How do we get black students in the picture and in computer majors?

Atlanta has made the short list of cities for Amazon’s HQ2. At the heart of the proposition to Amazon and other tech companies is people. City officials assert that one of our most important assets is a steady stream of young people with elite technical skills. In this courtship, it is clear which people the city is planning its future around. High-end science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is a proxy for who is valuable and who is not.  

Strangely missing from the city’s courtship of Amazon and other tech companies is a plan to break the pattern of racial segregation in STEM education that determines who is valuable. It begs the question, who is included in the future of Atlanta?  

With this logic, Atlanta is facing a basic challenge. People with computing and STEM skills are valuable. The future is being planned around them. If students of color in Atlanta have the least access to rigorous computing and STEM education, they are the least valuable. The future is being planned without them. In the starkest terms, this is the challenge facing the city.  

Read more at AJC.com