BootUp PD Has Joined the National Computer Science for All Movement for Its Fifth Year of Commitments

OREM, UTAH, OCTOBER 19, 2021 — Following an unprecedented year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, today’s virtual 2021 CSforAll Summit announces and lifts up 191 CSforALL Commitments from 115 organizations made by our member community. 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 Summit highlights CSforALL 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.

BootUp PD 2021 commits to advance CS education in underrepresented groups, increase equitable access, and raise awareness of CS education through the following commitments:

• Bringing computer science education and teacher professional development to 40 schools across the Los Angeles Unified School District, impacting over 300 teachers and more than 14,000 students by the end of 2022 school year.
• Developing 30 additional free interest-driven coding project examples and lessons that encourage creativity through project-based coding
• With support from NCWIT, BootUp commits to amplifying and sharing young female student voices through digital storytelling and launching a new video series - For Girls by Girls. The series will highlight young female students' experiences with computer science, computational thinking, and applications of computer science related to their daily lives, career goals, and passions.

A full list of the new announcements is detailed below and is available by state and region here.

This week, the 2021 CSforALL Summit will convene hundreds of individuals and more than 70 speakers from around the country to celebrate progress and collaborate on ideas to make CS education even more transformative, inclusive, and essential to all students. Notable speakers include:

• Dr. Marvin D. Carr, Director, Center for Racial Equity at Walmart Founded dation
• Mark Cuban, Entrepreneur, Investor, Author, Television Personality, and Philanthropist
• Martha Dalton, Education Reporter, 90.1 WABE
• Meka Egwuekwe, Executive Director, Code Crew
• Katy Knight, Executive Director, President, Siegel Family Endowment
• Saskia Leggett, Education Programs Lead, Wix Education
• Anna Lytical, Coding Drag Queen, Google
• Kate Maloney, ​​Executive Director, Infosys Foundation USA
• Carrie Anne Philbin MBE, Director of Educator Support, Raspberry Pi Foundation
• Allison Scott, CEO, Kapor
• Arana Shapiro, Managing Director and Chief Learning Officer, Games for Change
• Anupama Shekhar, ​​Director, Equitable Computer Science, Microsoft Philanthropies TEALS
• Bukola Somide, Founder/CEO Innovant Technologies LLC
• Ron Summers, Executive Director, CS Education at NYC Department of Education
• Clark M. Merkley, Executive Director, BootUp Professional Development

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. We connect 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 information: www.csforall.org Twitter: @CSforALL

About BootUp Professional Development: BootUp PD is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit with experience implementing district-wide elementary computer science initiatives that focus on creativity and problem-solving. Since 2015, BootUp has worked with 475 elementary schools in fifteen states, directly impacting over 1,000 educators and 150,000 students. BootUp prepares teachers to facilitate open-ended coding projects in the free platforms Scratch and ScratchJr that are not only project-based, but also personally meaningful. Students pick something that is interesting to them and find a way to explore that interest with code through design, music, art, animation, games, or stories. For more information: www.bootuppd.org Twitter: @BootUpPD

The 2021 CSforALL Commitments Showcase will be virtually on October 19–20. For more speaker and agenda information, please visit: https://www.summit.csforall.org/