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CSP joins New York City's K--12 computer science portfolio

New York City is the largest public school district in the country, with nearly 1700 schools serving 1.1 million students. Yet in 2014, only 738 students in NYC public schools took the Advanced Placement® Computer Science A (AP® CS A) exam, nearly half of them from three elite high schools. The need to expand access is great— only about 5% of the city’s students have access to a CS course. In other words, New York City represents an excellent opportunity to build a diverse, inclusive, and scalable approach to CS education [1]. The New York City Foundation for Computer Science Education (CSNYC) was founded in 2013 with the mission to provide a high-quality CS learning opportunity to every student in the NYC public schools. The foundation pursues a venture philanthropy approach—raising funds and investing in promising programs. Diverse programs and strategies contribute to an effort to build a CS education infrastructure that reaches thousands of students annually. In the 2014-15 school year, CSNYC-supported programs reached more than 100 schools and nearly 10,000 students [3]. In the 2015-16 school year, CSNYC will help promote Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (CSP) in NYC. More than 30 schools will pilot a course in anticipation of 201617, when the exam becomes available. The arrival of CSP courses in NYC helps expand access to rigorous CS in two important ways: (1) CSP complements existing pathways from introductory CS into more advanced courses, and (2) multiple instances of CSP courses for schools to choose from help meet the needs and interests of the city’s more than 450 high schools. This article discusses the development of a sustainable platform for CS education in NYC schools, including CSNYC’s role, the importance of CSP, three versions of CSP that will be piloted in the 2015-16 school year, and the development of a CS community of practice to connect and support a growing corps of CS teachers who have been trained through various programs.