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Obama's Computer Science For All Initiative Is Gaining Momentum

By The White House
September 15, 2016
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"We have to make sure all our kids are equipped for the jobs of the future — which means not just being able to work with computers, but developing the analytical and coding skills to power our innovation economy. In the new economy, computer science isn't an optional skill — it's a basic skill, right along with the three 'Rs.'"
                                      — President Obama, January 2016

Just eight months ago, in his final State of the Union Address and subsequent weekly address, President Obama set a bold goal — every American student should have the opportunity to learn computer science (CS). The President's case was simple. More than nine in ten parents want CS taught at their child's school and yet, by some estimates, only a quarter of K-12 schools offer a CS course with programming included. However, the need for such skills across industries continues to grow rapidly, with 51 percent of all science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs projected to be in a CS-related field by 2018.

Since the President's call to action, strong momentum for CS education has been growing at all levels of government and in the private sector. Twelve states have taken concrete policy steps to expand CS education — and there are now 31 states that allow CS to count towards high school graduation. More than 100 organizations have already pledged more than $250 million to support CS education. Just this month, thanks to sustained Federal support over the past eight years, a new Advanced Placement (AP) computer science course, AP Computer Science Principles, is launching and will be offered in more than 2,000 U.S. classrooms this fall, putting the course on track to be largest course launch in the history of the AP exam.

To mark this progress, and celebrate new commitments in support of the President's initiative, the White House is hosting a summit on Computer Science for All. Key announcements from the summit include:

• More than $25 million in new grants awarded from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to expand CS education;
• A new CSforAll Consortium of more than 180 organizations, which will connect stakeholders with curriculum and resources, as well as track progress towards the goal of Computer Science for All; and
• New commitments from more than 200 organizations, ranging from expanded CS offerings within the Girl Scouts of the USA that could reach 1.4 million girls per year, to Code.org supporting professional development for 40,000 additional teachers, to new collaborations to bring CS to students in a variety of settings from African-American churches to family coding nights to tribal Head Start programs to students as Chief Science Officers. 

Coding Required

There are nearly half a million open tech jobs in the United States today, and that number is projected to more than double within the next four years. These jobs pay 50 percent more than the average private sector job. One recent analysis of 26 million job postings found that nearly half of all the jobs in the top quartile in pay require some coding knowledge or skills.

And yet, CS is largely missing from American K-12 education. By some estimates in the past year, 75 percent of U.S. schools do not offer a single CS course with programming. Furthermore, even though research-based models exist that integrate CS into subjects such as Algebra, Science, History, and English, such integrated courses are rare.

This lack of access is even worse for communities traditionally underrepresented in CS and other STEM fields. In 2015, only 22 percent of students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science (AP CS) exam were girls, and only 13 percent were African-American or Latino students. In three states, no girls took the AP CS exam and in 10 states fewer than 10 girls took the exam. In 21 states, fewer than 10 African-Americans took the AP CS exam. Furthermore, portrayals in entertainment media and widely-held stereotypes exacerbate this dynamic, with far more men than women depicted in technology roles in film and television.

These challenges in course access, bias, and stereotypes are the reason why the Administration has progressively increased its focus on expanding access to CS. That is why the College Board, with NSF support, began developing a new AP Computer Science Principles course (AP CSP), designed with the goal to recruit and retain students who are typically underrepresented in CS fields. Instead of focusing solely on learning computer programming skills, the new AP CSP explores the creative aspects of programming, abstractions, algorithms, large data sets, the Internet, cybersecurity, and how computing addresses real-world problems. That course is rolling out throughout the United States this month, with more than 2,000 classrooms already signed up, reaching an estimated 25,000 high school students in this academic year and putting AP CSP on track to be largest course launch in AP history.

It is also why, in 2013, President Obama called on every child to take the opportunity to code, and in 2014 became the first President to write a line of code. And it is why in 2015, the President launched TechHire to get more adults access to accelerated paths to tech careers. Today, there are over 50 TechHire communities across the United States, with nearly 1,000 employers participating. Finally, more schools and communities are able to benefit from the Administration's announcements thanks to President Obama's ConnectED Initiative, which is helping teachers implement modern digital learning strategies and has delivered broadband to tens of millions of American students in the classroom. President Obama's proposal to give every student the chance to learn CS in school has seen significant progress in the last eight months:

• Federal agencies have announced new competitions, guidance, and support. The President signed the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds law in December 2015 to reform No Child Left Behind, which also expands the opportunities that states and districts have to offer CS and other rigorous STEM coursework. This spring, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) released a Dear Colleague Letter to states, school districts, schools, and education organizations focused on how to maximize Federal funds to support and enhance CS education. In addition, ED's Investing in Innovation competition included a priority for STEM education, including CS education, and its 21st Century Community Learning Center program launched a webpage of available CS education materials for its network of State directors, site directors, and frontline staff, and featured CS at the program's Summer Institute in July. In addition, the NSF has accelerated its efforts to expand access to CS. As a result, in the past eight months, over 1,200 high school teachers have participated in professional development through NSF-funded CS projects, preparing them to teach either Exploring Computer Science (ECS) or AP CSP.
• Twelve states have taken concrete policy actions to support CS education since the President's call to action: Colorado (allowing CS to count towards graduation), Delaware (designating CS as a statewide program of study), Florida (adopting new K-12 CS standards), Hawaii (integrating CS into other core subjects), Idaho (creating a CS curriculum), Indiana (adopting new K-8 CS standards), Louisiana (allowing CS to count towards graduation), Pennsylvania (allowing CS to count towards graduation), Rhode Island (setting a goal to get CS into all K-12 schools and reaching the half-way mark), Utah (establishing CS training and resources), Virginia (embedding CS into its K-12 standards), and West Virginia (requiring all secondary schools to offer a CS course this fall). In addition, 27 governors have called on Congress to support CS education.
• More than 100 organizations have already responded to the President's call to action. Since January, organizations have pledged more than $250 million in philanthropic support, and the more than 100 commitment-makers to the President's CS call to action have already reached more than one million students and teachers with CS programming. For example, in the past eight months and in support of the President's call to action, Apple announced Swift playgrounds, a new iPad app to learn coding, and nearly 12,000 students participated in coding sessions at Apple Camp this summer. Code.org has prepared more than 22,000 teachers to bring CS into their classrooms, including nearly 1,000 high school teachers. College Board has prepared 1,400 teachers to deliver the new AP CSP course in its summer institutes. The Iron Yard and Code Fellows, in collaboration with Operation Hope, last week launched the Tech Opportunity Fund with $45 million in diversity scholarships, and a goal of awarding $100 million in scholarships over five years. National Center for Women & IT (NCWIT) welcomed over 2,500 new members into the Aspirations in Computing Community in 2016, now supporting over 7,000 technical young women. Oracle has planned nearly 40 additional teacher training events for this academic year with an anticipated reach of 600 teachers. More than 50 CEOs and public sector leaders have called on Congress to support CS. In addition, as part of the United State of Women Summit, where the President cited the importance of depicting more examples of women in STEM, Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment (AFE) announced a new initiative called "#SeeHer" to incentivize advertisers, content creators, and the media to develop and showcase content that portrays diverse women and girls authentically.

New Steps

Recent Federal announcements in support of CS education include:

• More than $25 million in new grants being awarded by NSF. NSF announced that it will award over $25 million in new grants in support of Computer Science for All by the end of this month for FY 2016. These awards accelerate NSF's ongoing efforts to enable rigorous and engaging CS education in schools across the United States by funding: development and evaluation of scalable professional development for teachers for instruction of ECS and AP CSP courses; creation and piloting of instructional materials for use in preK-8; development of best practices; research on mechanisms for implementation of Computer Science for All; and coaching, mentoring, master teacher corps, online communities of practice, and other support for newly trained teachers. NSF anticipates an additional $100 million investment over the next four years.

• The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) will expand CS programs in six new communities. Through a collaboration with Google and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, CNCS will provide enhanced CS programming for six underserved communities and youth around the country. The announcement commits an additional 11 AmeriCorps VISTA members and seven AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associates to supporting this effort in the following areas: Harlem, New York; San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; Dorchester, Mass.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Omaha, Neb. Last year, this effort supported 12 AmeriCorps VISTA members who recruited and trained local volunteers across seven cities to deliver CS programming. In addition, AmeriCorps VISTA members designed Computer Literacy classes for parents, trained elementary school teachers on the CS First curriculum, increased accessibility to events like hackathons, and developed CS First Clubs at schools.
• An inter-agency working group will carry the Computer Science for All initiative forward. The National Science and Technology Council, under its Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education, has chartered a new interagency working group focused on meeting the goals of Computer Science for All. The working group is launching with the participation of more than 10 Federal departments, agencies, and offices, and will work to promote computer science education and coordinate activities between the Federal government and school districts, community organizations, non-profits, and the private sector.
• The Department of Education is releasing a new report this week on the future of STEM education entitled "STEM 2026." The report shares the perspectives of a range of education practitioners and outlines major opportunities for enhancing P-12 STEM education over the next 10 years. The report includes substantial discussion of computer science, and the importance of including computational thinking and CS-related activities in STEM education.

Private-Sector Commitments 

More than 200 different organizations have announced new commitments, showcasing the strong response to the President's State of the Union call to give every child the opportunity to learn CS, as well as his overall "Educate to Innovate" campaign to ensure all students have the tools to be innovators and problem-solvers.

Bringing CS to Students

• All Star Code, a non-profit organization that prepares diverse young men for careers in technology, is committing to deliver its Summer Intensive training in coding, technology, and entrepreneurship skills to 1,000 students by 2020.

• Apple, under its new Everyone Can Code effort, is releasing two new free courses and teacher guides — Learn to Code with Swift Playgrounds for middle school students, and App Development with Swift for high school students — which will be available to U.S. schools beginning this fall. Apple is also launching free "Get Started with Coding" workshops and "Swift Drop-in Hour" sessions this fall.
• BirdBrain Technologies will add 500 new Finch Robots during the 2016-2017 school year to their flock of loaner educational robots, which travel the country engaging students in computational thinking and programming. In total, 1,200 Finch Robots will be loaned to over 250 schools, providing computer science learning for over 35,000 students who might not ordinarily have a CS experience.
• Bruce Museum's "Power Up Girls" program will provide targeted computer science enrichment for 200 girls in 4th-8th grade in Fairfield County, Conn., starting early 2017.
• Computing Innovation Center is committing to provide comprehensive enrichment programs to over 500 K-8 students in creative computing through weekend events and summer camp courses in computer science, robotics, physical computing, and sewable electronics by August 2017.
• Digi-Bridge will deliver #STEAMSaturdays — science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) courses, rooted in computer science — to more than 500 K-8 scholars at nine sites in Charlotte-Mecklenburg during the 2016-17 academic year. Community collaborators such as the OrthoCarolina Foundation, will allow Digi-Bridge to extend these experiences free of charge to students living in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods of North Carolina. DigiBridge's STEAM Community Catalyst will create a model K-12 CS program with Charlotte area Title I schools during the 2016-17 academic year. In addition, DigiBridge will host Daddy Daughter Code-Ins to introduce school-age girls and their fathers or male role models to coding in a welcoming environment.
• Emerging Entrepreneurs Inc., through its "Urban Leadership Lab" for at-risk youth, will introduce a new tech-focused startup platform called #TechLabs. The program will combine its teen entrepreneurship incubator with STEM learning, encouraging over 1,200 youth ages 11-18 to explore startup concepts in robotics, coding, programming, and data sciences by November 2017.
• FlyTechnista and STEEAMnista.org will engage 5,000 students in CS across five U.S. cities (New York; Boston; Washington, DC; Atlanta; and Oakland, Calif.), working with regional collaborators to offer events such as hackathons and workshops in the fields of STEM, arts, and making.
• Girls Inc. will collaborate with NCWIT to bring the AspireIT Outreach Program to 10 Girls Inc. affiliates by 2018, providing 300 girls with CS experiences taught by "near-peer" instructors who have recently gone through similar experiences.
• Girl Scouts of the USA is committing to develop and launch a computer science progression for Girl Scout Daisy, Brownie, and Junior levels (girls ages 4 -11), providing CS opportunities to as many as 1.4 million girls annually in the United States and overseas locations.
• Girls Who Code will launch a new custom mobile app, which will allow its students and alumni to stay connected, and will also publish new research with Accenture concerning the gender gap in computing and the factors increasing the likelihood of girls becoming and staying interested in computing.
• Hive Research Lab, a project of Indiana University and New York University, with support from the Spencer Foundation, Capitol One, and the Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in the New York Community Trust, is announcing the launch of the Building Youth Pathways in Computer Science and Digital Making (CS-Paths) initiative, a collaboration with the Mozilla Hive New York City Learning Network to connect at least 500 teens to high quality computing and digital making experiences connected to out-of-school settings and online. Hive Research Lab will create and disseminate "CS opportunity brokering tool kits" — a collection of best practices for front-line educators. Additionally, HRL, in collaboration with researchers from CUNY-Graduate Center, launched "Visions and Ideologies of Computer Science Education" (CSed Visions), an initiative that highlights the voices and expertise of over 100 computer science education stakeholders in order to develop a framework to support vision-setting in various Computer Science for All efforts.
• JPMorgan Chase will invite and encourage its employees to engage in CSEdWeek and will provide webinars and a specially curated offering of online youth technology resources for staff to leverage for their families and their local communities, with the goal of engaging 3,000 staff and youth by end of this year.
• LA Makerspace is collaborating with the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles to bring computer science opportunities to four public housing sites as part of its Coding Crew program. Coding Crew trains kids to code while also teaching pedagogy and classroom management so they can teach others.
• LRNG will create a new digital playlist and badge that teaches computer science skills in the context of fashion design. The playlist will be available to all youth on the LRNG platform including 12 cities in the LRNG network, with an estimated impact of 1,000 badges earned by December 2017.
• ManyMentors will provide online and in-person STEM mentoring to support computer science, cybersecurity, and data science awareness and education for 1,500 students ranging from Pre-K to college students by facilitating mentor-mentee discussions via its browser-based and mobile platforms, strategically directing CS opportunities to students, and facilitating hands-on courses by 2018.
• MENTOR will create a new customized mentoring guide to support CS mentoring program development and implementation. This guide will be based on the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, which provides an overview of the evidence into effective mentoring practices for programs and mentors. The CS guide will be published by July 2017.
• MIT Scratch Team will make available 10 new free activity packets that provide creative pathways into coding — supporting a variety of introductory experiences, from making interactive stories and games to coding musical instruments and beats. Each packet includes tutorials, facilitator guides, and activity cards, and will be accessible in multiple languages to learners and educators around the world in fall 2016 on the Scratch website.
• Montana Code Girls, a free after-school coding program for girls ages 9–19, is setting a goal to expand its program across the state of Montana by 2019, with a first stage commitment of getting 150 girls enrolled for the 2016–2017 year.
• More Active Girls in Computing (MAGIC) will provide one-on-one mentoring in STEM areas to an additional 50 middle and high school girls by December 2017, with a priority on serving those from under-resourced communities.
• National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) is collaborating with Google to launch the Code Success @ NSBE program, offering year-round opportunities for 300 NSBE collegiate members to further their interest in CS through coding bootcamps focused on JavaScript, JAVA, Python, and Ruby coding languages lead by expert instructors in the field, and CS workshops at the NSBE 2017 Convention. NSBE is also committing to add mathematics and computer science and cyber security concepts to their Pre-College Initiative chapters and national SEEK summer camps in underserved communities, exposing approximately 10,000 K-12 students through 2018.
• New York Hall of Science, along with Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network and media designers Design I/O, is developing a digital game that will enable students to use computational problem-solving skills to investigate environmental phenomena. The game and curriculum will be freely available to more than 100,000 middle school students in New York City by 2018.
• NPower will expand its high school technology education programming to New Jersey serving more than 275 low-income students through the Technology Service Corps Program in Jersey City, work-based learning activities with schools in Newark and Jersey City, and app development training through 2017.
• Project Code Nodes, in collaboration with the Partnership of African American Churches and others, is setting the goal to establish coding clubs for 70 girls in economically disadvantaged communities in Charleston, West Virginia.
• RBC Capital Markets has set a goal to deliver 10,000 hours of free coding lessons to students ages 8-12 in 2017 through the Teaching Kids to Code initiative, a program in which RBC Capital Markets technical employees provide coding lessons in collaboration with community organizations and schools.
• Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) will engage at least 10 CS college students per semester in leading weekly after-school mini programming lessons and mentoring approximately 20 to 30 local middle school students. In addition, SCSU, as part of the NCWIT Pacesetters 2016-2018 cohort, has set a goal to increase the proportion of female CS majors from the current 13.8 percent to 25 percent by 2018. Finally, SCSU will offer professional development for high school teachers to offer AP CSP courses as part of the Mobile CSP Alliance.
• TECH CORPS, with support from Battelle and in collaboration with Franklin University and several Central Ohio school districts, will develop and implement a two-week computer science experience for 75 Central Ohio high school students in summer 2017. Furthermore, with support from AT&T, TECH CORPS will host a free two-day #CBusStudentHack Fall Coding Workshop for 50 Central Ohio teens. Participants will learn the building blocks, UI, graphics, media, and sensors to develop a cell phone app, and be mentored by IT professionals and exposed to representatives from local tech companies.
• Tennessee STEM Innovation Network will create a virtual STEM education hub equipped with CS courses, CS and STEM career awareness through Learning Blade to reach rural and under-served students at over 150 schools by June 2017.
• Tufts University is collaborating with 100 Girls of Code to launch local chapters in the Boston-area to provide young women the opportunity to create and gain confidence in problem-solving and programming. The collaboration will serve at least 100 middle and high-school girls by April 2017.
• University of Washington (UW) is starting a one week game development camp for 9th and 10th graders using Quorum, an accessible programming language, in order to ensure that students with disabilities can actively participate in the course. Additionally, UW partner University of Nevada Las Vegas is implementing a physics engine in the Quorum programming language and the game, thereby expanding the types of activities that teachers can assign students to complete in Quorum.
• The Walt Disney Company's STEM initiatives in 2016 and beyond will leverage the company's characters, brands, television, film and online programming, consumer products, and theme parks. Disney will develop a new computer science tutorial incorporating some of its newest characters. This tutorial will be distributed across the company's online and television programming channels for CSEdWeek. Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy will release a new topic in their joint online free STEAM-education program Pixar in a Box in October, sharing with learners how Pixar uses computer science to create and simulate believable-looking hair for films like Brave and Finding Dory. Disney will also launch a new STEM challenge tied to an upcoming film that will encourage girls to use their STEM and CS skills to save the world.

Preparing Teachers, Supporting Schools

• American Institutes for Research (AIR), with support from the NSF, is expanding the scope of its virtual community of practice to include computer science teachers at all grade levels. Support for ECS and AP CSP high school teachers will continue, while new preK-12 activities and resources will be added. A rebrand from "CS10K Community" to "CS for All Teachers" will reflect the expanded scope.

• Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and Arts (ASMSA) will engage 1,000 Arkansas students in grades 6-12 in creating "Apps for Good" by April 2017. ASMSA will mentor middle school and high school teachers in more than 30 districts to increase the number of qualified CS teachers by June 2017.
• ASU School of Computing, Informatics & Decision Making Systems Engineering, and Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, in consultation with Technology Education and Literacy in Schools, will create an elective course that will allow over 5,500 undergraduate and graduate students to volunteer in high school CS courses.
• Big Sky Code Academy, Bitterroot College, and Missoula County Public Schools will launch the Montana Teaching Teachers Tech initiative in 2016 to train teachers in Missoula County in 2016. The initial pilot will train 10 new teachers and then scale up to train 500 teachers and serve 21,000 students over the next three years.
• BizWorld.org will expand access to introductory computer science activities at 300 K-12 schools, and release BizWorld 5.0 for this school year, which will incorporate HTML coding and e-commerce development into its program.
• Bootstrap will release and offer teacher professional development for a new "Lightweight Data Science" module. This module provides an introduction to sophisticated processing of data tables, exploiting custom programming language enhancements created for this purpose. Through funding from Bloomberg LP and the NSF, Bootstrap will also host teacher workshops for 50 middle- and high-school teachers to pilot these new materials in 2017.
• Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School will develop free, open computer science playlists through its online platform, Cortex, to share across Cortex's 7,500 student and teacher users by the end of the 2016-2017 school year.
• Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) will expand the #BrowardCodes initiative in 2016-17 to more than 50,000 students through computer science offerings at all 236 K-12 schools. BCPS will build a cohort of 20 master teacher trainers and increase the number of CS trained K-12 teachers to over 1,000. In the 2016-17 school year, eight middle schools will offer the ECS course, and 2,000 high school students will be enrolled in CS courses at the college level through Advanced Placement or college dual enrollment courses. #BrowardCodes will broaden participation by hosting clubs, CS fairs, app challenges, and codefests.
• Capital One will expand C1 Coders, a program that helps middle-school students learn software development through a 10 week in-school program taught by Capital One employee volunteers. Capital One will expand the program from six to eight cities, adding New York, NY, and San Francisco, CA. This commitment includes a million dollar investment to provide computers and tablets for the in-school programs and a laptop to each student at the end of the course to encourage continued learning. With the expansion of the program, C1 Coders will impact more than 3,000 students by end of 2017.
• Carnegie Mellon will collaborate with the Microsoft TEALS initiative to offer seven new CS courses in five Pittsburgh Public Schools serving approximately 200 students during 2016-17. They will also collaborate with Google to host the Google Computer Science Summer Institute in Pittsburgh in 2017 for 30 underrepresented students, and will add a CS strand to the Carnegie Mellon Summer Academy for Math and Science (SAMS), a 6-week residential program reaching 40 underrepresented students, in 2017.
• Central York School District will develop and implement a K-6 CS curriculum in conjunction with a grant from Wonder Workshop, providing opportunities to an estimated 3,000 learners and over 150 educators in York, Pa. during the 2016-2017 school year.
• Chief Science Officers (CSO), a non-profit initiative that engages school and local communities by supporting elected student positions to act as liaisons for STEM, CS, and innovation, will create new programs in at least 600 schools in 14 regions with support and training for more than 1,400 elected student CSOs. Regional collaborators include the Arizona SciTech Ecosystem, Science@OC and OC STEM, SCOPE, Science and Citizens Organized for Purpose and Exploration, The Great Lakes Bay Regional STEM Ecosystem, ecosySTEM KC with KC STEM Alliance and the Science Pioneers, STEM for Idaho, California State University Department of Student Engagement and CSU Northridge, The Biocom Institute, The Western New York STEM Hub in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Science Engineering Partnership at University at Buffalo, The Long Island Sound Science Festival in collaboration with STEM Collaboratives, Southern Oregon STEM Hub in collaboration with ScienceWorks Museum and Rogue Valley Workforce, STEM East in North Carolina, Georgia BioEd Institute and Atlanta Science Festival, and the Colorado STEM Ecosystem.
• Code in the Schools is launching an organized effort in Baltimore City of local stakeholders from the school system, business, and philanthropy communities tasked with expanding access to CS education opportunities in Baltimore City. Code in the Schools will focus efforts on recruiting underrepresented students, retaining them in a four-year Computer Science Career Technology Education Pathway, and engaging them in Code in the Schools' additional training and education programs, including the Prodigy Program and CodeWorks.
• Code.org will launch a new course, CS Discoveries, to teach CS for grades 7  through 9; will expand its professional learning network from 25 organizations to 40 organizations; and support professional development for 40,000 additional CS teachers in time for the 2017-18 school year.
• CodeSpark will launch this fall new free tools for K-5 teachers including a teacher dashboard, lesson plans, standards mapping, and more, supporting more than 10,000 educators in all 50 states.
• Codesters will collaborate with 100 Title I middle schools and elementary schools in New York City during the 2016-2017 school year to bring CS to at least 5,000 low-income students.
• Colorado School of Mines will host CSEdWeek in 2017, with the goal of doubling the number of teachers at the conference and adding new professional development collaborators to the team. They will also work with Front Range Computer Science Teachers' Association to recruit, engage, and train 100 Colorado teachers in CS content and pedagogy in 2016-17.
• Computer Science for All in Western New York (CSA-WNY) will provide CS professional development for 45-50 teachers in 2016-2017 to offer ECS across Western NY. This will serve more than 1,000 students, with focus on including schools that serve students underrepresented in CS. CSA-WNY at SUNY Buffalo State College will also provide CS professional development for 15-30 teachers in 2016-2017 to offer AP CSP across Western New York serving potentially more than 600 students.
• Connecticut Chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association will run a one-day exploratory activity for 100 African-American and Hispanic boys during CSEdWeek 2016, and provide organizational collaborators such as the Science Center, Hartford Public Library, and Random Hacks of Kindness JR., with qualified CS teachers to support their efforts.
• Cornell Tech Teacher-in-Residence will provide embedded professional and curriculum development in CS in 7-10 NYC public elementary and middle schools, supporting 50 teachers and 5,000 students this year.
• Digital Promise will work with all 73 members of its League of Innovative Schools (League) on a coding challenge in middle and high schools during the 2016-2017 school year. Additionally, 37 League school district leaders, representing over 1 million students, have committed to providing rigorous CS and computational thinking in their individual districts, and Digital Promise will organize a League working group on this topic.
• Dysart Unified School District in Maricopa County, Ariz. will start after-school CS clubs at all 19 of their K-8 schools, open a middle level coding academy in the district, and offer AP Computer Science courses at all four high schools in 2016-17.
• Edmodo will send in-stream posts to its network to encourage participation in CSEdWeek and other non-profit based initiatives to encourage coding and CS in schools through the 2016-17 school year.
• Exploring Computer Science (ECS) will refine and integrate an NSF-supported and research-based e-textiles instructional unit into its curriculum, bringing together the maker movement and CS education and giving an estimated 40,000 public school children access to the tools to compute, create, and make. ECS will also provide four day-long, face-to-face regional professional development workshops for 400 first-year teachers during the 2016-17 school year. In addition, ECS will bring its curriculum, professional development, and policy support to Native American communities in New Mexico, Montana, Arizona, and South Dakota through its support of 18 educators in these communities. Finally, ECS will work in collaboration with Girls Build LA (a project of LA Promise Fund) as part of a multi-year program designed to reach more than 500 girls in the LA County public schools.
• Gianforte School of Computing at Montana State University will develop and deliver a new dual-enrollment course entitled The Joy and Beauty of Data at Bozeman High School during spring 2017 for 30 high school students. Next summer, they will also train up to 20 Montana high school teachers in CS.
• Girls Rising in Technology (GRIT), which was started by a student at BethesdaChevy Chase High School in Montgomery County, Maryland, will host eight monthly presentations for area students with female role models in the STEM fields, including CS. GRIT is also collaborating with DC-based tech organization Girls Tech Too to provide a free, after school, semester-long website development and CS workshop.
• Hodges University will collaborate with the Southwest Florida Regional Technology Partnership, a non-profit, to directly engage and encourage by June 2017 2,500 K-12 students and teachers in Southwest Florida to explore computer programming as a problem-solving mechanism for community issues.
• Infosys Foundation USA will establish the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Continuing Professional Development Pipeline program, building their capacity and growing their community of 23,000 teachers; and launch the Infosys Foundation-ACM-CSTA Awards for Excellence in the Teaching of Computer Science in collaboration with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) through which 10 K-12 CS teachers will be recognized and awarded $10,000 each. Finally, Infosys Foundation will support the Next Scholars Program at the New York Academy of Science providing resources, career guidance and mentoring for as many as 300 young women interested in studying CS, with a focus on first-time college goers.
• Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and the Institute for the Science of Teaching and Learning will create a new 10-part online professional development, and continuing education courses teaching CS in elementary and middle schools.
• KISS Institute for Practical Robotics (KIPR) and Concerned Citizens Community Involvement are collaborating to reach an estimated 2,500 youth in 25 U.S. cities by 2018 with CS and STEM programming. KIPR is also collaborating with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation to expand the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Junior Botball Challenge and Botball programs to impact an additional 15 Oklahoma schools and an estimated 200 Creek students, and implement the standards-based Junior Botball Challenge program in 10 Head Start programs targeting 250 Creek Pre-K students. KIPR is also collaborating with New Mexico State University to implement the Junior Botball Challenge Program into two elementary schools in Las Cruces, N.M serving 60 elementary students and six educators in the first year. Finally, KIPR and Tulsa Public Schools will expand the Junior Botball Challenge program to 15 additional elementary schools in 2016-17 bringing CS to 350 students.
• Learning.com will host a code-a-thon in mid-November and during CSEdWeek, offering free Nation-wide access to their new K-8 computational thinking lessons and coding solution for students and teachers.
• Department heads from more than 75 universities and colleges have agreed on behalf of their departments to take concrete actions to expand K-12 CS education. Actions they are committing to act on may include: collaborating with colleges and schools of education to support the in-service or pre-service preparation of CS teachers; supporting their local Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) chapter; giving credit or placement for the new AP CSP course; and connecting undergraduate and graduate students to service learning opportunities in K-12 classrooms.
• Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance, with support from NSF, will add to its existing cohort of 40 teachers to include a new cohort of 20 teachers from rural western Maine in implementing ECS by March 2018.
• Michigan State University College of Education will redesign its Introduction to Educational Technology course around computational thinking to prepare its preservice teachers to embed computational thinking concepts and practices in the classroom. Approximately 175 preservice teachers will participate in this redesigned course per year. In addition, the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program will launch a new graduate certificate in creative computing to meet the growing demand of in-service teachers who need CS education. Approximately 250 in-service teachers will gain the opportunity to complete the certificate program as a part of the Master's program annually.
• Mississippi State University, with support from the National Security Agency GenCyber Program, will host teacher residential experiences in cybersecurity and programming, promoting the involvement of underrepresented populations in rural settings. The new residential teacher institutes will support 30 teachers from a variety of disciplines who are committed to integrating computing concepts in their curricula, extending the reach of 90 middle and high schoolers in the student camps to 3,000 per year in classrooms across Mississippi.
• MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement) USA, with support from Amazon and Microsoft, will pilot a CS initiative for middle and high schools and launch an Internet of Things-themed MESA National Engineering Design Challenge by the 2017-18 school year, engaging 10,000 underrepresented students, 500 teachers and 500 expert mentors in hands-on CS challenges at schools across 10 states.
• PinkThink is launching a new coding website that allows students to learn to program any Arduino-supported hardware product. PinkThink will launch this new open source coding language and curriculum at Perspectives Charter Schools, which will reach at least 5,000 students in Chicago this school year.
• Project Lead The Way (PLTW) will launch this fall a new professional development approach, Online Core Training, to give more teachers greater options and flexibility in how they take part in CS training. Teachers will have the opportunity to create and implement solutions in their classrooms and benefit from real-time coaching by experienced PLTW teachers.
• Raspberry Pi Foundation will expand Picademy, its digital making educator workshop, with a goal of training at least 300 U.S. K-12 educators for free in 2017. These educators will have the opportunity to get hands-on professional development aimed at blending project-based learning with CS.
• RePublic Schools Computer Science will train over 200 teachers in CS and will reach over 15,000 students across the South in the next two years.
• Southern New Hampshire University's School of Education, in collaboration with the Flatiron School, will offer Code Sharing: Empowering Teachers to Teach Code, a new course aligned to CSTA standards that equips K-12 teachers with no prior knowledge the skills to teach high school students how to code.
• STEAM:CODERS will offer a 10 week programming course at John Muir High School for 25 students and launch a high school cybersecurity course in collaboration with University of Laverne.
• Taskar Center for Accessible Technology and the Computer Science & Engineering Department at the University of Washington will engage 60 school communities in computational thinking experiences and civic action through 20 challenges in geographical information systems about sharing data about accessibility and use of pedestrian paths.
• Teach For America, as an AmeriCorps grantee and building on funding from AT&T and an NSF research project, will recruit, develop, and mobilize a diverse group of more than 120 educators to implement the ECS and AP CSP courses in high-needs schools by the 2018-2019 school year.
• Texas State University's Department of Occupational, Workforce, and Leadership Studies will offer CS workshops for interested K-12 Career and Technical Education teachers in Round Rock and San Marcos, Texas.
• Thinking Media is committing to exposing up to 30,000 middle school students in 320 schools in Arkansas to CS careers through the Governor of Arkansas's initiative to deliver Learning Blade, a tool for increasing STEM career awareness, by December 2017. In addition, at a national level, TATA Consultancy Services will collaborate with Thinking Media and Learning Blade to introduce 10 CS careers and technologies in way that emphasizes social interaction and impact.
• University of California-Irvine will, through the NSF-funded CS1C@OC project, produce 100 well-prepared CS teachers in Orange County by the year 2020. These educators will in turn teach computing to secondary students who have traditionally been underserved and underrepresented in CS.
• University of Nebraska at Omaha is committing to doubling the number of credentialed K-12 computing teachers in Nebraska to 160, through formal endorsement curricula and new graduate programs within the next three years.
• University of Texas at Austin's Department of Computer Science (UTCS) students, alumni, and faculty will introduce and encourage programming in elementary, middle, and high schools in the Austin area during CSEdWeek 2016. UTCS members are committing to volunteer 300 hours in local classrooms, an increase of 50 percent over their 2015 participation, thereby reaching approximately 3,500 Austin area Pre-K-12 students. In addition, the university's UTeach program will convene representatives from 10 major pre-service teacher preparation programs to discuss and draft a report for national distribution that includes recommendations specific to improving pre-service CS teacher preparation and increasing the number of pre-service teachers with both a CS major and minor and strong pedagogical preparation.
• Upperline Code is committing to training 40 new CS teachers in New York, Washington, DC, and Boston in 2017 through their "learn, teach and code" fellowship. The 40 high school teachers will have the opportunity to receive online mentorship and training, a one-week paid intensive boot camp and up to six weeks of teaching experience with intensive feedback with Upperline's summer programs. Additionally, Upperline commits to supporting 100 high school students through its summer scholarship programs.
• Vidcode and Girl Scouts of Greater New York will pilot a new 20-week afterschool program — Breaking the Code — with approximately 120 middle school girls in six high-need schools in New York City during the 2016-2017 school year. Breaking the Code combines coding and creative video projects with the leadership development outcomes central to Girl Scouting.
• Washington State University's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is committing to bring 150 high school girls to campus by the end of the 2017 school year and every year thereafter. Students will spend a half-day learning from college students with a meet-and-greet, facilities tour, robotics lab activity, overview of CS club and research activities, panel discussion and mentoring activity, and hands-on programming.
• Zulama, in conjunction with the CSTA, will begin offering a Computer Game Design Teacher Certificate in the fall of 2016 to prepare teachers to lead student inquiry and development of CS principles through computer game design.

National Movement

• ACT | The App Association will publish a follow up report in 2016 to their recent Six Figure Salaries: Creating the Next Developer Workforce, highlighting subsequent research on the availability of CS education in underserved communities; the economic benefits that accrue locally from CS education; industries and jobs beyond tech companies that rely on skills that come from CS; and the participation level in CS education measured by gender and ethnicity.

• Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is launching the Computer Science is... campaign this fall, a series of videos that describe the multiple ways that CS is used in careers, industries, and daily life, and feature a diverse group of professionals sharing stories of how they got interested in CS. The video collection will be available for use by educators, counselors, parents and students. Additionally, CSTA is releasing a new promotional video for the new K-12 Computer Science Standards.

• A new CSforAll Consortium is launching to monitor and celebrate progress towards the goal of Computer Science for All, and to connect stakeholders with curriculum and resources. The new consortium is led by CSNYC and a steering committee comprised of the Association for Computing Machinery, Code.org, The College Board, CSTA, and NCWIT. The CSforAll Consortium is launching with a membership of over 180 organizations.
• CS4TX is launching a campaign and statewide pledge for Texas district and campus administrators to commit to expand access to CS in their schools.
• Cyber Innovation Center (CIC) is committing to reach 450,000 students over the next two years through its CS and cyber curricula. The CIC is also committing to working with an additional 15 Governors and state departments of education to approve CIC courses in their state-wide curricula and educational pathways bringing the total to 25 states. Additionally, the CIC will engage 2,500 underserved students, including girls and minorities, by hosting and supporting hands-on events focused on CS and cybersecurity.
• Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance (ECEP), an NSF Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance led by Principal Investigators at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Georgia Tech, will engage five new states in the ECEP network improvement community model, and host a summit bringing together more than 100 leaders from 17 member states as well as researchers and CS organizations to exchange best practices in state-level educational policy reform and develop strategic plans to achieve CS for All. These 17 states will serve as models for others seeking to implement sustainable K-16 CS programs and educational policy.
• International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) will support 10 states over the next year in advancing student-centered learning through policy development and ensuring the flexibility for next generation learning models, including access to CS courses. iNACOL will provide direct support to more than 1,000 public schools and districts in designing next-generation learning. iNACOL will also host the annual symposium, reaching over 3,400 experts.
• Google is committing to contribute an additional $1.1 million to support CS education, and to reach one million students by the end of the 2016-2017 school year through CS First, Google's free introductory coding program. Google will also: collaborate with the Global Poverty Project to inspire girls and women to start coding and join the Technovation Challenge; commission new research on diversity in CS education; distribute 100,000 free copies of Careers with Code - a new CS career magazine from Refraction Media; and, along with Cartoon Network, create a one-hour coding activity, where students can create their own stories with code using the characters from The Amazing World of Gumball.
• National Association of State Boards of Education will release a State Innovations publication this September highlighting best practices in supporting K-12 CS education in Arkansas and Maryland, with the goal of supporting other states interested in expanding access to CS education.
• Raise the Game is committed to launching three large-scale public engagement campaigns with the goal of reaching up to 500,000 people in 2017, all specifically focused on empowering women in the video game industry and community. These campaigns will elevate women in the games industry, support STEAM education programs, tackle online harassment, and inspire the next generation of women to harness the potential of video game technologies.
• SignUp.com and the CSforAll Consortium are co-developing an 'idea center' launching later this year, focused on bringing CS to their school for the SignUp.com community of 8 million parents. In addition, MV GATE, SignUp.com and the National Watch D.O.G.S (Dads Of Great Students) volunteer network, with support from Capital One, will launch and promote the Family Code Night Event Kit to help more parents host a coding event at their child's school.
• Twitch, a social video platform, is launching twitch.tv/programming, a channel focused on bringing existing and emerging programmers together to learn, chat, and connect with each other over inspiring community content. To kick-off fostering and empowering the next generation of CS talent, Twitch also live streamed and promoted the Computer Science for All Summit.

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