Collaborative Research: Preparing Urban Milwaukee for Pathways in Computer Science

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Wisconsin faces increasingly inequitable access to Computer Science (CS) content in schools. Affluent suburban schools add courses, such as CS Principles (CSP), at a record rate. Schools with fewer resources have little or no CS offerings and see meager access diminished as scarce while CS teachers are lured away to industry and the suburbs. Marquette University and The Learning Partnership have already made significant inroads in expanding Wisconsin's CS professional development opportunities for teachers. Prior work over the last five years has provided CS Professional Development to over 1,850 K-5 teachers, reaching over 67,000 school children. Careful assessment will allow the team to explore deeper questions about how prior CS exposure effects students later in the CS pathway, why execution of CS initiatives are so unevenly effective in different parts of the city, and how to strengthen and expand a pathway in a dynamic urban school system.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.