New York City is currently beginning the largest rollout of computer science education in the history of the United States, and one of the largest scaled rollouts of a new academic subject for American public high school students in decades. NYC is incredibly diverse; some estimates suggest that the borough of Queens in the single most pluralistic large city in the history of humanity, with hundreds of nationalities, hundreds of languages, and a remarkable range of SES attending public school together. The “Computer Science for All” (CS4All) initiative provides an incredible opportunity to evaluate the affordances and impact of K-12 CS curricula and pedagogies in highly diverse settings at a scale rarely possible. 

In CS-NYCE (NSF #1645700) PIs Matthew Berland, Nathan Holbert, Betsy DiSalvo, and Mike Tissenbaum are studying imminent, core questions around the design and implementation of CS curricula in diverse NYC communities. Having real research findings on when, how, why, and what kind of initial deployments are working for underserved students will, we believe, change that conversation to be more equitable for the hundreds of thousands of students affected in NYC, and, with the new announcement of CS4All by Pres. Obama, around the USA.