The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) Office of Computer Science is pleased to announce the fifth annual Governor’s All-Region and All-State Coding Competition sponsored by Verizon. This competition is open to Arkansas public, private, and homeschooled school students in grades 8-12.

This competition, which has had over 1,200 students participate in the first four years, has been funded by $225,000 in grants from Verizon.   

This year’s competition will include regional qualifying competition events and a state-level competition. The regional events are scheduled to take place on Friday, February 26, 2021, and the State Competition is scheduled for Saturday, May 1, 2021. 

At this time, the regional events are scheduled to take place in person at regional locations across the state and the state competition is scheduled to be an in person event in Little Rock; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, backup plans to shift one or both of these events to an online version are being prepared. Confirmed teams will receive notification of event locations and of any changes.

The ADE Office of Computer Science has established a page to provide interested parties with information regarding regional and state competition: 

• locations, dates, and times;

• rules;

• registration information and process; and

• contact information.

Each team member of the 1st place team will receive a $2,000 award; 2nd place team members will each receive a $1,000 award; and members of the 3rd place team will each receive a $500 award. These awards will be provided as deposits into established 529 College Savings Plans.

Schools that sponsor the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams will receive the following awards to support their computer science program:

• 1st Place - $10,000

• 2nd Place - $6,000

• 3rd Place - $4,000

The above-referenced webpage may be accessed via the ADE website at cs.arkansas.gov or directly by using this link: http://bit.ly/ARCodingComp. This dedicated webpage will be updated as information is released.