Oct 19, 2021
By CSforALL
NEW YORK CITY, NY, OCTOBER 19, 2021—Following an unprecedented year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the virtual 2021 CSforAll Summit announces and lifts up 191 CSforALL Commitments from 115 organizations made by its member community, including the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
During this two-day event, the CSforALL community will celebrate the incredible progress organizations continue to make in advancing the K-12 computer science education systems in the United States.
The fifth annual CSforALL Summit highlights members and non-members building on 2020’s major themes, including increasing equity and access among underrepresented groups, building capacity, raising awareness, and cultivating the ecosystem that will empower local communities to build successful computer science education systems for ALL students. This year’s event features keynote speaker Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Sociologist and Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University;opening ceremony speaker Brandon Tory, Artist and CEO at FORMLESS and Staff Engineer at Google A.I.
#CSforALL commitments are new, specific, and measurable actions aimed at advancing the goal of rigorous and inclusive computer science education for all U.S. youth, and are designed to grow support and momentum for a sustainable K-12 computer science education system in and out of school. Notably, 75 organizations are prior CSforAll commitment-makers and 20 of those have made annual commitments since 2017. Overall, the CSforALL community made an extraordinary 941 commitments between 2017 and 2021. The commitments detailed below include initiatives in all 50 states, nationwide commitments, and a record 14 commitments with an international focus.
Highlights of today’s major announcements include:
● 73 commitments from 60 organizations, including Tableau, Wix Education, Kiss Institute for Practical Robotics, and Code.org, center on increasing equitable access and outcomes for computer science learners.
● 70 commitments from organizations like EIE, Museum of Science, Game Changineer, and NCWIT pledged to raise awareness across underrepresented minority groups, women and girls, and within rural communities.
● 14 college and university programs, including the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Computing and UCLA CS Equity Project; nine school districts, including Juab School District in Utah, and Riverside Unified School District in California; five local/regional education agencies, including the Hawaii State Department of Education and Sacramento County Office of Education; and five individual schools committed to increasing equitable access, building capacity and awareness, and racial equity.
● 7 industry and corporate partners, including Microsoft Philanthropies’ TEALS program, SAS, and Schenker Consulting Group, will work with schools and districts to develop computer science programs and curricula, impacting more than one million students across the U.S.
● 14 commitments focused on family engagement and pre-service teacher preparation, which will create an ecosystem of support for computer science learners.
● CS is Elementary, in collaboration with its 40 state partners and schools and districts, shared commitments for all 50 states and Washington D.C. to seek First Mover CS is Elementary computer science goals–which include reach and hours of instruction–from at least 1,000 elementary schools, serving more than 500,000 students.
● The CPB-PBS Ready To Learn Initiative, in partnership with University of Florida’s Creative Technology Research Lab, will reach 13 million families nationwide by September 2025 by sharing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) content production guidelines with creators and educators.
A full list of the new announcements is detailed below and is available by state and region here.
CSforALL is the national hub of the computer science for all movement with a mission to make high-quality computer science an integral part of K-12 education in the United States. It connects providers, schools and districts, funders, and researchers working toward the goal of providing quality CS education to every child in the United States, and engage with diverse stakeholders leading computer science initiatives across the nation to support and facilitate implementation of rigorous, inclusive and sustainable computer science.
For more speaker and agenda information, please visit: https://www.summit.csforall.org/