Giving Compass' Take:

• Emily Langhorne explains how Digital Pioneers Academy Public Charter School is creating a generation of tech-literate students. 

• How can funders work to increase access to STEM education for disadvantaged students? 

• Learn how increased diversity can help fill the tech talent gap. 

“When I finish writing the statement, that cat will move,” promises Deshaunte’ Goldsmith, a sixth-grader at Digital Pioneers Academy Public Charter School. She presses enter on the keyboard and, sure enough, the animated cat on her screen begins to pace back and forth.

Goldsmith is a member of the founding class at the school knows as DPA, Washington, D.C.’s first computer science-focused middle school. Opened in August, the school is small, serving about 120 sixth-grade students across four classes but has plans to build out to 12th grade. Every day, students take computer science as a part of their core curriculum.

Today, only 40 percent of America’s K-12 schools teach computer programming, and computer science-focused schools like DPA that do not required admissions tests or screen their applicants are rare. Low-income families often lack access to technology, and the racial achievement gap in the tech industry is well documented. Less than 3 percent of Google’s workforce is African American.

“Our mission is very simple,” says Mashea Ashton, DPA’s founder and the head of school. “We want to develop the next generation of innovators. We want our students not just to consume the digital economy, but to be a part of creating it.”

Read the full article about Digital Pioneers Academy Public Charter School by Emily Langhorne at The 74.