The ECEP Alliance is pleased to announce the release of a Request for Applications for new state membership in ECEP. Currently, ECEP consists of 22 states and the territory of Puerto Rico. Supported by funding from Google.org and NSF, ECEP will be adding seven additional states to the Alliance. The goal of our alliance is to help states improve equitable capacity for, access to, participation in, and experiences of quality computing education and pursue systemic change at the state level that will result in more diverse students pursuing educational paths in computer science.

We wanted to go big for the 2022 Computer Science Education Week. In 2022, ECEP turned 10! With 10 years of experience in building state-level capacity to address the lack of diversity in K-16 computer science and computing pathways, we are building towards the future of computer science education. In order to meet the needs of states working to address systemic barriers, the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance is hiring!

Surveying the landscape of computer science education is a key stage in ECEP’s 5 Stage Model for State Change. As of 2022, 65% of our states have produced at least one landscape report. These reports help states identify not just data but other resources to develop strategic plans that drive CS education policy and advocacy efforts.

ECEP leaders have had a busy summer sharing our expertise and resources with colleagues across the nation at various conferences. This dissemination work began with the Code.org Advocacy Coalition’s State Computer Science Supervisors meeting. This annual gathering of state CS supervisors always yields new ideas in CS advocacy and uncovers state-level actions that are driving CS education initiatives across the United States. Two conferences specifically aimed at CS educators — the WeTeach_CS Summitin Texas and the national Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) 2022 Annual Conference in Chicago — brought ECEP’s mission and resources to K-12 teachers.

As computer science education advocates across the country are launching a new school year, the ECEP Alliance is excited to launch a new and improved website. The ECEP website has gone through a structural refresh designed to curate and highlight the resources that Alliance members have developed to advance their broadening participation in computing goals.

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance (ECEP) is pleased to announce a new partnership with Google.org to support ECEP’s broadening participation in computing mission across the country. 

Google.org’s funding of $3 million over three years will complement the baseline investment from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and allow ECEP to build additional backbone capacity for supporting Alliance members and activities.

Held in Washington D.C. May 3-4, 2022, the 2022 ECEP Alliance Summit brought together 80 leaders from 21 of ECEP’s 22 states and the territory of Puerto Rico. The agenda was built around four goals:

• Amplify state success and efforts
• Reconnect and discover new ways to collaborate
• Critically examine current BPC practices, policies, and pathways
• Explore the continuum of BPC to find bright spots and focus on goals and strategies

On November 3, 2021, Code.org, CSTA, and the ECEP Alliance released the 2021 State of Computer Science: Accelerating Advocacy Through Action report at CSEdCon. The report includes descriptions of policy trends, an in-depth view of each state’s CS education policies, and data on disparities in access to and participation in computer science. This year’s report represents a key milestone, with 51% of our nation’s high schools now offering at least one foundational computer science course. While this is a notable increase from the 35% of schools that offered CS in 2018, a deeper dive into the data indicates we still …

The National Science Foundation recently awarded the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance a $3.5 million dollar Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance Extension grant. ECEP will begin the transition to the Equity in Computing Education Policies, Pathways, and Practices (ECEP 3) Alliance (NSF Award Number 2137834) in late fall. The new name highlights our ongoing commitment to strategically addressing policies, pathways, and practices that will lead to more equitable K-12 computer science education.

Dr. Carol Fletcher, Principal Investigator of ECEP, and Dr. Jayce Warner, a member of the ECEP Alliance in Texas, collaboratively authored an article published in the February issue of Communications of the ACM. In the piece, titled “CAPE: A Framework for Assessing Equity throughout the Computer Science Education Ecosystem”, they explore the different levels of the CAPE framework and how the framework as a whole can be used as a tool to address CS education inequality with an ecosystem-level approach. The framework addresses four key components of CS education: Capacity for, Access to, Participation in, and Experience of equitable CS …