New AP curriculum aims to increase access,
participation, and long-term career success for high school
students from communities currently underrepresented in tech – with
Georgia, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania set to pilot
the program during the 2021-2022 school year
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced a $15 million donation
from Amazon Future Engineer to nonprofit Code.org to support the
development and launch of a new equity-minded Advanced Placement
computer science programming curriculum. The new curriculum will
teach students the same tools and concepts as the existing AP
Computer Science A (AP CSA) course, and it will be built
inclusively to take into account the unique cultural perspectives,
interests, and experiences of Black, Latino, Native American
(BLNA), and other minority students. By using a research-backed and
culturally responsive approach to teaching in the curriculum,
Code.org and Amazon Future Engineer hope to increase equitable
access, participation, and achievement in computer science (CS)
among high school students of all backgrounds and encourage more
BLNA students to pursue careers in engineering.
For many students, taking AP CSA is an opportunity to earn a
college credit equal to a first semester college CS course—a
critical step in a student’s CS journey for long-term success. For
example, Black students who take the AP CSA course are seven times
more likely to study CS in college, according to the College Board,
which administers the AP program. However, while Black students
made up 15% of the U.S. student body in 2020, they comprised only
3.5% of exam takers—down from 3.9% in 2019 and largely flat for the
years prior. Additionally, only 14% of the 70,000 students who took
the AP CSA exam in 2020 were from underrepresented racial and
ethnic groups* and only 25% of students identified as female,
according to Code.org.
To make AP CSA more equitable and accessible to all, Code.org
will design the new curriculum to incorporate students’ diverse
interests and experiences into CS concepts. The goal is to empower
students to investigate real-world concerns during class
activities. Additionally, open-ended projects will enable students
to demonstrate mastery of concepts that make no assumptions about
their cultural backgrounds or life experiences. Students will also
develop and model valuable, real-world career skills, such as
conducting code reviews, tracing code segments, reading
documentation, and writing code, with both the user and other
developers in mind. Through firsthand experiences, students will
ultimately be able to envision themselves as capable software
engineers.
“Since its inception, our Amazon Future Engineer program has
worked to ensure more students have the resources and skills they
need to build their best futures," said Jeff Wilke, former CEO
Worldwide Consumer, Amazon. "With our donation to Code.org, we hope
that even more students—from a wider variety of backgrounds—will be
inspired and prepared to pursue computer science in high school,
college, and beyond.”
"We are excited to develop a much-needed AP-level programming
curriculum to inspire, engage, and prepare a more diverse
population of students in high school computer science,” said Hadi
Partovi, CEO and Founder of Code.org. “With our experience of
designing CS curricula that break records in student participation
and diversity, we are confident of the curriculum’s potential
impact, and we are grateful for Amazon’s generous support to make
it possible.”
State education leaders in Georgia, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma,
and Pennsylvania have pledged to expand AP CSA during the 2021-2022
school year. Code.org will supply the curriculum and professional
development workshops needed to offer the curriculum to all
participating schools, ensuring all interested students will have a
trained teacher to prepare them for the year-end exam administered
by the College Board. Additionally, each state has committed to
requiring all of its high schools in their states to offer computer
science. Teachers and others interested in the program can sign up
to receive news and updates as the curriculum development
progresses. Code.org will make the new AP CSA curriculum available
for all schools nationwide for the 2022-2023 school year.
“The Georgia Department of Education is committed to
transforming computer science education from an elective available
for a few students, to a foundational educational discipline
accessible to all,” said Richard Woods, Georgia State School
Superintendent. “This new AP Computer Science A curriculum will be
designed to inspire, support, and prepare students from all
backgrounds who want to pursue a CS path.”
In addition to working with states, Code.org is forming both an
Education Advisory Council—composed of representatives from
nonprofits, colleges, and universities, including Historically
Black Colleges and Universities—and an Industry Advisory Council
with representatives from a variety of employers. These councils
will provide feedback in the development process to ensure the new
AP CSA curriculum best prepares students for the next step in their
education and careers.
The $15 million donation from Amazon Future Engineer, paid over
three years, will also help Code.org enhance student awareness
around academic and career pathways in computer science. The
nonprofit will also use the funding to provide tools to help
students succeed in college-level computer science classes and
beyond. Amazon Future Engineer is Amazon’s signature CS program
intended to inspire and educate students from underserved
communities and groups currently underrepresented in tech to pursue
careers in computer science. In addition, AWS is the strategic
cloud solution that powers the Code.org platform for this new
curriculum and other offerings like Hour of Code tutorials,
ensuring millions of students across the world can learn
uninterrupted using advance, secure cloud computing
technologies.
Amazon’s partnership with Code.org is only one part of the
company’s ongoing work to support education and racial equality
initiatives in communities across the country. Recently, the
company donated $10 million to organizations that are working to
bring about social justice and improve the lives of Black and
African Americans. Recipients are selected with the help of
Amazon's Black Employee Network (BEN) and include groups focused on
fighting systemic racism through the legal system as well as those
dedicated to expanding educational and economic opportunity for
Black communities. Amazon followed its donation with an employee
match program that garnered an additional $17 million, meaning the
organizations received a total of $27 million from the Amazon
community. In addition, Amazon teamed up with musician Pharrell
Williams, his education equity nonprofit YELLOW, and the Georgia
Institute of Technology last month to announce an ongoing
collaboration called “Your Voice is Power” to encourage middle and
high school students to share their voice about the importance of
racial justice and equity while learning to code new music
remixes.
About Amazon Future Engineer
At Amazon, we believe in the power of computer science to
unleash creativity and unlock human potential. We also know that
while talent and passion is spread across all young people,
opportunity is not. That is why we created Amazon Future Engineer:
our signature computer science education program designed to offer
all young people the chance to build their best future. Amazon
Future Engineer is a childhood to career program, offering
programming that starts with primary school and continues through
secondary into career. Amazon Future Engineer inspires and educates
millions of students globally, including hundreds of thousands of
students in the U.S. each year. Students explore computer science
through school curriculum and project based learning using code to
make music, program robots, and solve problems. Amazon Future
Engineer also awards 100 students each year with four-year, $40,000
scholarships and paid internships at Amazon, and celebrates
teachers with professional development and $25,000 Teacher of the
Year Awards. Amazon Future Engineer is part of Amazon’s $50 million
commitment to STEM and computer science education. The program is
available in the U.S., UK, Canada, and France.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets,
Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and
services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit
amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
*URG or underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, by Code.org’s
definition, refers to students from marginalized racial/ethnic
groups underrepresented in computer science including students who
are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx, Native
American/Alaskan, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. See more at
code.org/diversity.
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