In April, 1999, the College Board approved a request from the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) Development Committee to form an Ad Hoc Advisory Committee to explore future directions for AP CS. At the college level, AP CS involves material taught in a typical CS1-CS2 sequence; at the high school level, the corresponding course typically is labeled CS AB. The formal charge of the Ad Hoc Committee states:

The charge of this ad hoc committee is to make recommendations to the AP Computer Science Development Committee for changes in the curriculum and whether or not C++ should remain the delivery language. If C++ is still a reasonable option, the current subset should be reexamined. If another language is recommended, then a language subset and any other guidelines deemed necessary will need to be developed.

Since that time, an advisory committee has been appointed, and discussions have begun concerning possible directions for AP CS.

Context for AP CS

1. AP provides guidance and resources for teachers and students for challenging, college-level courses in various disciplines within a high school setting.

2. AP provides a mechanism for those students to receive college credit for that high school work.

To fulfill this mission, AP seeks to identify the content and approach of introductory courses taught by typical colleges and universities, to codify that material in published course descriptions, and to develop and administer examinations in various subject areas. In particular, subject Development Committees develop course descriptions and examinations, based on an understanding of what colleges and universities are teaching. Development Committees also must try to anticipate new directions that colleges and universities will follow, so that examinations will evolve in ways consistent with trends at the college and university level.

In computer science, this mission is particularly difficult for several important reasons:

• the college and university community includes a remarkable diversity of views,
• the discipline changes at a rapid rate,
• new directions for AP CS must be identified and developed with sufficient lead time that high school teachers can become appropriately prepared to teach to new standards,
• the course description and examination must parallel the introductory courses of many colleges and universities, so many of those schools will give credit to those students who receive strong scores on the AP CS examination, and
• scoring standards must be sufficiently consistent from year to year that colleges and universities can have confidence to interpret student scores.

Altogether, the AP CS Development Committee must identify and anticipate a common middle ground of college and university practice.

Committee Approach

While the computer science community may have a very diverse range of goals and approaches for introductory computer science, the AP CS Ad Hoc Committee is taking a step-wise approach to determine to what extent there might be consensus in some areas. This is prompting the following possible outline for Committee work:

1. Determine to what extent computer science faculty might agree about goals for the CS1-CS2 introductory sequence -- independent of language.
2. Determine whether one or more languages can be identified to support these goals for AP CS.
3. Determine to what extent colleges and universities would require work in a particular language before being willing to give credit for previous work (either in high school or in other colleges).
4. Draft specific recommendations, based on answers to the above questions.
5. Circulate draft recommendations to the computer science community for feedback.
6. Make final recommendations to the AP CS Development Committee.

Documents and References

• First call for input: Goals for the end of the CS1-CS2 introductory sequence

• Second call for input: Some principles governing language selection for CS1-CS2

• June 16, 2000 Update: Letter to SIGCSE.MEMBERS@ACM.ORG

• Third call for input: Letter from Esther Tesar

Ad Hoc Advisory Committee Members

• Owen Astrachan, Committee Chair, (ola@cs.duke.edu)
• Corky Cartwright, ACM Ed Board Representative, (cork@cs.rice.edu)
• Gail Chapman, College Board Representative, (gchapman@collegeboard.org)
• David Gries, (gries@cs.uga.edu)
• Cay Horstmann (cay@horstmann.com)
• Frances Hunt, Educational Testing Service Representative (fhunt@ets.org)
• Richard Kick, (r-kick@district86.k12.il.us)
• Fran Trees (ftrees@compuserve.com)
• Mark Weiss, AP CS Development Committee Representative (weiss@cs.fiu.edu)
• Henry Walker, SIGCSE Representative (walker@cs.grinnell.edu)
• Ursula Wolz (wolz@tcnj.edu)

Additional Notes

• A session for discussion with the Advisory Committee has been scheduled at SIGCSE 2000 on Friday, March 10, 2000 at 4:00. At that time, the Committee plans to make some initial comments and then listen to comments from the audience.

• As your SIGCSE representative on the Committee, I especially welcome your comments.

• ETS and AP CS are making an on-going effort to identify resources and grants that might help needy school districts to obtain both the hardware and the software needed to support the current C++-based course. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

• The AP CS Development Committee has expressed its interest engaging the computer science community in an on-going dialog about possible revisions and new directions for AP CS. Toward that end, the Development Committee has worked to provide more opportunities during the annual SIGCSE Symposium for sessions and discussions. The newly-appointed Ad Hoc Advisory Committee represents another forum for feedback and interaction.

• Official College Board Information: The College Board maintains a World Wide Web page with various information about Advanced Placement in general and AP CS in particular.

SIGCSE

Suggestions concerning this World Wide Web page are welcome.

Henry M. Walker (walker@cs.grinnell.edu)