Memo Text
On Friday, October 21st, Governor Asa Hutchinson announced the release of the Arkansas High School Computer Science Enrollment Numbers. In his press release, he announced that for the 2022/23 school year, 23,544 individual students in Arkansas are enrolled in at least one, but in many instances more than one, CS course. This represents an increase of 10,997 students (88%) over 2021/22 and 22,440 students (2,033%) over 2014/15.
The Governor and the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) Office of Computer Science would like to hear more stories about the excellent computer science work that students and teachers are doing around the state. Educators, students, and community members are encouraged to share their computer science education experiences with social media posts using #CSforAR and #ARKidsCanCode.
Enrollment report highlights include:
-
24,780 enrollments for the 2022/23 school year. This number includes all of the one credit course enrollments of the 23,544 individual students
-
More than 1,200 students are taking more than one high school computer science course this year
-
21,950 (88%) of 2022/23 enrollments are being taught in a face-to-face manner by an Arkansas Computer Science endorsed or approved computer science teacher
-
717 enrollments are in concurrent credit college courses; 197 (28%) of those enrollments are for weighted concurrent credit
-
There was an increase at every grade level. The largest grade level number of enrollments are coming from the state’s 9th graders
-
More than 2,200 8th graders are taking a computer science course for high school credit
-
More than 9,000 female students enrolled in a computer science course, an enrollment increase of 4,966 from the 2021/22 school year
These outstanding results are possible because of the educators in Arkansas who have stepped up to provide our students with opportunities that students in other states only wish they had. Arkansas has grown from approximately 20 to more than 800 state identifiable computer science credentialed teachers. Additional information on teacher certification pathways can be found at: https://csforar.info/CoursesandTeachers.
The ten statewide CS Specialists (https://csforar.info/specialists) have provided thousands of hours of training and support to Arkansas educators; their work is largely responsible for building the face-to-face teacher capacity, knowledge, and enthusiasm that facilitates the enrollment numbers our state is experiencing.
Arkansas remains committed to not only continuing to support the overall growth in Computer Science course enrollment, but also finding, developing, and working solutions that will continue to close the gaps in enrollment by underrepresented populations.
The ADE Office of Computer Science again expresses our appreciation to Governor Asa Hutchinson, Secretary Johnny Key, Mr. Bill Gossage, Deputy Commissioner Ivy Pfeffer, the Arkansas General Assembly, all other state leaders, our school leaders and teachers, and the numerous public and private partners who have provided support for this initiative since day one.