This morning Mark Guzdial tweeted on his latest post: Results from Longitudinal Study of Female Persistence in CS: AP CS matters, After-school programs and Internships do not https://t.co/GOzp3045Hp — Mark Guzdial (@guzdial) October 14, 2019 I'm glad Mark wrote about this as it's something that's important to both research and publicize but it's really not a surprise. I'm going to start by dismissing the statement that "… participation in the Aspirations awards program were teh best predictors of persistence three years after the high school survey in both CS and other technology-related majors.

Two of the hardest topics to make meaningful to students in APCS-A are inheritance and interfaces. It's not that they're super difficult topics but rather that they're not often needed, useful, or superior to not using them on beginner assignments. More often than not the motivation is a bit forced as are the assignments. Inheritance is its own can of worms and to be honest, something I've not found to be all that useful or necessary.