Here is a reason to champion diversity.. this dataFor the first time, I attended the Tapia Conference. It was a meeting of true diversity. The presenters, panelist and participants represent the kind of diversity that is America. The conference will become a yearly conference from now on. It is a gathering of students , professors, and people who can inspire them to do great things.
EXPECTATIONS
When you read in the literature how hard it is to reach many of the very diverse groups of students, it is easy to become discouraged. This article comes to mind, and thoughts about tracking in schools .There are resources to help students be able to matriculate, but most of the time the students are not aware of these resources.
Graduation Rates
New Mexico, Nevada and Washington, D.C. have the lowest graduation rates in America. The worst rates are for children of color.
In Nevada, the graduation rate among black students is a national low at 43 percent.
Washington, D.C. boasts the largest disparity in the country between white students and minority students who graduated during the 2010-2011 school year. Eighty-five percent of white students graduated, while only 55 percent of Latinos and 58 percent of black students earned their diplomas. In New Mexico, only 56 percent of Native American, 59 percent of Latino, and 60 percent of black students graduated in 2011.
Nationally, the numbers have slightly improved from 2001 to 2010, according to the Building a Grad Nation report. For Hispanics, the number rose from 61 percent to 71.4 percent. Black students also saw a considerable increase: from 59.2 percent to 66.1 percent.
NCLB: No Chance for Latinos and Blacks
Often when you read the reports about all things digital this comes to mind when thinking about our diverse students.
Education equity is a major issue facing our country today. Children of color are falling behind at alarming rates and not receiving the education they deserve. We lose so many of them , and their ability by poor schooling and lack of resources, and by not supporting their teachers so the conference was a breath of fresh air .
Problems that the students must bypass:
High School Dropout Rates
Though high school dropout rates are the lowest they’ve been since 1974, they still remain high among certain demographics. Hispanic students had the highest dropout rate in 2010: 15.1 percent. Not far behind were American Indian students at 12.4 percent. Black students had an 8 percent dropout rate, white students came in at 5.1 percent and Asian students were at 4.2 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
High schools that serve mostly Latino and African-American students don’t offer as many higher-level math and science classes, according to a study released in 2012 by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
CLASSES OFFERED
Only 29 percent include calculus classes on their schedules (versus 55 percent at schools with lower Latino and African-American enrollment), and 40 percent offer physics (versus 66 percent).
The report stresses that the mastery of algebra early on is key to higher-level learning and helps students get on a clear path to college. Some schools are trying to start this at an earlier age. In Elizabeth, New Jersey, for example, where 89 percent of the students are African-American and Hispanic, all students take algebra I in seventh and eighth grade, with nearly all students passing the course (95 percent).
Teacher Salaries And Assignment
Schools with predominantly African-American and Hispanic students are twice as likely to employ first- or second-year teachers. Their salaries tend to be lower as well.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights reports that teachers in elementary schools with more African-American or Hispanic students were paid $2,251 less per year than their colleagues in schools in the same district that served less diverse populations.
Some schools districts are taking steps to make sure certain groups of students aren’t limited to lesser-experienced teachers. In Long Beach, California, for example, schools with the highest African-American and Hispanic enrollment have a teaching staff made up of four percent first- and second-year teachers.
This group of students , undergraduate and graduate have successfully made their way to a level of learning that is difficult to achieve for many students of diversity.
Graduation Rates
New Mexico, Nevada and Washington, D.C. have the lowest graduation rates in America. The worst rates are for children of color.
In Nevada, the graduation rate among black students is a national low at 43 percent.
Washington, D.C. boasts the largest disparity in the country between white students and minority students who graduated during the 2010-2011 school year. Eighty-five percent of white students graduated, while only 55 percent of Latinos and 58 percent of black students earned their diplomas. In New Mexico, only 56 percent of Native American, 59 percent of Latino, and 60 percent of black students graduated in 2011.
Nationally, the numbers have slightly improved from 2001 to 2010, according to the Building a Grad Nation report. For Hispanics, the number rose from 61 percent to 71.4 percent. Black students also saw a considerable increase: from 59.2 percent to 66.1 percent.
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) awards the National Medal of Science to Dr. Richard A. Tapia of Houston, Texas, who, in addition to his research on numerical analysis and other aspects of mathematics, has devoted himself to improving science and math education and supporting students from groups underrepresented in those fields, including women and minorities, at the White House October 21, 2011 in Washington, DC. Obama honored the recipients of the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation the highest honors bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors.
The 2013 Tapia Conference Celebrates the Most SuccessfulMeeting Yet!!
WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 20 – The 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference concluded the largest meeting in its 12 year history, with 550 students, academics and computing professionals attending the three-day conference.
It was a kind of a shock to see that the presenters were as diverse as the audience and that some of the presenters were students. The panels were awesome.
The conference program included plenary speakers, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, birds-of-a-feather meetings, professional networking and hundreds of informal conversations in the hallways and over meals.
“This was truly an amazing three days in which we celebrated the diversity that each one of us brings to the field of computing,” said Tapia 2013 General Chair Juan Vargas. “Looking out at the attendees, their energy and enthusiasm was both gratifying and inspiring. Many are already looking forward to next year’s conference in Seattle.”
According to Vargas, the Tapia conference is clearly one of the most diverse in the computer science community. At Tapia 13, 51 percent of the attendees were women, Blacks and African Americans made up 43 percent, Hispanics and Latinos constituted 26 percent and Caucasians comprised 19 percent. Students, from freshman to Ph.D. candidates, made up 60 percent of all attendees. For 69 percent of those attending, this was their first time at the Tapia conference, and for many of them it was their first professional conference.
Attendees heard from an all-star lineup of speakers, including Prof. AnnieAnton of Georgia Tech, Vinton Cerf of Google, Theresa Maldonado of the National Science Foundation, Prof. Jeanine Cook of New Mexico State University, Hakim Weatherspoon of Cornell University, Armando Fox of the University of California, Berkeley, Prof. Anita Jones of the University of Virginia, and Dot Harris of the U.S. Department of Energy.
After Cerf gave a thought-provoking talk on whether our digital documents of today will be readable 1,000 years from now, one student introduced herself and then touched him to confirm that he was real, reminiscent of a scene from the film, The Matrix, in which the Architect carrier is based on Cerf.
A record number of students (twenty-one) presented their research and received advice from nine panelists during the 2013 Doctoral Consortium., a one-day workshop to support Ph.D. students as they work toward their doctorate degrees. Sixty students also presented their own research in a special poster session. Awards for the best undergraduate posters went to Joseph Crawford, Morehouse College; Jhensen Grullon Sanabria, University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras; and Raul Viera, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. Awards for the best graduate posters went to Grace Silva, University of North Carolina; Omar U. Florez, Utah State University/Intel Labs; and Sidafa Conde, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. The Most Engaging Poster award went to Jessica Jones of Clemson University.
Also at the concluding banquet, Juan E. Gilbert, Chair of Human-Centered Computing in the School of Computing at Clemson University, was presented the 2013 Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing.
The Tapia conference has a tradition of providing a supportive networking environment for under-represented groups across the broad range of computing and information technology, from science to business to the arts to infrastructure. The Tapia conference is organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery, and in cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society and the Computing Research Association.
The Tapia conference series enjoys the support of a number of academic, research and business organizations, including:
- Platinum sponsors: The National Science Foundation and XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) and Beyond Broader Engagement
- Gold supporters: EL (Empowering Leadership) Alliance, Clemson University, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M University
- Silver supporters: Google, Microsoft, University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Tech
- Bronze supporters: IBM, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, National Center For Women and Information Technology, National Security Agency, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan
- Contributors: Facebook, Intel, Tufts University, VMware and Yahoo
