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In early 2020, a cohort of 30 high schools engaged in a year-long intervention designed to increase their ability to offer Computer Science (CS) and Cybersecurity education to their students. After we performed an evaluation on the intervention’s impacts, we turned our attention to whether or not the outcomes were influenced by engagement of the schools in the cohort. In this research paper, we focus on the guiding research question: How do schools’ engagement in an intervention designed to build equitable CS and Cybersecurity education capacity impact schools’ course offerings and students’ participation in these courses? To measure equitable impact, we evaluated changes to actual CS and Cybersecurity course offerings and enrollment at the schools. We focused on the differences in participation across student gender and race/ethnicity as well as participation levels at the different schools across three years prior to the intervention and one year after the intervention. Findings indicate that, despite the disruption to schools from the COVID-19 pandemic, schools engaged in the program had very significant increases in AP CSP, AP CS A, and Cybersecurity course offerings and enrollment, particularly at schools that serve students from low-income families.
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Analyzing the Effects of CTE Grant Funding on CS Course Offerings and Enrollment in California
Computer Science (CS) courses classified as Career Technical Education (CTE) make up over half of all CS courses offered in high schools in California as of the 2018-2019 school year and are eligible for funding through CTE grants. There has been a growing focus on creating equitable access to CS as well as recommendations to use CTE funds for this purpose. This paper examines whether there is an increase in CS course offerings or CS enrollment as an effect of receiving CTE funding in California. Publicly available data from the California Department of Education (CDE) was used to conduct a two-way fixed effects analysis. Results indicate a null effect from these grants on CS course offerings and enrollment. These results raise questions as to other factors that might have played a larger role in the recent increase in CS course offerings and expansion of CS courses classified as CTE.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2144249
- PAR ID:
- 10428887
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
- Volume:
- 1
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 46 to 52
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569812
