CompuPower Investing in Innovation Evaluation: Final Report

This is the final report of an independent evaluation of the CompuPower program that was developed by Arizona State University's Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology (ASU CGEST). CompuPower is a multifaceted program for high school students that is centered on a culturally responsive computing course that includes four key components: the CompuPower course curriculum, mentor teacher professional development, a multi-day CompuPower Residency Experience, and a series of parent workshops. The evaluation of the CompuPower program was funded with a development grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) program and carried out by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) over the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years in nine mostly rural high schools. The evaluation employed a quasi-experimental matched comparison design to estimate the impact of CompuPower on one confirmatory student social emotional outcome--self-regulation--and two exploratory outcomes--critical thinking skills in everyday life and grade point average. The evaluation also assessed the implementation fidelity of the four key CompuPower program components. Across the four program components, only the mentor teacher professional development was implemented with fidelity. Most implementation challenges for the other three program components resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, but there were other challenges as well. CompuPower students showed slightly higher scores on self-regulation, critical thinking skills in everyday life, and GPA measures than comparison group students, but the differences were not statistically significant.