young Adult Fiction Kids Indie Next List Pick "Marieke Nijkamp's brutal, powerful fictional account of a school shooting is important in its timeliness." —Bustle.com "A gritty, emotional, and suspenseful read and although fictionalized, it reflects on a problematic and harrowing issue across the nation." —Buzzfeed "A compelling, brutal story of an unfortunately all-too familiar situation: a school shooting. Nijkamp portrays the events thoughtfully, recounting fifty-four intense minutes of bravery, love, and loss." —BookRiot

Code Nation explores the rise of software development as a social, cultural, and technical phenomenon in American history. The movement germinated in government and university labs during the 1950s, gained momentum through corporate and counterculture experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, and became a broad-based computer literacy movement in the 1980s. As personal computing came to the fore, learning to program was transformed by a groundswell of popular enthusiasm, exciting new platforms, and an array of commercial practices that have been further amplified by distributed computing and the Internet. The resulting society can be depicted as a “Code Nation”—a globally-connected world that is saturated with computer technology and enchanted by software and its creation. Code Nation is a new history of personal computing that emphasizes the technical and business challenges that software developers faced when building applications for CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and other emerging platforms. It is a popular history of computing that explores the experiences of novice computer users, tinkerers, hackers, and power users, as well as the ideals and aspirations of leading computer scientists, engineers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Computer book and magazine publishers also played important, if overlooked, roles in the diffusion of new technical skills, and this book highlights their creative work and influence. Code Nation offers a “behind-the-scenes” look at application and operating-system programming practices, the diversity of historic computer languages, the rise of user communities, early attempts to market PC software, and the origins of “enterprise” computing systems. Code samples and over 80 historic photographs support the text. The book concludes with an assessment of contemporary efforts to teach computational thinking to young people.