CS4ALL: EQUITY INITATIVES

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Supporting CS4All Equity Initiatives 

Computer Science for All Initiative New York City (CS4All), with whom TYTHEdesign has collaborated since 2015, is a 10-year, $80 million plan to bring computer science (CS) education to each of NYC’s 1.1 million public school students. You can read more about our original case study here, outlining TYTHEdesign’s support in creating the CS4ALL NYC Blueprint.

Over the course of our partnership, TYTHE has supported CS4All in creating and scaling their equity initiative that prioritizes breaking down gender and racial barriers by focusing on female, Black, and Latinx students and paving the pathway to greater diversity and equality for tech jobs in the workplace.

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OUR STRATEGY

TYTHE’s goal for supporting this initiative was to be a thought leader and capacity-builder with CS4All team members across all of their equity engagements and strategy. Throughout our collaboration, we helped CS4All build, plan, facilitate, and create resources and tools to increase awareness, recruit educators, and foster critical conversations around race, justice, and equity in technology. TYTHE identified strategies to support their vision, programs, and team with the specific aim of ensuring scalability across the city and measuring success and impact. Through coaching and capacity-building, specifically through the lens of stakeholder engagement, we ensured that CS4All team members’ perspectives and expertise was utilized.

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THE OUTCOME

Strategic Planning: Theory of Change & Initiatives 

This partnership culminated with a completed CS4ALL Equity Theory of Change and supporting materials to bolster CS4All’s work across all stakeholders, particularly when it came to organizational change management. The client specifically wanted to focus on being less reactionary, identifying immediate needs, and building towards long-term goals. The Theory of Change supports the articulation of their plans for the ongoing growth and sustainability for teachers, leaders, and other stakeholders in a way that builds buy-in and investment.

Programs & Events: Stakeholder Engagement 

Over the last five years, TYTHE has supported CS4All Equity in the planning and leading of 30+ events, connecting with more than 2,000 educators. In our role as coach, we helped ensure mutually beneficial experiences for stakeholders, speakers, and CS4ALL team members. These events ranged from in-person, full day conferences about the importance of women in CS and discussions with leaders like Colson Whitehead on the power of teachers of color in CS to virtual events featuring social justice lessons developed by CS4All teachers.

Communications: Equity Website, Guides, & Workbooks

As the project grew over the years, the CS4All team sought new ways to archive their resources, share their initiative, and be a thought leader in Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education (CRSE). TYTHE codesigned a website–complete with a platform for ongoing education and engagement–and a series of materials such as guides and workbooks. While all of these resources were shared across the CS4All network, several were mandatory for use by every CS4All educator. Over the 2023-2024 school year, CS4all has expanded to publish short videos featuring teacher lessons, event highlights, and speaker presentations about issues facing educators and technology today.

Status Report

TYTHEdesign guided CS4All through the process of tracking their impact across all of their initiatives over the last five years. We developed data tracking tools and led the analysis of the collected data. Finally, TYTHE supported the content development, graphic design, and planning of a status report launch event in Spring 2023.

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Client: NYC Department of Education

Collaborators: Hillary Clark, Kristina Drury, Aliza Sarian, and Hans Callenbach 

Year: 2018-present