Demographics and Student Description
James Lick High School (JLHS) is a Title 1 school located in the east side of San Jose, California, with an enrollment of 878 students as of 2024. The student body is 74% Hispanic; 74.4% are classified as socio-economically disadvantaged, and 32.8% are English language learners2. Despite being surrounded by the headquarters of Google, Apple, Nvidia, eBay, Meta, and several other big tech companies, interest and enrollment in computer science at the school is at an all time low: zero. The upcoming 2025-2026 school year marks the first time this millennium that JLHS will not offer any computer science classes. When recruiting students to register for computer science classes, a frequent response from students is that they don’t believe computer science is for them, that they feel intimidated by coding and express doubt about their ability to grasp computer science concepts.
Historically, JLHS students have struggled with math, and it’s getting worse. Figure 1 shows the school’s performance on the 2024 California state math test, the CAASPP. Each subject area on the CAASPP is scored on a scale ranging from 2200 (lowest) to 2730 (highest). For math, JLHS students scored an average of 2337, which puts the school in the lowest category: standards not met. This is down 25.6 points from the previous year’s average score in math.
Figure 1 – JLHS’ math results for 2024 CAASPP test
For the past decade, JLHS has been a member of the New Tech Network, which encourages interdisciplinary, co-taught classes such as Math-Physical Education and Biology-Literature. The prevalence of co-taught classes at JLHS provides the ideal justification to teach this hybrid unit on biology and computer science, despite computer science not being offered as a standalone class this school year. If this unit succeeds, it could cultivate the student cohort needed to revive the computer science program next school year. A further aim of this unit is to strengthen students’ confidence and sense of belonging. Although they live in Silicon Valley, many view its high paying tech careers as unattainable and feel steered toward the occupations already familiar to their families, such as cosmetology, construction, or retail. This perception can limit economic mobility across generations and could be one of the reasons why the east side of San Jose is so poor compared to the rest of the city. While the decision is ultimately up to the students, getting a good computer science education expands their horizons and ensures they have greater freedom to choose their own paths.
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