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This study analyzes the impact of the Chicago Alliance for Equity in Computer Science (CAFÉCS) Research Practice Partnership (RPP) on the Chicago Public School (CPS) Office of Computer Science (OCS). Using a qualitative analysis drawing on data from leadership team meetings, published articles and presentations, and evaluation reports from 11 years of the partnership, we utilized a framework developed by the CAFÉCS leadership team to document the impact on district (1) Programs, (2) Research, (3) Organizational Structures, and (4) Policies leading to (5) Equitable Results for students, condensed as PROSPER. In particular, we explore the role of the RPP in supporting a 500% increase in graduating students who completed at least one high school computer science (CS) course between 2016 and 2020 in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). This study adds to the existing literature on assessing the impact of RPPs through the development of the PROSPER Framework, which may be a useful tool to help RPPs examine impacts on partner districts. 

With the CS for All movement increasingly gaining traction nationally, students entering colleges and universities are arriving with deeper and broader CS experiences. This in turn can change students' higher education starting point. This panel of CS faculty with expertise in this area will present perspectives and models to describe how higher education choices for placement, credit, and curriculum design affect the efforts to broaden participation in student pathways into computing and related studies. 

This study compares the characteristics and professional development (PD) experiences between teachers who began teaching Exploring Computer Science before and after the enactment of a CS graduation requirement in the Chicago Public Schools. The post-requirement teachers were less likely to have a CS background, but their experience in the ECS PD and their level of confidence at the end of the PD were equivalent to the early adopters. 

This special session explores the use of magic tricks based on computer science ideas; magic tricks help grab students’ attention and can motivate them to invest more deeply in underlying CS concepts. Error detection ideas long used by computer scientists provide a particularly rich basis for working such “magic”, with a CS Unplugged parity check activity being a notable example. Prior work has shown that one can perform much more sophisticated tricks than the relatively well-known CS Unplugged activity, and these tricks can motivate analyses across a wide variety of computer science concepts and are relevant to learning objectives across grade levels from 2nd grade through graduate school. These tricks have piqued the interest of past audiences and have been performed with the aid of online implementations; this conference session will demonstrate enhanced implementations used to illuminate the underlying concepts rather than just to perform the tricks. The audience will participate in puzzling out how to apply relevant concepts as we work through a scaffolded series of tricks centering on error detection and correction. The implementations also provide a useful model for incorporating greater interaction than is typically found in current innovative online interactive textbooks. In addition, they are samples for possible programming assignments that can motivate students using CS Unplugged activities to actively pursue deep programming experiences. 

This special session explores the use of magic tricks based on computer science ideas; magic tricks help grab students' attention and can motivate them to invest more deeply in underlying CS concepts. Error detection ideas long used by computer scientists provide a particularly rich basis for working such ``magic'', with a CS Unplugged parity check activity being a notable example. Prior work has shown that one can perform much more sophisticated tricks than the relatively well-known CS Unplugged activity, and these tricks can motivate analyses across a wide variety of computer science concepts and are relevant to learning objectives across grade levels from 2nd grade through graduate school. These tricks have piqued the interest of past audiences and have been performed with the aid of online implementations; this conference session will demonstrate enhanced implementations used to illuminate the underlying concepts rather than just to perform the tricks. The audience will participate in puzzling out how to apply relevant concepts as we work through a scaffolded series of tricks centering on error detection and correction. The implementations also provide a useful model for incorporating greater interaction than is typically found in current innovative online interactive textbooks. In addition, they are samples for possible programming assignments that can motivate students using CS Unplugged activities to actively pursue deep programming experiences. 

This study investigated patterns in the development of computational thinking and programming expertise in the context of the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) program, a high school introductory CS course and professional development program designed to foster deep engagement through equitable inquiry around CS concepts. Prior research on programming expertise has identified three general areas of development — program comprehension, program planning, and program generation. The pedagogical practices in ECS are consistent with problem solving approaches that support the development of programming expertise. The study took place in a large urban district during the 2016–17 school year with 28 ECS teachers and 1,931 students. A validated external assessment was used to measure the development of programming expertise. The results indicate that there were medium-sized, statistically significant increases from pretest to posttest, and there were no statistically significant differences by gender or race/ethnicity. After controlling for prior academic achievement, performance in the ECS course correlated with performance on the posttest. With respect to specific programming concepts, the results also provide evidence on the progression of the development of programming expertise. Students seem to develop comprehension and planning expertise prior to expertise in program generation. In addition, students seem to develop expertise with concrete tasks prior to abstract tasks. 

A key strategy for broadening CS participation in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has been the enactment of a high school CS graduation requirement. The Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curriculum and professional development (PD) program serve as a core foundation for supporting enactment of this policy. The CAFECS researcher-practitioner partnership provides support for ECS implementation in CPS. An important part of the sustainability of the ECS PD model in CPS is the development of local workshop facilitators. Potential facilitators have generally been selected based on the CAFECS team's personal familiarity with active ECS teachers. Once selected, teachers engage in a two-year apprenticeship program to become facilitators. However, in the three years since the enactment of the policy, the number of ECS teachers and students has grown significantly. This rapid expansion of the CS teaching force has strained the ability to confidently identify new facilitators from a large pool of teachers and ensure consistency of workshop implementation. As a result, CAFECS is exploring how to supplement the ECS Facilitator Development Model through a proactive recruitment model and explicit support for the mentoring process. 

Exploring Computer Science (ECS) [1] spawned from the need to provide access to Computer Science to everyone in the US. The success and commitment to equity and diversity of the ECS curriculum in Latina/o communities inspired an interdisciplinary group of educators from the University of Puerto Rico to tackle the lack of K-12 CSE on the island. This group recognized the need to implode the self-perception of Latinas (os) as being foreign to computing [2] by educating them about Computer Science. Teachers were identified as the catalyst change agents to transform Puerto Ricans students into contributors and creators of technology through computing. The intended audience for this panel consists of practitioners and creators of curriculum looking for creative strategies to engage students from diverse cultural backgrounds in computing using their native language.