EAGER: Increasing the Supply of High-Quality Computer Science Instructors to Low-Income Communities

Teach For America, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Teach For America (TFA) will conduct a pilot to develop a new model for recruiting and training new teachers to effectively teach Exploring Computer Science (ECS) at 5-10 New York City public high schools in 2013-2014. The course will be taught by TFA corps members who are qualified to teach a secondary core subject and who also have taken 2 or more semester-long core CS courses in college. TFA will conduct targeted recruitment of CS college students on 10 New York and New Jersey university campuses. This recruitment will include outreach to CS departments, presentations to CS classes, engagement with TFA campus recruitment teams, participation of TFA alums with a CS background, and a general messaging campaign articulating CS education as an equity issue. An external evaluation consultant will conduct teacher surveys at the beginning and end of the course, interviews with school leaders in the schools in which ECS is being taught, and analysis of student work and instructional materials. In addition, TFA will assess whether targeted CS recruitment efforts lead to an increase in the number of people with a CS background who apply to TFA and who are accepted to TFA. This pilot will test a novel model for pre-service teacher recruitment and professional development that will contribute to the CS 10K initiative. Students in the participating high schools that currently lack CS courses and CS teachers will be directly affected. In addition, this pilot can inform expansion of CS courses within NYC and throughout high schools in other TFA regions around the country. The model of recruiting recent college graduates with CS expertise and training them to be CS teachers also has the potential to inform recruitment strategies of pre-service teachers at other college campuses.