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In 2016, former President Barack Obama endorsed expanded funding for computer science education in the nation’s secondary schools. State agencies, industry leaders, and educators embraced the challenge eagerly, knowing the future health of the U.S. economy would rely on a workforce that is equipped with skills in computer science and computational thinking. Despite the need, inequities exist between who is receiving high-quality computer science instruction and who is not.

In California, the Silicon Valley Research Practice Partnership for Computational Thinking and Positive Identity for Computer Science (SVRPP) felt that cultural stereotypes were prohibitive in encouraging underrepresented female students to pursue a career in computer science or engineering. The SVRPP received a Computer Science for All grant from the National Science Foundation for April 2021 through March 2024. This 3-year grant provided the opportunity for the SVRPP to form a research and practice partnership in order to increase computational thinking and positive identity for Latina students in grades 4 and 5.

This report covers the impact of the SVRPP during the 2022–23 school year and the first semester of the 2023–24 school year:

• Computational thinking: The SVRPP had a statistically significant impact on Latina students’ skill and understanding of abstraction in grades 4 and 5 during both school years.
• Positive identity: During the 2023–24 school year, Latina students showed a statistically significant growth in their perceptions of culturally responsive pedagogy and their identification with math. During the 2022–23 school year, no statistically significant growth was observed in Latina students’ ratings in these two areas.
• Assessment performance: Latina students taught by SVRPP teachers scored higher on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium standards-based math assessment than did Latina students taught by non-SVRPP teachers. This difference, while not statistically significant, shows a positive trend in academic achievement that may be influenced by enriched educational support.
• Teachers’ knowledge: During the 2022–23 school year, teachers’ culturally responsive pedagogy and computational thinking knowledge improved from the start of their participation in the SVRPP to after their participation in the SVRPP for one school year. The difference was statistically significant. During the 2023–24 school year, a similar trend was observed, though not statistically significant.