Helping African American students pass advanced placement computer science: A tale of two states

Abstract

The goal of Project Rise Up 4 CS is to increase the number of African American students that pass the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) A exam. The African American pass rate on the exam is the lowest nationally of any ethnic/racial group. The project offers extra help sessions, near-peer role models, competitions, financial incentives, and a community of learners. Project Rise Up 4 CS was first offered during the spring of 2013 at Georgia Tech and that year a record number of African American students passed the exam in Georgia. While we don't claim that Project Rise Up 4 CS was responsible for this record, participants did report a statistically significant pre-to-post increase in attitudes towards computing and a large increase in their perception of their ability to pass the exam. This paper reports on the second iteration of this project where we repeated the project in Georgia and replicated it in Maryland. Using mixed methods, we explore the effectiveness of the project and our design hypotheses by examining changes in attitudes and participant reactions to the project components.