Author’s note: During the spring of 2022, I took ENG-104 Honors Composition II at Berkshire Community College with professor Nell McCabe. The course was a semester long research project on any topic of our choosing. I choose to discuss the state of computer science education at Taconic High School, which I am a student at. This is the final product at the end of the course.

Here is the PDF version of the research paper in APA 7th edition student formatting.

Abstract

Taconic High School, an academic and vocational high school in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, will be transitioning to a fully vocational school within the next two school years, and their information technology (IT) and computer science teacher will be retiring after this school year. This has caused the number of computer science elective course offerings to be limited to one, Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP). Even with the retirement of Taconic’s IT teacher, Taconic should offer AP CSP and Advanced Placement Computer Science A (AP CSA) to students interested in computer science, a demographic increasing due to the popularity of video games. Offering AP CSP would get these interested students comfortable with computer science, while offering AP CSA would allow these students to build upon the skills learned in AP CSP in this more advanced course. Implications are discussed on how these two courses should be offered at Taconic, including how the courses should be aligned to allow for all students to succeed in both courses. 

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