I appreciate ECEP's model and support of CS ed reforms at the state level, and I've witnessed its impacts up close now in two states, which are very different. Can you share a bit about how the 5th stage works? Is data or data infrastructure being shared across states?  In terms of the CAPE model, it seems state education policy most likely addresses Capacity and Access, whereas Participation and Experience are influenced at the district, school, or classroom level. Do you find that to be the case in ECEP's experience? Are ECEP states finding ways to address Participation and Experience via state policy changes? 

Those are great questions, Renee. I think Stage 5 may happen differently across states since states differ in terms of what education data are collected and how. States also differ in terms of who can access the data. The important thing is that there is a team of folks in the state who can access the data, is invested in broadening participation in computing for their state, has the capacity and ability to analyze and report the data, and has the network/connections for making sure the reported data reach the right decision-makers in the state. I suspect that for most states that team would be led by someone in the state education department since state ed department staff are more likely to have access to the data. In Texas, we don't really have anyone at the ed dept with that kind of capacity and vested interest. However, we are fortunate that our team (CS ed researchers at the University of Texas) is able to access all of the state public education, so we have taken it upon ourselves to analyze and report out the CS ed data. 

In terms of sharing across states, that is an area where we need a lot of work done. Right now, data are not very comparable across states due to differences in how the data are collected and reported as well as differences in CS ed policy. ECEP is currently working on a project with the six New England states to tackle that problem by creating common metrics across states to report out. The hope is to scale this work to the broader ECEP community and eventually the nation.

As for CAPE. I think you make a great point. I agree that state ed policy has greater influence over Capacity and Access than Participation and Experience. There are some ways, however, in which state policy could impact Participation and Experience. For example, in terms of Participation, state policy that mandates or suggests prerequisites for certain courses would impact who is able to take those courses. For Experience, course standards written at the state level could explicitly address issues of equity and inclusion in CS.

Just to build on what Jayce has said regarding state policy and experience, this is one of the reasons why supporting states to create standards for CS is an important component of a project like ECEP. On it's surface, it may seem like standards writing is not directly connected to BPC, but if ECEP leaders are involved to ensure that standards include explicit attention to equity, diversity, inclusion, the social impacts of computing, etc., then we know that students are more likely to experience these things as well. 

The ECEP 5-stage model is just a starting point for most states. The first stage of building a diverse leadership team is where states work to intentionally include the voices of traditionally underrepresented groups in CS. Each state also uses the process of developing a CS landscape report to determine where their most persistent gaps may be occurring. For some states, that might be women in CS, for some it might be students of color, and for others, it might be rural students or Native American students. Once the data points to these specific areas of inequity, states can then develop strategies and interventions that address the unique challenges of their populations of focus. 

Yes indeed Ann ... ECEP would love to have better connections with CAHSI.

Thanks Ann - we would love to circle up with your group to see how we can work more closely together. Sarah Dunton will follow up to get something on our respective calendars!

This is a great question. Because ECEP's unit of analysis is at the state level, we originally developed the CAPE model to consider a state-wide ecosystem. For example, at the level of capacity, is state funding for CS education provided to all school districts by formula (meaning "baked into" the formula funding from the state) or does it require individual districts to apply for special, short term grants? This has equity implications because most small or rural districts don't have the bandwidth to apply for funding to support a program that may only have 1 teacher at 1 high school initially. This creates inequities that favor large, multi-high school districts and an administrative staff who can apply for and manage special grants from the state. That is an example of how equity can be interrogated at the state level. However, it is also possible to use this model at a district or campus level as well. Using the same component of capacity, a district could examine how teacher capacity differs across schools. I know there are many districts here in Texas that offer a whole suite of CS courses at their more affluent schools and none at their less affluent schools. What is the role of the district in ensuring that qualified teachers are available for all of their schools and students? Even individual teachers can use this framework to examine their own CS programs. For example, if a teacher or school has a policy of requiring students to have completed Algebra I before enrolling in a CS course, this can have huge implications for diverse enrollment in CS due to institutional bias in prior advanced math pathways that result in fewer capable black, brown, or low income students having taken Algebra 1 before high school. So, while in theory, students of color may have "access" to CS, they can't really "participate" at the same rate as non-minority students if these policies are actually denying them access upon entry to high school. We presented a paper on this at SIGCSE '20 if you'd like to see the empirical evidence for how this is playing out across Texas. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3328778.3366...

Hi Judi - thank you for going the extra mile and visiting our website. Yes, there are a lot of resources there.

In our most recent national ECEP convening, we asked each state team to prepare a mini-presentation outlining their broadening participation in computing-focused progress over the past year. Responses ranged from passing legislation that is supportive of CS education with an equity focus (Alabama), to the release of an equity guide designed to bring more K-12 administrators into the work of broadening participation in computing (California).

Other areas in which state teams have made progress include:

• The development of pre-service teacher pathways (Co-PIs Anne Leftwich and Leigh Ann DeLyser are leading additional research on pre-service pathways)


• Creating state-level data dashboards, and other collection and dissemination of data such as landscape reports


• Hosting statewide computer science education summits to democratize decision making and build consistent messages around the past, present, and future reality of BPC efforts

Some of our past videos also highlight the progress made in ECEP states too. 

Thank you.  I am excited to check out the equity guide.   Excited to hear about new legislation too.  I'll look for past videos.  

Judi, Thanks for checking out the Equity Guide... hope it's useful for you.  We'd love to hear any feedback.  

Unfortunately, a lot of legislation requiring $$ has not moved forward due to what states have had to deal with due to COVID-19.

Thank you for your feedback Deborah. Since the last ECEP Summit, we've been developing ways to talk about how the 5-Stage model and the CAPE Framework work together. Making this video helped us to be concise.

We also just published this news article on our ECEP Website talking about how the 5-Stage Model of State Change, the CAPE Framework and our revised Theory of Change inform our broadening participation work. 

Thanks for highlighting this Allison. I would encourage any researcher who is exploring ways to connect their work with broader impacts in K-12 to check out the ECEP membership website https://ecepalliance.org/about/alliance-members to connect to ECEP state leaders. These amazing individuals are often doing much more than state level policy work but also teacher professional development, student camps, curriculum development, and BPC research of their own. They are the folks who can serve as Mavens and Connectors, to borrow from Malcolm Gladwell, and who understand the CS landscape well enough to help you find strong partners. Many of the ECEP state leaders are part of RPPs themselves. I also recommend reaching out to the Career and Technology directors at state agencies, even if you aren't in an ECEP state, as computer science is part of CTE in many states. 

Another set of resources geared toward building researcher-practitioner partnerships are the RPPforCS project (of which I am a member of the leadership team), and the National Network of Research-Practice Partnerships. Both of these groups offer resources to support the creation, sustainability, and improvement of partnerships. You can read RPPforCS' latest write-up for the quarterly publication NNERPP | Extra for an overview of our community and the work that we do.

Thanks Stacey ... we're aware of the RPPforCS project, as many of us have RPPforCS grants (and one of our PIs is also on your leadership team).  We have certainly all learned from the RPPforCS project in developing our own projects, which have contributed to ECEP in multiple ways.

Hi Carol!

Equity has been a huge focus of the CS for All Springfield RPP project. One way that we are attending to Access by tracking the rollout of the Professional Development and the project-created lesson plans over time, noticing the schools and classrooms that are we are impacting and even more so noticing those we have yet to reach. As time goes on, I could imagine a future study that looks at the students' subsequent course taking patterns and performance. In the CRōCS project that I'm an evaluator for, their primary focus has been on influencing the student experience through focusing on culturally responsive and equitable pedagogies.

A few other folks and I are doing some work that grew out of a pre-RESPECT workshop to look at equity as a capacity within a research practice partnership, which we posit influences how an RPP team might approach their own equity interventions.

Great video, by the way! 

Love this idea of equity itself being a capacity building characteristic of an RPP - thanks for sharing Stacey.

In addition to what Maureen said below, we also have tried to employ smaller working groups that focus on specific issues (like preservice pathways or community colleges) to help narrow our focus areas. 

We also tend to collaborate across states to present at conferences and publish articles. 

Also, each month in the Zoom meetings, we rotate through and feature states that have new ideas or policies that have been put into place. It's truly an amazing collaboration between states, building and sharing policies, materials, and resources that work to support the broadening of participation in computing.

Thank you for posting your paper about the STEreotypes, Motivation, and Outcomes (STEMO)model. I look forward to a deeper dive in to your paper and the interventions you highlight. We appreciate the feedback on our video, and are certainly happy to talk more about how our efforts align with yours.