Secure and Upgrade Computer Science in Classrooms through an Ecosystem with Scalability & Sustainability (SUCCESS)

More than 20% of public-school students in the US attend schools in rural districts; however, these schools are less likely to offer computer science (CS) courses than those in suburban areas, contributing to the access divide and disparities in CS participation and achievement by socioeconomic status (SES), race, and gender. One of the primary reasons why integration of CS into the K-12 curriculum remains elusive for rural districts is the lack of educators with CS expertise.

Additionally, principals and counselors are often unaware of the importance and prevalence of CS to careers relevant to their communities. The SUCCESS team will address these issues by designing an ecosystem, including district and school level supports, that will ensure that all middle school students in predominantly rural WV have access to high quality CS education and an understanding of CS career opportunities.

To reach its goal of increased CS access, SUCCESS will specifically work to increase teacher CS content knowledge, improve principal and counselor understanding of how to support teachers, and spread awareness of CS careers for students, teachers, counselors and principals.

Secure and Upgrade Computer Science in Classrooms through an Ecosystem with Scalability & Sustainability (SUCCESS), will build an ecosystem to increase access to Computer Science (CS) and participation of underrepresented West Virginia (WV) middle school students in CS. SUCCESS builds on an established partnership between West Virginia University Center for Excellence in STEM Education (CE-STEM), Code.org (Code WV, in CE-STEM, is their WV Regional partner), the WV Department of Education (WVDE), and the Raleigh County School District to increase CS access by addressing the objectives identified as crucial by practitioners.

The goals of this project are to increase: 1) teacher CS content knowledge, 2) principal and counselor understanding of how to support teachers to ensure all students have CS access, and 3) the awareness of CS careers for students, teachers, counselors and principals. The design research partnership approach provides for iteration and improvement of the PD model and other activities based on research, including data and input from SUCCESS partners and the ability to increase the number of educators that the project can serve.

SUCCESS will adapt a high-quality existing CS curriculum and PD program to increase awareness of CS in the 16 Career Clusters established by WVBoE, satisfying two state course requirements. A video library supporting the career clusters will be created and all materials made available to all teachers in WV. Other CS training content identified as needed by partners will be created and delivered through the WVDE online system for use by teachers throughout the state toward achieving CS credentials.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.