The CS principles project

➧1 In fall 2008 a group of computer scientists and educators convened in Atlanta under the auspices of an NSF-funded conference, Computational Thinking and Fluency in the 21st Century, to discuss the future of computer science education and to identify emerging models. It was widely agreed that students require increasing skills in computing across all disciplines and that a new high school course on a national scale would be an important step towards developing and providing access to these skills. The CS Principles Project has since developed as a collaborative effort involving computer science educators and the College Board with support from the National Science Foundation. Professional organizations including the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) have played prominent roles as well in supporting the development of the course and its place within the high school CS curriculum (see Reforming K-12 Computer Science Education ... What Will Your Story Be?, this issue) and the larger CS 10K project (see Transforming High School Computing: A Call to Action, this issue). Support for the project from the computer science education community has led the College Board to commit to making the CS Principles course a new Advanced Placement offering in the comA New Introductory Computing Course for Everyone