BPC-AE: Into the Loop: A University K-12 Alliance to Increase and Enhance the Computer Science Learning Opportunities for African American, Latino/a, and Female Students

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This Broadening Participation in Computing award funds the extension of the Into the Loop Alliance. The Into the Loop Alliance has a primary goal of helping to strengthen the capacity of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest and one of the most diverse school districts in the country, to offer and support high-quality, college preparatory computer science classes, especially in high schools with high numbers of African-American and Latino students. The goal is also to pursue a strategy that creates sustainable changes in the culture and practices at the school and district level; and to develop a model and repository of best practices that can help spread and inform similar efforts in other school districts. The strategic approaches utilized range from the classroom and school level to the policy level. This Alliance Extension provides the opportunity to expand and sustain the original alliance work locally and nationally. With its initial funding, the Into the Loop Alliance has created an innovative pre-Advanced Placement (AP) computer science curriculum, Exploring Computer Science (ECS); piloted ECS in approximately 16 LA schools with over 900 students enrolled, predominately Latino/a and African American students; designed an ECS Professional Development program; and developed authentic higher education computer science involvement with K-12 schools and educators . In addition to deepening and extending all of the above, the alliance extension includes a commitment to three new strategic initiatives: designing assessment measures for student learning of computational thinking; launching a statewide policy campaign, the California Computing Initiative (CCI); and providing leadership for state and national expansion of these initiatives. All of these goals are aimed at institutionalization and sustainability of the alliance progress to date. Intellectual Merit: Improving STEM education and guaranteeing equal access to quality education for all students is one of our country's most pressing challenges. Into the Loop sits at the crux of this national challenge. The underlying project research about increasing rigorous learning of computer science opportunities in schools, about assessing student learning of computational thinking, about professional development for computer science teachers, especially in schools with high numbers of students of color, will shed light on similar challenges in other STEM disciplines. Broader Impact: Into the Loop will provide a model of what has to be done both on the school, district, state, and national levels to improve quality computer science education for all students. The models of professional development that will be designed and implemented in the second largest and one of the most diverse school district in the country will contribute to efforts underway to broaden participation in computing: specifically, to recruit and train a high school teachers who can impart to students the magic and computational thinking of computer science, to re-position Computer Science at the high school level as an academic subject, and to redesign the high school curriculum so that it is rigorous and engaging for a broad segment of our student population. Creating statewide policy change that can reinforce all of these initiatives will be critical for institutionalizing and sustaining these reforms and will be a model for other states as well.