Measuring Computer Science Opportunities in Schools Across a District-Wide CS4All Initiative

• In Event: Measuring the Efficacy of Large-Scale Computer Science Efforts in K–12 Settings: Strategies and Challenges

Abstract

NYC’s CS4All is a 10-year, districtwide initiative aimed at providing high-quality CS education to all NYC public school students. It aspires to increase the numbers of students, teachers, and schools exposed to CS in NYC, and to provide meaningful learning experiences that build upon prior exposure and skills at every grade level. These plans include providing high-quality professional development (PD) to some 5,000 teachers, aimed at helping them learn new programs and pedagogies in CS education, as well as integrate CS into existing courses. This paper will present efforts to capture a baseline assessment of school participation in CS across the NYC school district through a landscape survey and secondary analysis of school-level course data. Specifically, it explores the extent to which schools across the City have participated in CS-related teacher training and offer CS courses, and the challenges schools have met in doing so. This study pays particular attention to understanding the extent to which CS is reaching schools and students who are historically underrepresented in CS—including women and girls, students of color, low-income students and students with disabilities (Google Inc. & Gallup Inc., 2016; Hood, Hopson, & Frierson, 2005).

Given CS4All’s goal of exposing every NYC school and every student to CS content and skills, we administered a survey to a group of 344 schools that are representative of the system as a whole in terms of geography, school size, and student demographics. The survey asked detailed information about stand-alone CS courses, integrated CS offerings, extracurricular programming and professional development in CS, as well as challenges and future directions of CS in their schools. We also analyzed course offering data collected from every school in the system by the NYC Department of Education. These data, linked to individual student records, allow us to determine course offerings by school and course-taking patterns for key subgroups of students. Together, we use the survey and course data to determine the reliability and validity of each method, and to paint a rich picture of the landscape of CS across the district.

Our survey showed that 66% of schools responding to the survey reported participating in some type of CS training in the prior year. In addition, 57% of schools responding to our survey offered stand-alone CS courses, 41% offered CS integrated into other subject areas and 58% offered CS-related extracurricular activities. Schools offering CS courses and activities served slightly fewer students who are historically underrepresented in CS, compared with those that did not. Barrier to implementing CS included funding (41%), lack of staff ability or interest (29%) and competing priorities (23%).

These data provide a benchmark from which to assess the continued spread of CS to schools across the city. In addition, this work helps strengthen the initiative, while building knowledge about K-12 CS education, benefitting stakeholders here in NYC and around the country. Finally, our work can inform the work of other CS ‘for all’ initiatives with a strategy for measuring large-scale implementation in a diverse and complex districtwide effort.

Authors

• Adriana Villavicencio, New York University

• Cheri L. Fancsali, Research Alliance for New York City Schools