title: The Effect of a Collective Impact Model of Teacher Professional Development on Increasing the Number of Certified Computer Science Teachers in Rural Areas
Creators: name: Warner, Jayce R.
name: Fletcher, Carol L.
name: Torbey, Ryan
name: Garbrecht, Lisa S.
Publisher: name: The University of Texas at Austin
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: policy brief
subject: high school

description: Students living in rural areas are less likely to attend schools that offer computer science (CS) courses largely because educational institutions in these remote areas lack the resources to staff teaching positions for these courses. This study investigated the impact of WeTeach_CS, a program designed to train teachers to become certified to teach high school CS in Texas. The WeTeach_CS collective impact model may be well suited to influence rural areas at scale because it utilizes an existing network of organizations across the state to bring high-quality professional development opportunities to teachers in remote areas. Results from an interrupted time series analysis showed a significant, positive change in the rate in which the number of certified CS teachers in rural areas increased during the period of time after WeTeach_CS began compared to the period before the program was implemented, whereas the number of teachers certified in technology applications showed no such change. Furthermore, the growth rate in the number of certified CS teachers was much higher for rural schools than urban, suggesting that collective impact models like WeTeach_CS may be especially beneficial for rural communities. Schools in rural areas are behind their more urbanized counterparts in terms of access to CS education (Google Inc. &amp; Gallup Inc, 2017). Rural schools constituted only 10% all U.S. public schools that offered an AP computer science course in 2017 (College Board, 2018), even though the latest estimates show that 28% of all public schools in the U.S. are designated as rural and 42% as rural or small-town (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). At the core of this issue is that the lack of qualified CS teachers overall is exacerbated in rural areas, where schools have a relatively harder time funding new teaching positions and recruiting highly qualified teachers to fill those positions. Schools simply cannot offer courses for which they have no qualified teacher, implying that one crucial antecedent to increasing access to CS education for underserved students is increasing the CS teacher workforce in those areas. Efforts to increase the number of qualified CS teachers are invariably met with challenges of scalability and sustainability. Collective impact models (Kania &amp; Kramer, 2011), which unite interdisciplinary partners towards a common goal, may be better suited to overcome these challenges than stand-alone interventions. A collective impact model has the potential to effect change in rural schools because it connects local education agencies with resources and expertise to which they may not otherwise have access. The WeTeach_CS program has worked extensively with rural schools and teachers over the past three years to build capacity for K-12 CS Education. Approximately 40% of the 640 schools served by WeTeach_CS in 2016-17 are in rural or small-town districts. WeTeach_CS, which serves teachers across multiple districts, is particularly helpful in creating an economy of scale for CS teacher professional development that is not possible to obtain for individual small, rural districts. WeTeach_CS supports sustainability of program effects by using a network of professional development partners to support local teachers before and after becoming certified to teach CS.