Giving Compass' Take:

• AP Computer Science Principles course is a hands-on class that brings out true ingenuity from students and is growing in popularity. 

• How can more schools adopt this course into their curriculum? 

• Read about this program that aims to address the shortage of computer science educators. 

Seth Reichelson has been teaching Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles at Lake Brantley High School in Orlando, Florida, for three years, and he’s still surprised by the ingenuity the course brings out in his students. “I love seeing what my students design and implement,” he says of the nation’s fastest-growing AP class.

Introduced three years ago, AP Computer Science Principles takes a much more creative, hands-on approach than the AP’s old standby, Computer Science A — with the goal of appealing to a far more diverse array of students.

Students learn everything they would in a programming class, but also gain a deeper knowledge of the computing world, says Reichelson. “For example,” he adds, “they look behind the scenes of applications they use almost every hour of their lives.”

That appeal seems to be catching on.

The number of schools offering the course has jumped from about 2,500 in 2016 to 3,700 in 2017, and more than 76,000 students took the end-of-course exam last May, up from 50,000 in May 2017. But perhaps more important, the College Board, which administers the AP program, credits the curriculum with increasing participation in the Computer Science Principles exam by 70 percent among African-American students, 61 percent among Hispanic students, and 70 percent among female students.

Crystal Furman, director of AP instruction, design and professional development, says College Board staff spent years developing the curriculum to make the new course as successful as possible — and as straightforward for teachers who might not have a strong computer science background.

“CSP is a breadth course, exposing students to all the different related fields: the internet, data analysis, the impact of the computer globally,” Furman says. “The students are gaining a lot of skills in terms of understanding practices, how you write programs, how you use the internet, along with computing devices and how you make things work.

Read the full article about AP computer science courses by Tim Newcomb at The 74