Abstract:

In "The 2020 State of Computer Science Education report: Computer science education still has diversity gaps" the authors claim that although computing jobs will grow at a faster rate than any other career field, many K-12 students maintain the same accessibility challenges, especially girls and Black and Latinx students. As reported by a Google/Gallup-sponsored national survey, "schools report a lack of qualified teachers and funds to offer CS."

This paper introduces CMU CS Academy and our efforts to address educational equity through flexibility, scalability, and effective communication between students, teachers, and our team of faculty, staff, and students at Carnegie Mellon University. CMU CS Academy is a collection of browser-based, Python language curricula, designed for teacher-led classrooms. We offer both experienced and inexperienced teachers the ability to deliver computer science curriculum using engaging graphics. We provide our courses in English and Spanish (togglable), and our community translation tool allows teachers to contribute in the language of their choice. We provide entirely free access to all our materials, professional development and ongoing support. To date, more than 7,000 teachers have delivered our curricula to over 155,000 students.

Current curricular offerings include three courses: CS0, a 40-hour course for middle school and/or after-school programs. CS1, our flagship 120-hour high school course in foundational programming. CS2, a modular course that includes topics such as art, AI, and music. We are currently piloting CS3, equivalent to a first-year college programming course. We also offer APCS-P modules that allow students to complete their programming units in Python using the CMU CS Academy platform.

Keywords:

K-12, APCS-P, translation, Spanish, professional development, equity, Python.