Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: When Good Projects Go Bad. Girls and Computer Science.

In week-long semesters in the summers of 1997, 1998, and 1999, the 6APT (Summer Institute in Computer Science for Advanced Placement Teachers) project taught 240 high school teachers of Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS) about gender equity in computers. Teachers were then followed through 2000. Results indicated that while teachers, did in fact increase the number of equity strategies they carried out, there was no corresponding increase in girls' enrollment in APCS courses. Speculations about the results are offered. Three major conclusions were drawn: (1) there was an increase after the 6APT experience in the percentage of computer teachers carrying out equity strategies and an increase in the number of strategies they carried out; (2) while there were changes in the numbers of students enrolled, both male and female, they were likely attributable to the change from Pascal to C++ programming language in May 1999 and not the 6APT training; and (3) the number of recruitment and retention strategies used by teachers whose female enrollment did not increase or change remained at 2.0, while those teachers who were most successful in increasing female enrollment increased the strategies they used from a mean of 1.0 to 1.5, and the number and type of strategies did not appear to be related to changes in enrollment. (Contains 32 references.) (Author/AEF)