Introduction The Myth of Technology as the Great Equalizer The book begins by explaining Margoliss choice in title for

her book. Margolis explains that an article titled, Everyone into the Water: Closing Swimmings Deadly Racial Gap, became a natural metaphor for her own study. The article described a study examining the racial disparities in swimming. The article details the historical reason, inherent stereotypes of the sport, and lack of educational resources that cause racial disparities in swimming and a death rate from drowning among African American children that is three times that of their peers. Margolis connects all of these issues that affect swimming with her own study that examines the relationship between race and computer science. Like swimming, African American and Latino/a students have been denied access to resources and opportunities to learning computer science while their underrepresentation has been rationalized. Margolis cites that in US Ph.D. granting CS or Engineering departments, only 8% of bachelors degrees and 4% of masters degrees in CS are awarded to African Americans. Jane Margolis, while associate dean of Carnegie Mellons computer science department, completed a study titled, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. After the study was published, Margolis observed a marked increase in female enrollment in Carnegie Mellons CS department; while the number of African American and Latino students remained low. This observation fueled Margolis to initiate another study focusing on underrepresented minorities in computer science. In 2000 she received a NSF grant and began the study, Out of the Loop: Why Are so Few Underrepresented Minority High School Students Learning Computer Science? This study is the basis for Stuck in the Shallow End. To conduct the study, Margoliss team interviewed educators, administrators, and 185 students from 3 schools within the same school district in Los Angeles that all identified as digital high schools.

The high schools varied in demographics and structure however. One school was an overcrowded facility in East Los Angeles with an almost entirely Latino/a student population. Another an aerospance mathematics science magnet in mid-Los Angles with a predominantly African American population. The third was a neighborhood school surrounded by mansions overlooking the Pacific Ocean with colored students making up two-thirds of the population from all over Los Angeles. The schools belong to the Las Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) which is the second largest in the country. Seventy-five percent of students are Latino/a, eleven percent are African American, and eight percent are white. Sixty two percent qualify for free or reduced lunches. The graduation rate in 2004 was 49% and only 18% were qualified to attend a four year college or university. In California underrepresented students of color are 49% of the population but only 9% of the AP Computer Science test takers. The study defines computer science (CS) as the study of computers and algorithmic processing including their principles, their hardware and software designs, their applications, and their impact of society. This emphasizes the problem solving aspect of CS rather than literacy skills. Literacy skills include things like Word processing or Internet searches. Margolis writes that she was initially perplexed when she observed that even when CS classes were available, they were rarely utilized by African American and Latino/a students. Two of her interviewees cite a lack of interest based on racial images of the computer science field. Margolis points out that our society rationalizes disparities as inherent skills based on race. She uses the example of African American being stereotyped as good at sports while computer scientists are expected to be white and Asian men. Margolis acknowledges that race is a complex issue writing, We refer to national or ethnic categories as racial, as do the students who Pollock found were using these terms to negotiate in a system of power relations, a system of inequality, and I think that why they called them racial- not

because they thought they were biological. Margolis believes that race must be part of the discussion of educational disparities because of the inherent rationalization and bias that has been constructed from historical gaps. She writes, When working for school reform, failure to take race into consideration in fact perpetuates the segregation that still exists in the system.