This poster examines the commitment of the computer science (CS) education community to equity and justice. By analyzing 146 public pledges from 119 organizations using the Kapor Center's Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Computer Science (CR-SCS) Framework, we assessed focus areas such as racism, inclusive classroom cultures, rigorous curriculum, student voice, community engagement, and diverse experts. Findings show efforts in affirming student identities and community involvement but reveal gaps in addressing racism and recruiting diverse speakers. The results highlight the need for a comprehensive approach to ensure equity and inclusions in CS education. This study provides crucial insights into the current state of CS education and emphasizes the importance of holistic commitments towards justice.

With over 22 million students enrolled in PreK-5 grades in the United States alone, we recognize that this is an important opportunity to bring computer science (CS) education to millions more students than who have traditionally had access. It also presents a unique opportunity to embrace teaching computer science in these early grades that is highly inclusive, engaging, and even blended with traditional subjects taught in these early years. In this panel, we bring together a collection of experts in the PreK-5 field, including researchers, a curriculum designer, and teachers, to discuss promising practices for including CS instruction in the PreK-5th grades, focusing in particular on PreK-2nd grades. The intended audience for this panel includes researchers and practitioners who are interested in CS in the early elementary and early childhood years. This topic is highly relevant to the SIGCSE community since it brings together teachers, curriculum designers, and researcher perspectives into a shared space to highlight the ways schools, teachers, and researchers can think about successfully adding computer science into young children's education.

The demand to provide high-quality computer science (CS) education to K-12 students across the United States continues to grow due to societal transformations driven by AI and cybersecurity. However, the impact of state initiatives and mandates on district leaders' decision making remains an under-explored area in the literature. In 2022, CSforALL began work in Tennessee, a state poised to enact CS education policy, as part of a Research Practice Partnership (RPP). This study investigates the first eight school districts who participated in theStrategic CSforALL Resource and Implementation Planning Tool (SCRIPT) workshops in 2022 and 2023, setting goals based on the SCRIPT rubric. The study takes a general qualitative approach underpinned by the Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience (CAPE) Framework to develop a coding scheme analyzing the districts' related rubric scores and goals, and to investigate the impacts on equity indicators. The districts participated in three SCRIPT workshops held in 2022 and 2023, and this study dives deeply into the initial goals as well as analyzing the ways the SCRIPT rubric aligned to the CAPE Framework to investigate how district leaders make decisions which impact teacher and student outcomes which lead to equitable high-quality CS education.

Educators should provide access to all students with inclusive and equitable computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) learning outcomes. Yet access to CS and CT is not always available for students with disabilities. This qualitative cross-case study examined the barriers and strengths three exemplar teachers faced, explored the supports and resources they provided, and presented how these teachers defined successful inclusive CS learning outcomes for their students. The data set included analysis of the semistructured teachers' interviews and teaching materials. The results included seven successful strategies the teachers identified: 1) using physical computing, 2) pair programming, 3)connecting CS and Individual Education Plans (IEP), 4)applying hands-on activities, 5) CT integration, 6) using CS vocabulary, and 7)open-ended pedagogy. Three resources and supports the teacher provided emerged from the data set as follows: 1) accessible instructional materials, 2) projects with multiple entry points, and 3) essential scaffolding supports. Whereas four barriers teachers faced; 1. subject matter, 2) accessible tools, 3) students receiving support, 3) the role of CS in instruction, and 4) the role of time served as additional findings. The results suggested that school-based practitioners, including administrators, can overcome the barriers and promote successful strategies that lead to asset-based CS-inclusion in the classroom.

While computational thinking has gained popularity in K-12 schools to increase access to computing tools and practices, there is still limited understanding on how to broaden participation of students with disabilities in computational thinking (CT). One approach to increasing access to computing to students with disabilities is to educate future special education teachers to bring CT into their instruction. This study examined the influence of integrating CT into assistive technology course for special education pre-service teachers. Our results suggest that integrating CT into special educa- tion teacher preparation coursework can have a positive impact on how pre-service teachers see the value of bringing computational practices to students with disabilities.