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 …

Since 2015 the ECEP Co-Sponsorship program has distributed over $650,000 to ECEP member states to support state teams with broadening participation in computer science education strategies. The national funding landscape for this type of work is varied, and ECEP has been committed to not only working collaboratively with state teams as they chart a path forward but to also fund state team activity. 

2020 was filled with urgent reminders that actively dismantling unjust and inequitable systems requires all of us to dive deeper into the headlines and take actions beyond yard signs, self learning, and hashtags. With CSEdWeek 2020 recently coming to a close, it is important to continue to grapple with the implications of CS for Social Justice and consider where we are as both individuals and a collective movement to address the historic marginalization and bias which has resulted in the longstanding underrepresentation of Black, Latinx, women, LGBTQI, indigenous students, and students with disabilities in CS. 

In celebration of CS Education Week, the ECEP Alliance partnered with the Computer Science Teachers Association to organize a policy-focused webinar. Sarah Dunton, Director of ECEP, facilitated presentations from: 

• Dr. Joshua Childs, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Educational Leadership and Policy
• Nate Myers, Computer Science Teacher at Wakefield Middle School
• Ryan Torbey, ECEP Project Specialist & CS4TX Leader

The world has changed drastically since we released the 2019 State of CS Report in collaboration with Code.org and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). Our communities have been impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, schools all over the country are moving toward virtual instruction, and racial injustice has become a national focal point. The challenges of 2020 have pushed us to more deeply examine our strategies for addressing the persistent inequities that remain in computer science education.

The ECEP leadership team sent the following letter on June 4th to our ECEP state leaders and supporters. We are posting our statement here to open dialogue and invite participation in our work to broaden participation in computing, which can only be done if we work collaboratively to dismantle systemic racism.

Stepping into year nine of the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, the leadership team developed a new Theory of Change, and recently added a fifth stage to the ECEP How to Change at State model, originally developed by Mark Guzdial, Rick Adrion, Barbara Ericson and Renee Fall. Both of these models reflect past ECEP efforts and position ECEP to adapt to the evolving needs of state teams working to broaden participation in computing (BPC) through advocacy and policy reform efforts.

RESPECT 2020, the 5th international conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology was held virtually on Wednesday, March 11th. Making a quick transition from the planned in-person format to a virtual format, we applaud the leadership taken in these unprecedented times by the organizing committee, and especially the general chairs Christina Gardner-McCune (UF) and Nicki Washington (Winthrop). This year’s theme was “Learning from the past. Building for the future.” In retrospect, it was probably not intended to reference the massive effort that it would take to flip the entire conference in less than …