On October 17, at the CSforAll Summit in St. Louis, Mo., ECEP, along with more than 170 organizations representing education, nonprofit, government, and industry, jointly committed to bring computer science to every student in the United States.

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences, stated its mission of strengthening the capacity of its 17 state and territory alliance members to create statewide infrastructure and initiatives designed to broaden participation in K-12 computing. This collective impact model disseminates best practices, resources, research, and provides access to a network of experts through monthly community calls, annual face-to-face meetings and ongoing individualized support for each statewide team.

The ECEP Alliance includes 16 states – Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia – and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

Of the new commitments made during the summit, two of our alliance states, Texas and California announced exciting major efforts:

• A new campaign called CSforCA is setting a goal to bring CS education to 6 million students in California
• University efforts to scale up rigorous professional development for both pre- and in- service teachers by University of Texas at Austin

During the full-day gathering, led by the CSforAll Consortium, at Washington University, several ECEP Alliance members took the stage to participate in presentations sharing their efforts in bringing computer science to all K-12 students.

Chris Dovi, Executive Director, CodeVA, Spotlight: Virginia is for Computer Science Lovers

Rebecca Dovi, Director of Education, CodeVA, Panel: Supporting CSforAll in Rural Districts

Carol Fletcher, Deputy Director of the Center for STEM Education, University of Texas at Austin, Byte-Sized Announcements: Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance

Dave Frye, Associate Director of the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation (FI) at NC State University’s College of Education, Panel: Supporting CSforAll in Rural Districts

Anthony Owen, Director of Computer Science Education for the State of Arkansas, Panel: State Approaches to CSforAll

In addition, many organizations in ECEP Alliance states have made commitments in support of CSforAll students in the U.S. including:

Alliance for California Computing Education for Students and Schools (ACCESS), in partnership with key stakeholders across the state, is launching the CSforCA campaign to create equitable and sustainable access to high quality teaching and learning opportunities in computer science education for six million California students that prepares them for college, careers and community engagement by 2025.

Arkansas Department of Education is launching a new program today, as part of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s #CSforAR initiative, to drive student participation and achievement in rigorous computer science courses. Beginning with the 2017-18 school year, the state will recognize public high school students and their schools with substantial tiered monetary awards when they earn a qualifying score on the College Board Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) A exam.

CodeVA is partnering with the State of Virginia to launch the "Virginia is for Computer Science Lovers" campaign with the state tourism bureau, and to invest more than $360,000 in targeted teacher professional development in high-poverty rural areas; and in 2017-18 will partner with Family Code Night on a statewide campaign to engage parents as their children will soon be coming home with CS homework.

Georgia Institute of Technology is establishing the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing to focus on the equitable delivery of computing education for underserved students through national and international policy, advocacy and research; and provide comprehensive and inclusive CS education programs in metropolitan Atlanta, the state of Georgia and beyond, beginning with Atlanta Public Schools serving an estimated 7000 students of color in 10th-12th grade, through hybrid courses, online programs, outreach, and leadership and professional development programs for new CS teachers.

Maryland Center for Computing Education, in collaboration with CS Matters in Maryland and the Maryland State Department of Education, will support statewide CS efforts in 2018, including implementation of the MD P-12 CS standards; measurement and tracking of gender, race, and socioeconomic gaps; ensuring that each district has CS course listings included in their program of studies; and trained CS teachers are in place in at least 50% of MD high schools.

New Hampshire Department of Education will implement the newly adopted CS Educator certification, develop and adopt academic standards for K-12 CS, and support broad implementation of K-12 CS for all 189,000 public school students in NH by 2020.

The Friday Institute will prepare more than 250 K-12 teachers to teach computer science courses, and integrate computer science and computational thinking in other courses in 40 North Carolina school districts through 2018.

­University of New Hampshire will host 6 teacher workshops and meetups reaching 100 new teachers, and continue to build partnerships to expand teacher professional development offerings in NH through 2018.

UT Austin’s Center for STEM Education will support 100 educators obtaining a high school computer science teacher certification through the WeTeach_CS project by August of 2018, a 25% increase over the prior year.

ECEP is proud to partner with the CSforAll Consortium and is an active member of the CSforAll community. Find a full list of commitments on the CSforAll website.