Although it is well known that Black women are underrepresented in computing, less is known about their pre-college experiences. We hypothesize that inequities at the K-12 level result in Black women's underrepresentation in computing, because Black women have accumulated less social capital and are less embedded in courses and organizations related to computing prior to college. This paper reports the initial findings from the first round of a survey designed to gather the pre-college computing experiences of Black women and their peers. Black women in our sample were less likely to report participating in formal computer science (CS) education in school, slightly more likely to report participation in outside-of-school computing programs, about equally as likely to pursue computing experiences independently, and more likely to have had no pre-college computing experiences at all. We found that Black women were less likely to report that they were told they would be a good computer scientist, especially by friends, teachers, and guidance counselors, thus reflecting weaker social connections and lower levels of social capital. These findings suggest that organizational embeddedness or social ties from pre-college computing experiences may indeed be a factor in Black women's underrepresentation in computing and that access to these experiences outside of the formal classroom may be particularly important. The survey is one part of a study that will feature a second round of data collection in another state, analysis of state-level longitudinal data, and interviews with Black women.

Many university computing and engineering departments rely on transfer student enrollment from community colleges, but these students often face unique barriers to academic and social integration. These challenges can be compounded for students from underrepresented racial backgrounds. Using institutional and survey data, correlations among social and academic factors were calculated to measure the impact of a Post Transfer Pathways program on GPA and persistence. While findings indicate that participation has significant positive impacts, URM students may be more vulnerable to disruptions in social and academic factors than non-URM students.

In recent years, state members of the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance have made efforts to increase access to and broaden participation in computing at the K-12 levels. Each ECEP state's K-12 computer science (CS) education journey has been documented during their ECEP membership resulting in over 25,000 digital documents. Over the course of the project it was necessary to track key events, identify trends across states, and maintain consumable records of state progress. A systematic way to collect and track the data is critical to conduct historical and cross-state analyses. In an effort to quantify and categorize, the researchers engaged in a review process of all ECEP reports, artifacts, and other relevant data to develop a system. Relevant and important components were identified in each type of document and assigned codes using ECEP's Five Stage Model ("a five-step process toward state-level CS education reform"), the Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience (CAPE) framework (to measure equity in CS education implementation), and specific policies initiatives (alignment with various policy initiatives - Code.org's "Nine Policy Ideas to Make CS Fundamental to K?12 Education"). Indiana was identified as a state to conduct an initial, in-depth case study using this process. Indiana's case will be used as a model to further develop the stories of other ECEP Alliance member states. Through the development of a data dashboard, we hope to organize all of this information to make it more easily accessible for review and further analysis. The ECEP data dashboard development is currently in progress.

While the population of girls in Texas grade 6-12 computer science courses has increased, gender parity remains elusive. This work explores the root cause of this phenomenon as understood by Texas teachers who are part of an NSF supported networked improvement community (NIC) focused on gender disparities. Using teacher-defined problem statements about the root cause of gender disparities, we uncovered 15 subcodes across six main attributions for the underrepresentation of female students. Teachers overwhelmingly described student-related issues, such as awareness and lack of role models, as the primary driver of gender disparities. We found that teachers' attributions of the root cause of gender disparities varied based on teacher gender and teacher experience.

Efforts to improve and promote CS education characterized by greater participation of underrepresented groups have taken off sharply in the six years since the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) NSF alliance was first funded. Though many of these initiatives are occurring at the student and teacher level, ECEP and other national-level organizations have demonstrated the importance of focusing on change at the state level, as this can have important, long-term implications on policy and infrastructure. This poster describes ECEP's emergent design as a backbone organization helping state-level teams achieve educational change around CS. It also highlights key lessons learned through the alliance about how to foster CS education change at the state level. Four key lessons stand out. 1) The importance of understanding that engaging states requires appreciating the commonality of a framework around key areas to change (such as state standards, teacher certification and graduation requirements) but also respecting the uniqueness of state circumstances in these change areas. 2) The shared value created through a collective impact model to build a community that can support rich discussion and sharing of ideas. 3) The utility of an empirically derived a 4-stage model of state change used by ECEP that emphasized defining leaders, understanding the CS education landscape and finding allies to support efforts. and 4) The role of state team structures that can facilitate change when they are guided by identifying and engaging key stakeholders within a state and giving them a voice in driving the strategies and plans.

With the growth of computing education research in the last decade, we have found a call for a strengthening of empiricism within the computing education research community. Computer science education researchers are being asked to focus not only the innovation that the research creates or the question it answers, but also on validating the claims we made about the work. In this session, we will explore the relationship between evaluation and computing education research and why it is so vital to the success of the many computing education initiatives underway. It will also help computing faculty engaged in computer science education research understand why it is essential to integrate evaluation and validation from the very first conceptual stages of their intervention programs.

No abstract available.

Computer Science (CS) is a rapidly growing and evolving field, with many secondary teachers participating in professional development (PD) to offer CS courses in their schools as the entry point to a CS education pipeline. In 2014 the Evaluator Working Group (EWG) formed to address the issue of common data collection across NSF CS10K projects in order to capture the number of teachers being trained across CS10K projects and locations. The EWG goals are twofold: First, the EWG seeks to test the feasibility of a diverse group of projects collecting and reporting on common data. The lessons learned through this effort will inform the CS education professional development community as the field matures and data collection is more broadly supported. Second, the EWG hopes to have an accurate count of the number of teachers trained through CS10K, some demographic and descriptive information about teachers, information about the students enrolled in teachers' classes, and information about the schools in which the teachers are offering courses. To accomplish these goals, the EWG has developed a common data collection tool and process for projects to report aggregate-level participation data. To date 100% of projects submitted at least partial data. The results show that 1,538 new teachers have participated in PD through these 29 CS10K programs; taught in at least 909 public and private schools in 43 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. This poster will provide a visual display of both the process of data collection and the results.