Cs Principles: Piloting A National Course

Reports on a new national course designed to be an Advanced Placement course in Computer Science have been reported in [1-3]. This course has been designed from first principles to be taught nationwide at both the secondary and post-secondary levels. As part of this joint NSF/College Board project, 11 high schools are partnered with 10 colleges to teach the course, be part of a national initiative to test assessment items, and to help validate the curriculum framework that is the basis for the course and project.The traditional Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science program is intended to reflect enough of a common core of a first semester or year of university-level computer science so that placement or credit can be awarded for work done before college. This special session is a report of the second stage of pilot that is designed to lead to a national standard and a new, additional AP exam in the next five years. This course will not replace the traditional, CS1-oriented AP exam, but will be a new national introduction to Computer Science.