Equity in the Who, How and What of Computer Science Education: K12 School District Conceptualizations of Equity in 'CS for All' Initiatives

Abstract

Equity is arguably an agreed upon value within the Computer Science education (CSed) community, and perhaps even more so within efforts to universalize access to CSed within K12 settings through emerging ‘CS for All’ initiatives. However, stakeholders often mean different things when referring to equity, with important implications for what CS teaching and learning looks like in schools. In this paper, we explore the question of how K12 school district actors’ conceptualizations of equity manifest within their planning and implementation of district-wide CSed initiatives. Based on a research-practice partnership aimed at supporting and researching district-wide CSed initiatives, data presented - interviews with district faculty, district planning documents, meeting transcripts and field observations - were drawn from five participating school districts as they made decisions and enacted activities over 11 months in areas including vision-setting, curriculum, professional development, leadership efforts and use of formative data about implementation. Analyzing these data through equity frameworks found in CSed literature, we highlight three distinct but interconnected ways that district actors conceptualized equity within their CSed initiatives: (1) equity in who Computer Science is for, (2) equity in how Computer Science is taught, and (3) equity in what Computer Science is taught. Data show that these varied conceptualizations resulted in different kinds of decisions about CSed in districts. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of their relevance to equity-oriented CS education researchers, and what lessons they hold for policy-makers and education leaders engaged in their own efforts to support equitable computer science education.

Full text

Equity in the Who, How and What of Computer
Science Education: K12 School District
Conceptualizations of Equity in ‘CS for All’
Initiatives
Rafi Santo
CSforALL
New York, USA
rafi@csforall.org
Leigh Ann DeLyser
CSforALL
New York, USA
leighann@csforall.org
June Ahn
UC-Irvine
Irvine, USA
junea@uci.edu
Anthony Pellicone
UW-Madison
Madison, USA
apellicone@gmail.com
Julia Aguiar
CSforALL
New York, USA
julia@csforall.org
Stephanie Wortel-London
CSforALL
New York, USA
stephanie@csforall.org
Abstract—Equity is arguably an agreed upon value within the
Computer Science education (CSed) community, and perhaps
even more so within efforts to universalize access to CSed within
K12 settings through emerging ‘CS for All’ initiatives. However,
stakeholders often mean different things when referring to equity,
with important implications for what CS teaching and learning
looks like in schools. In this paper, we explore the question of how
K12 school district actors’ conceptualizations of equity manifest
within their planning and implementation of district-wide CSed
initiatives. Based on a research-practice partnership aimed at
supporting and researching district-wide CSed initiatives, data
presented - interviews with district faculty, district planning doc-
uments, meeting transcripts and field observations - were drawn
from five participating school districts as they made decisions and
enacted activities over 11 months in areas including vision-setting,
curriculum, professional development, leadership efforts and use
of formative data about implementation. Analyzing these data
through equity frameworks found in CSed literature, we high-
light three distinct but interconnected ways that district actors
conceptualized equity within their CSed initiatives: (1) equity
in who Computer Science is for, (2) equity in how Computer
Science is taught, and (3) equity in what Computer Science is
taught. Data show that these varied conceptualizations resulted
in different kinds of decisions about CSed in districts. We discuss
the implications of these findings in terms of their relevance to
equity-oriented CS education researchers, and what lessons they
hold for policy-makers and education leaders engaged in their
own efforts to support equitable computer science education.
Index Terms—Equity, district decision making, policy imple-
mentation, K12 CSed, CS for All
I. INTRODUCTION
Equity is arguably an agreed upon value within the Com-
puter Science education (CSed) community, and perhaps even
more so within efforts to universalize access to CSed within
K12 settings through emerging ‘CS for All’ initiatives. How-
ever, stakeholders often mean different things when referring
to equity, with important implications for what CS teach-
ing and learning looks like in schools. For example, equity
understood as equal treatment of all students, the definition
offered in the landmark education case Brown vs. Board of
Education [1], may have overlaps with an understanding of
equity as the righting of historical social injustices, but these
nuanced differences can easily manifest distinct educational
approaches and policies. How equity is conceptualized matters
when the rubber hits the road of educational practice. In
what are still quite nascent efforts to bring computer science
into K12 schools, it’s important to understand how varied
understandings of equity might play out on the ground. In
doing so, the field may be able to better consider where and
how certain dimensions of equity are being effectively met by
current efforts, and where improvement is still needed.
Researchers, practitioners and policymakers focused on K12
computer science education voice a number of equity-related
themes. Foremost are those of broadening participation [2]
and goals of making computer science accessible for all
[3]–[5], the former focusing on addressing issues of under-
represented groups in the STEM workforce, and the latter
centering on ensuring universal access to CSed more generally.
Related to these are pedagogically-focused discussions of what
equitable teaching and learning look like for various groups,
such as pedagogies appropriate for those with disabilities,
women, ESL students, or black and brown communities [6]–
[11]. Finally, broader societal acknowledgement of the role of
technology platforms themselves as linked to production of
social inequities has led some advocates to call for computer
science curricula that actively teach about the social impacts
of computing [12], [13]).
But what do these ideas mean on the ground, in key
contexts - K12 school districts - that are currently attempting
to institutionalize CS education? In this paper, we explore the
question of how K12 school district actors’ conceptualizations
of equity manifest within their planning and implementation
of district-wide CSed initiatives. Data presented was collected
as part of a research practice partnership [14] focused on
supporting district-wide CSed initiatives, and includes qualita-
tive data - interviews with district faculty, meeting transcripts,
district planning documents and field observations of planning978-1-7281-0821-6/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

meetings - drawn from five participating school districts.
Data focused on capturing the deliberations, decisions and
activities that district teams and broader faculty within asso-
ciated districts engaged in around a number of areas related
to developing comprehensive computer science initiatives for
their schools - leadership efforts, vision-setting, curriculum
and materials, professional learning and development and
utilization of improvement data to inform decision-making.
Analyzing these data through existing equity frameworks
found in CS literature noted above, our findings speak to
three distinct but interconnected ways that district actors
conceptualized equity within their CSed initiatives: (1) equity
in who Computer Science is for, (2) equity in how Computer
Science is taught, and (3) equity in what Computer Science is
taught. Data show that these varied conceptualizations resulted
in different kinds of decisions about what CSed would look
like in their districts. We discuss the implications of these
findings in terms of their relevance to equity-oriented CS
education researchers, and what lessons they hold for policy-
makers and education leaders engaged in their own efforts to
support equitable computer science education.
II. EQUITY IN THE CONTEXT OF K12 COMPUTER SCIENCE
EDU CATI ON
In K12 computer science education there are a variety of
equity-oriented discourses, each emphasizing different goals
and relationships to the notion of equity. In this section, we
highlight some of the most prominent, with an aim to establish
that there is not a single, agreed upon understanding of
equitable computer science education, and therefore a variety
of equity-related goals that might be pursued by districts
attempting to bring computer science to their schools.
Perhaps the most prominent notion of equity in CS edu-
cation is encapsulated in the ‘for all’ moniker that’s been
linked to the broader movement to establish universal access to
CS learning experiences [3]–[5]. ‘For all’ has been used both
as a naming convention as well as ‘rallying cry’ of various
local and national initiatives and organizations dedicated to
expanding access to CSed within K12 contexts (e.g. CS4TX,
CS for All Teachers, CS4All NYC), acting a shorthand for
the goal of establishing equity in access for all learners
regardless of their backgrounds in terms of gender, race,
ability, socioeconomic status, and other factors.
Related to this is the frame of ‘broadening participation’,
adopted as the primary equity-orientation of the National Sci-
ence Foundation [2], which focuses on addressing the lack of
under-represented groups within STEM careers and industries
including women, minorities and persons with disabilities.
In centering on issues of under-representation specifically,
the broadening participation frame still focuses on issues of
access, but can be seen as somewhat distinct from the ‘for all’
frame in that it actively highlights and acknowledges historical
and contemporary realities of exclusion of particular groups
from participation in computing culture.
For others concerned with access, having under-represented
groups participate in CSed focuses less on the problem of a
lack of diversity within computing industries in-and-of itself,
and more on issues of economic inequality [15], [16]. Es-
sentially, this perspective sees well-paying jobs in computing
as ladders of economic opportunity for low-income groups
specifically, which often, though not always, are the same
groups that are underrepresented in computing professions.
This focus on the relationship between computing, equity and
jobs emphasizes economic mobility rather than representation,
viewing computing careers as a mechanism for poverty alle-
viation for non-dominant populations.
Equity orientations focused on access to CS learning are
linked to those concerned with questions of appropriate ped-
agogies for particular groups. For example, advocates of
accessibility for students with special needs in computer
science education [6], [17] do not simply argue that diverse
learners should be present in CS classes, but that these classes,
and associated instructional technologies, must be taught and
designed in ways that are inclusive; grounded in principles of
universal design for learning [18]. Similarly, those focused on
teaching black and brown students, ESL students and those
from indigenous communities see equitable CS education as
requiring shifts in teaching to methods that are culturally
and linguistically relevant, responsive and sustaining [7]–[11].
These viewpoints see that how CS is taught is inextricably
linked to who has access to it.
Finally, preparing students to understand the social impacts
of computing represents an equity-oriented view of computer
science education learning goals. This conception of equity
focuses on learners themselves grappling with varied forms of
social inequality and ethics issues associated with computing
technologies and platforms such as those related to bias,
privacy, labor exploitation or erosion of democracy [13]. For
example, the K12 Computer Science Framework includes
as one of five central conceptual areas one related social
impacts of computing, highlighting learning goals such as “An
informed and responsible person should understand the social
implications of the digital world, including equity and access
to computing.” and “design and use of computing technologies
and artifacts can improve, worsen, or maintain inequitable
access to information and opportunities” [12]. It also high-
lights as a central practice “fostering an inclusive computing
culture”, which includes “address[ing] bias in interactions,
product design, and development methods”. Such concerns
around ethics and social impacts acknowledge the emergent
realities of, for example, bias in algorithms [19], [20] and
adverse effects of networked technologies on democracy and
civil society [21], [22].
III. SCHOOL DISTRICTS AS CON TE XTS FOR POLICY
IMPLEMENTATION IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION
The differing notions of equity noted above might seem
somewhat abstract, even philosophical. But we see importance
in taking such differences seriously in the context of the
larger project of bringing computer science education into
K12 schools, since bringing to CSed to scale can mean
that slightly different understandings around equity might

have cascading effects within large, distributed and complex
institutional systems that school districts represent.
Within the policy context of the United States, districts are
a critical unit of change. Education reform has historically
been largely decentralized in this country, with both state and
local district-level actors playing a large role in determining
the shape of education systems. Districts specifically play
central roles in deciding questions of curriculum and assess-
ment, graduation requirements, and professional development,
among other things. And while some scholars and promoters
of universal computer science education have noted that under-
standing policy implementation will be key to achieving their
goals [23], [24], there are few studies that aim to understand
the relationship between policy implementation and issues of
equity (see [25], [26] for emerging work in this area), and
none that look at how district actors’ views concerning equity
play out within decision-making about instruction.
This study draws on conceptual tools from a larger literature
on policy implementation within districts concerned with how
decisions are made and how they contribute to, or detract from,
the development of coherent instructional systems [27]–[29].
This framework focuses on the importance of looking across
many elements of instructional systems - including guiding
vision, learning goals, guiding pedagogies, curriculum, pro-
fessional development, leadership practices and organizational
routines - in order to create alignment across these elements.
For example, this view of instructional coherence holds that
professional development opportunities should build teaching
capacity in ways that align with the guiding pedagogy of a
district, selected curricula should align with learning goals,
and organizational routines should support the process of
coordinating and aligning such elements of an instructional
system.
In the context of understanding issues of equity, frameworks
that aim to understand policy implementation in districts are
useful in that they expand the view from solely looking at
classroom contexts, aiming to understand the broader organi-
zational systems that classrooms and teachers are situated in.
Additionally, the particular framework of instructional systems
coherence focuses on understanding linkages between broad
goals and values held by actors within a system and how they
are manifest in decision-making about various aspects of an
instructional system that mediate equity.
In this paper, we aim to explicitly center on decision-making
about instructional systems around CS education within dis-
tricts, and in particular look at decisions that focus on issues of
equity, as seen through the various orientations towards equity
laid out in the prior section.
IV. MET HO DS , DATA SOUR CE S AN D ANALYTI C APP ROAC H
This paper is based on data collected as part of a research
practice partnership (RPP) [14] focused on supporting K12
district level computer science initiative planning and imple-
mentation. The RPP includes a research team along with a
partner non-profit organization that supports CS education na-
tionally. Together, the project supported sixteen district teams
across urban, suburban and rural districts in a geographically
diverse region of the mid-Atlantic United States. Districts were
supported in efforts to design coherent CS implementation
plans that addressed issues of curriculum, leadership, pro-
fessional learning, vision-setting and data-informed decision-
making around CS education in their contexts. They were
provided with planning frameworks, work time, financial reim-
bursement for portions of team planning time and consultation
with the RPP team. District teams were convened during a
series of strategic planning workshops between January 2018
and January 2019, and a subset participated in virtual cross-
district and one-on-one calls with the RPP team. In these
contexts, district teams engaged in planning around their initia-
tives, shared ongoing work with one another, gave and received
feedback on proposed implementation strategies, and worked
with the RPP team to develop approaches for collecting and
analyzing district improvement data. Each district team ranged
from six to twelve members, and districts were selected along
a number attributes, including their size, the demographic
makeup of their students, their CSed offerings coming into
the project, and their desire to participate in the RPP. All were
relatively small districts, with the smallest serving under 1,000
students and the largest serving just over 5,000.
Data collection with districts included initial applications
and interviews with district leaders, principals and faculty to
understand incoming contexts, field-notes and district created
artifacts from RPP-led workshops where teams developed
implementation plans, and transcripts of conversations from a
wide variety of meetings between the RPP and district teams
that took place throughout the project. Altogether, data col-
lected on district planning and decision-making encompassed
over one hundred pages of written notes, approximately 20
hours of recorded meetings and interviews, an additional 130
hours of meetings with recorded field notes, and dozens of
district created documents related to their CSed initiatives
including team meeting notes, internal guidance documents
around their initiatives’ goals and underlying values, budget
plans, proposals for external funding, data collection plans, and
information that district teams gathered for planning purposes
about current CS activities in their schools. We include data
related to five focal districts in this analysis, using pseudonyms
for each.
The focal question we aim to address in this paper is: How
do school district actors’ conceptualizations of equity manifest
within their planning and implementation of K12, district-wide
computer science education initiatives? In order to answer
this question, three members of the research team first coded
qualitative data using a coding scheme developed based on
an existing theoretical framework around district decision-
making and instructional systems [28], [29]. One aspect of the
codebook focused on decision-making processes and enacted
activities (e.g. a goal being set, a potential activity proposed,
an action being carried out, etc.) and another focused on what
aspect of the instructional system a decision or activity related
to (e.g. leadership, curriculum and instructional materials,
professional learning, etc.). Throughout, we also coded for

any instances that either implicitly or explicitly focused on
addressing equity concerns. In a second round of analysis, we
returned to these data that specifically focused on equity and
further analyzed them through existing definitions of equitable
computer science education, including the noted frames of
broadening participation [2], reaching all students [3]–[5],
culturally and linguistically responsive computing pedagogies
[7]–[11], addressing special needs students [6], ethics and
social impacts in computer science education [12], [13], and
addressing economic inequality through supporting access to
technical professions [15], [16]. We aimed to surface data on
both explicit instances of district participants or teams includ-
ing rationales or values related to various conceptualizations
of equity in CS education, and then also direct actions and
activities that linked to and could be understood as reflective
of those values.
V. FINDINGS
In looking across the plans and implementation activities in
the districts we studied, along with the rationales provided
for these decisions, our analysis showed three broad and
interrelated ways of conceptualizing equity within district-
level computer science education initiatives: (1) equity in who
computer science is for, (2) equity in how computer science
is taught, and (3) equity in what computer science is taught.
A. Equity in who Computer Science is for
Aligning with prevalent rationales of bringing computer
science to all K12 students, one conception of equity evident
in the data centered on addressing equity issues around who
is taught computer science. In Warren Central School Dis-
trict (WCSD), the idea of equitable participation was present
in their initial application to participate in the partnership,
where they noted that an important existing district goal is
student equity. The application stated this as an intention
for their forthcoming CSed initiative, stating that “creating
assured experiences for all students, regardless of their teacher,
socioeconomic status, native language or disability status is a
high priority.”
Similarly, Greenwood Unified School District (GUSD), in
their district mission and vision for their CSed initiative stated
that “Every GUSD student across race, class, gender, language,
and ability level, will creatively and critically engage in repre-
senting and solving problems using computational and systems
thinking.” Finally, during one of the project’s cross-district
community calls, an assistant superintendent from Springfield
Central School District (SCSD), shared the following about
internal district discussions around the development of their
CSed initiative:
“We looked at the equity part of this, which was a
huge part of our process. We do want all the students
to be involved in this. So, we want our special ed
students and especially in some cases, both genders,
girls and boys being involved and taking advantage
of those kinds of things.”
-Juan, SCSD assistant superintendent, cross-district
call May 10th, 2018
Across these three examples, we see conceptions of equity
that focus largely on who has access to CSed, both through
the lens of universal access (as WCSD stated, “assured expe-
riences for all students”) that align with the broader ‘for all’
frame, and then also specifically noting sub-groups that have
been traditionally underrepresented along lines of gender, race,
socioeconomic status, language, and special needs, aligning
with a ‘broadening participation’ frame.
While all of the above represent what might be considered
fairly straightforward commitments to equitable learning, it is
important to look with more specificity at how districts aimed
to mobilize these equity commitments around who is accessing
computer science within the context of the decisions they made
in their implementations.
At one of the strategic planning workshops facilitated by
the RPP team, one activity focused on helping participants
link their rationales around CSed to implications for how they
planned to carry out implementation in their districts. In this
activity, a teacher and assistant superintendent from WCSD
worked with one rationale for CSed they had come up with
during the activity, that CSed “cultivates equal opportunities
for all students in a K12 setting and in the post-secondary
world”. In coming up with implications of this rationale
for their initiative, Warren Central School District listed the
following activities in a planning document created on January
23, 2018:
•“[Create] assured experiences at each grade level k-9
•Track enrollment metrics
•Active promotion of CS opportunities to underrepresented
groups
•Eliminate or minimize prerequisites
•Limiting scheduling barriers
•Intentional cultivating of the mindset of staff that all can
and should participate in CSed”
All of the above represent various ideas that WCSD leader-
ship and faculty considered as important for reaching their goal
of equitable CSed access to all students, though the picture of
how they aimed to translate this commitment into practice
came into sharpest relief later in their initiative’s development
as they worked to define their initiative’s specific learning
objectives in the Spring of 2018.
The definition of computer science learning goals within
WCSD was unique - it was intentionally broad, and inclusive
of different approaches to CSed, as well as some elements
such as digital citizenship and media arts which have variable
overlaps, depending on how they are enacted, with learning
goals found in CSed guidance documents like the K12 CS
Framework. The Warren team shared their definition with us
in the context of a document they were using to conduct a
curricular audit. (see Figure 1).
At the top of the document they included a broad definition
of computer science - “the study of computers and ALL the
phenomena that arise around them”, one offered by noted com-
puter scientist Herb Simon and shared with the participating

Fig. 1. A screenshot from Warren’s curricular audit document, showcasing
their five part definition of computer science learning goals.
districts in the context of one of the RPP’s strategic planning
meetings. Below that, they outline various ‘subcomponents’
and what would get taught in WCSD within the context of their
computer science initiative, including ”digital citizenship”,
“digital literacy”, “information technology”, “media arts” and
“programming/coding”.
In discussions about it, Warren’s leadership framed the
broad nature of their definition of CS as something that
would support teacher buy-in, and, in- turn, support equitable
learning opportunities for students. Molly, the district assistant
superintendent, mentioned in an initial interview that Warren’s
newer teachers are largely open to teaching various forms of
CSed - both direct computer science activities (for example,
Hour of Code) as well as CS integration into existing curricula.
However, she stated that older teachers see computer science
as limited to coding, and therefore a new skill that they must
learn themselves in order to teach, as well as a competing
priority in their lesson plans. During a call with our research
team, she explained Warrens broad operationalization of com-
puter science within their curricular audit this way:
“I think some teachers are very comfortable with
[CSed] and with teaching any form of computer
science and some arent, which could account for
why students have different experiences depending
on who the teacher is. Part of this audit, maybe
its expanded beyond curriculum to instruction to
say how much of your instruction currently has
some form of computer science and what is your
efficacy towards those skills, using those tools as
a professional and implementing them into your
curriculum instruction assessment.”
-Molly, WCSD assistant superintendent, cross-
district call, April, 18, 2018
The move for broad definitions of CS is seen both as a
possible way to secure greater teacher buy-in by highlighting
integration points that do not require specialized coding skills
or pushing out existing content, but is also a way to improve
equity, since a broader definition means more places that it
might sit in a curriculum - not just in stand-alone programming
classes that fewer students in the district are exposed to. In this
case there is an interdependence between several elements of
the instructional system at play in a decision-making process:
how CS learning goals are defined, teacher buy-in, what
teachers need to know about CSed, and equitable access to
CS learning opportunities. Through a definition of CS learning
goals that was broader than coding, district leadership changed
the requisite teacher knowledge and thus, in theory, faculty
buy-in, which would then mean a greater possibility of an
initiative to have CS instruction reach all students.
This example highlights how complex decision-making can
be when the ‘rubber hits the road’ concerning a fairly straight-
forward and common conceptualization around equity in CSed
- who gets access to computer science learning experiences.
The equity goal around reaching all students rippled through
a number of interrelated elements that were the focus within
the planning and implementation process, so much so that
it mediated that ways that district leadership defined what
learning outcomes should be specified to guide the initiative’s
curricular approach and attendant professional learning efforts.
B. Equity in how Computer Science is Taught
The second broad conceptualization of equity found in the
data relates to how computer science is taught. This conceptu-
alization of equity centered not simply on who gets taught CS,
but the modes of pedagogy utilized within classrooms. Though
it often co-occurred with equity commitments around who
had access to CS learning opportunities, this conceptualization
added an additional dimension of what constitutes equitable
access to include the ways that different curricula, tools and
guiding pedagogies did, or did not, result in equitable learning
for different groups of students.
Various decisions made by the Greenwood Central School
District (GCSD) illustrate what this conceptualization of eq-
uity looked like in practice. In early goal-setting work by
GCSD’s team, they set as one goal to find curricula that is
culturally and linguistically responsive and relevant to the
identities of historically underrepresented and marginalized
groups, indexing an orientation towards culturally and linguis-
tically relevant pedagogies.
Throughout the project, GCSD faculty participating in CSed
planning actively noted disparities in participation vis-a-vis
their CSed offerings at the high school level. During a cross
district call, Melissa, a technology integration specialist, noted
the existence of high school courses in Advanced Placement
CS, non-AP CS, and Computer-aided Design (CAD), stating
that:
“...we have a lot of strong offerings. But we’re not
reaching a really broad or diverse population of
students. [...] The kids who sign up for these classes
are the same kids taking all of those classes.”
- Melissa, Technology Integration Specialist, GCSD,
March 13th, 2018
In order to address this, the curriculum committee within the
broader GCSD CS planning team began exploring the possibil-
ities of working with their high school teachers to develop new
courses that would be interdisciplinary and integrate computer
science practices, setting aside lesson planning days for the
coming summer to support integrated course development.
They noted possible courses in arts, business, media arts and
English language arts that incorporated CS with the rationale
that these would appeal to a broader range of students, and not
just enroll “the same kids” that were already taking advantage

of existing electives explicitly framed as being about computer
science.
Additionally, during the summer of 2018, GCSD sent one
of their high school teachers to an external professional
development called Tapestry, which focused on “shar[ing]
strategies, research-based practices, and field-tested good ideas
for teaching high school computer science in a way that
reaches all students regardless of sex, race or ethnicity”, a
manifestation of their commitment to developing the capacity
of teachers to engage in CS pedagogies relevant to a broad
range students coming from diverse backgrounds.
While an approach to equity in CS education that focuses
on how CS is taught is deeply linked to the question of who it
is taught to, the decisions noted above that GCSD made based
on this commitment show that there are important implications
in practice for this particular definition of equity in CSed.
Rather than simply assuming that they needed to get computer
science to more students, faculty were attending to the very
make-up of those learning opportunities. They made decisions
about the kinds of pedagogies they employed, understanding
that developing culturally relevant teaching strategies for CS
would be appropriate for students from diverse cultural and
linguistic backgrounds. They invested in developing the ca-
pacity of their educators to teach CS in way that attended to
student backgrounds. And critically, they re-thought how CS
learning opportunities were framed and their purposes - in de-
centering from only offering electives explicitly focused on CS
and developing interdisciplinary courses, they positioned new
learning opportunities not solely as means to learn computer
science for its own sake, but as ways to engage with other
disciplines and student interests such as arts, humanities and
business. In doing so, they offer an example of what decisions
might be made at the district level when conceptualizing equity
as a question of how CS is taught.
C. Equity in what Computer Science is taught
The final conceptualization of equity in CS education
present in district planning and decision-making concerned
ensuring equity in what computer science is taught. Where the
two previous conceptualizations focused on who gets taught
and how teaching is practiced, this commitment focused on
what kinds of skills, practices and learning outcomes should
be part of CS curriculum in order to meet equity goals.
In developing their vision for why they wanted to bring
CS to their students and the projected impacts associated with
CSed, a number of districts included equity-oriented values
that would substantively impact curricular learning goals. For
example, in Charlesville Central School District, the team
included that “as a marginalized/disadvantaged community,
our students need to have opportunities to explore the work
and career skills that flow from computer science” (their
emphasis), centering on professional opportunity and mobility
that might address issues of economic inequality facing their
students. At the same time, they also included in their vision
statement that teaching computer science would help students
to be aware and wary of “big institutions - government,
media, corporations”, though did not specify this in more
detail in terms of how it might achieve this. However, it is
not hard to imagine how both of these values might lead
to specific curricular decisions. For example, in focusing on
economic mobility and career opportunity for disadvantaged
students, CCSD might aim to develop an internship program
that linked their older students to early work experiences in
local technology companies.
In Starling Central School District’s planning documents
we see a more direct link between equity values and what CS
curricula might teach. In their values and rationales for bring-
ing CSed to their district, they stated that they aimed to teach
CS in order to help students “critique and address structures of
power and inequality” and “think critically about technological
platforms”. In thinking through what these values implied for
what their instruction would look like, they included adding
content to their curriculum that “specifically explored issues of
who possesses power and why”, and “specifically looks at the
inequality of the technological world, who is making decisions
and why, and how to address the power imbalance”.
A final example of the how commitments to equity can be
indexed in district decisions around what gets taught within
CS courses can be seen in Warren CSD’s decision that their
CS initiative’s learning goals must include keyboarding skills
in order to achieve equitable CS learning. During a July 2018
planning workshop, as the team discussed the development
of a K12 scope and sequence of learning goals for their CSed
initiative, they discussed the reality that many of their students
didnt have opportunities to develop fundamental typing skills
that are necessary for engaging in CS, with one team member
noting that “home access [to computers] isnt there for 40% of
[our] kids”.
Keyboarding - a skill that is more often the subject of
derision by CS advocates due to experiences of having to
correct misconceptions around ‘what counts as CS’ - is seen
very differently here by a cross-level district team, inclusive
of teachers, specialists and leadership. The group was both
highly attendant to equity issues facing their students while
simultaneously valuing the development of an initiative that
focused on far more advanced computing skills. For them,
their equity-based values for addressing the needs of a diverse
and disadvantaged population of students led to a common
understanding of keyboarding as a necessary prerequisite for
engagement in more advanced computational tasks, and thus
a necessary learning goal to include if the district was going
to achieve equity around CS learning.
The primary examples shared in this section highlight the
ways that commitments to equity manifest in variety of ways
when it comes to what is included within CSed curricula
within districts. On the one hand, Starling’s equity orientation
led to a decision to include learning goals around the social
impacts of computing including curricula that “specifically
looks at the inequality of the technological world”. In choosing
to include keyboarding skills within the larger scope and
sequence of learning outcomes associated with the larger CSed
initiative, Warren CSD shifted what constituted the ‘what’

of computer science in their district in a way they believed
was necessary in order to achieve equitable participation the
broader computer science learning opportunities they were
planning.
The two examples are also quite distinct from each other
in terms of their equity goals. In the case of Warren CSD,
the decision to include keyboarding can be seen as a decision
around what is taught thats in service of an equity goal around
who is taught. If WCSD was not concerned with its CS
learning opportunities reaching all students - a conception of
equity centered who is taught CS - they may not have needed
to include this shift in what is taught as part of that initiative.
In the case of Starling CSD, the equity goals associated with
teaching about social impacts are not connected to questions
of who their students are, but ostensibly in promoting a more
equitable world by equipping their students with knowledge
about how to critique and change structures of power embed-
ded in technological systems.
VI. DISCUSSION
Guided by both existing notions of equitable computer
science and frameworks around district-level planning and
implementation, this study aimed to shed light on how ideas
about equity play out on the ground. Data highlight three
distinct, but intertwined, broad conceptions of equity in CSed
as they were expressed and enacted in district decision-making
-who is taught computer science, how computer science is
taught, and what computer science is taught. Data highlighted
ways that such commitments translated into practical choices
in areas like curriculum and course development, professional
learning, learning outcomes and broad visions that guided
implementation.
In the data, we see variation in how complex the ‘trans-
lation’ was between conceptions of equity and how these
commitments were put into practice. For example, Greenwood
CSD’s understanding of equity as needing to focus on how
computer science is taught led to one fairly straightforward
decision - sending teachers to a professional development
opportunity about teaching under-represented groups - and an-
other that was more nuanced - deciding to develop integrated,
cross-disciplinary courses at the high school level that they
believed would attract more diverse students.
Indeed, in some cases we see highly complex considerations
on the part of district leadership in their efforts to enact
their particular equity goals. Warren CSD’s district team, for
example, actively shaped their definition of CS-related learning
goals such that it might create greater buy-in from teachers
through a broader conception of what kinds of teacher capacity
would be required. They believed that a sole focus on coding
would result in teachers not seeing themselves as being able
to teach CS, and thus not be bought into the district’s CSed
initiative. In carefully crafting learning goals to include ones
that were beyond coding, they believed they would be able to
reach more students and achieve their equity goals.
This example highlights an important consideration regard-
ing intersecting relationships between different conceptual-
izations of equity - in seeing the ways that “who is taught
CS” might mediate “what CS is taught”, the example invites
consideration about ensuring equity on multiple dimensions.
It was not the case with Warren, but it is possible to imagine
districts, in their efforts to reach all students (equity in ‘who’ is
taught), might choose to water down learning goals to the point
where what is taught might no longer considered equitable
(equity in ‘what’ is taught).
We believe that it is important for policymakers at all levels
to consider multiple conceptions of equitable computer science
education, as well as their intersections. For district leaders,
this can mean thinking through not just the ways to ensure that
all students have access to CSed learning opportunities (equity
in ‘who’ is taught), but also that these experiences are taught
in equitable ways (equity in ‘how’ teaching happens), and
that learning goals speak to both equity needs and as well as
consideration of how equity issues associated with technology
are taught within curricula (in equity in ‘what’ is taught).
For those that operate at the state-level, where often the
primary levers of change might focus purely on standards (the
‘what’) or graduation requirements (the ‘who’) they should
also consider ways that their policies might positively impact
equity in terms of equitable approaches to teaching CS (the
‘how’), through supporting particular forms of professional
development that aim to build teacher capacity to teach under-
represented groups.
A number of limitations are important to qualify the findings
of this study. From the standpoint of organizational change,
looking at implementation data from one year, especially the
first year of planning and activities in an area of reform, is a
short period of time. Many of the districts highlighted were
more engaged in activities related to long term planning, buy-
in and resource allocation than ones that focused on direct
instruction or even professional development. As such, we
are not able to make robust claims about how various com-
mitments and understandings of equity might be ultimately
translated, or not, into direct student learning experiences
and outcomes. To more deeply understand this issue, further
research should aim to develop more robust longitudinal case
studies and data sets to see how decisions play out over time,
and especially how data can shed light on equity outcomes
related to teaching and learning.
Additionally, this study did not examine differences within
district actors’ viewpoints about equity in computer science.
There is no reason to believe that such views are consistent
within a district; indeed broader factors related to organiza-
tional coherence would likely mediate whether faculty have
shared understandings of equity. The intersection and negoti-
ation of such viewpoints among district leadership, principals,
and teachers presents an important area for future research on
enactment of equitable computer science in K12 schools.
This study represents a first step in developing a deeper
understanding of the relationship between implementation of
computer science in districts and varied conceptualizations of
equity. We believe that our findings definitively show that
how equity is understood by actors in K12 education systems

matters in terms of what happens on the ground. In that K12
CS education is a young field, we see it as critical to center
questions of equity from the start. If we better consider how
different dimensions of equity are being addressed, or not, by
current efforts, we can better focus attention and resources on
areas where improvement is needed.
VII. ACKN OWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank our district partners who
generously and openly shared about their work to bring
computer science education to their students. Support for this
project was provided by the National Science Foundation
award #1738675.
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