Sustained Success: Thousands of Students Code for Congress in 2020
Despite the disruption to traditional educational cadences for students across the country, the 2020 Congressional App Challenge came to a close on October 19th, yielding 1,851 fully functioning apps. This would represent an incredibly successful campaign under the best of circumstances, and is an extraordinary campaign given the challenges posed by COVID-19. All told, 308 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 49 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, D.C.. Over 6,000 students registered for the competition.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during the annual #HouseOfCode festival.
Now in its sixth year, the Congressional App Challenge has established itself as the largest student computer science competition in the world with a broad national reach. The 308 participating Members of Congress represent over two-thirds of Americans, providing inspiration to students in all corners of the nation.
In response to the obstacles caused by COVID-19, the Congressional App Challenge created a series of original initiatives to ensure students around the nation had access to the materials and inspiration necessary to compete in this year’s challenge. In March, the Congressional App Challenge participated in the #BuildforCOVID19 Global Hackathon, one of the first global initiatives to use the power of tech to fight the virus. In April, the program launched its Code at Home initiative, a comprehensive hub full of free resources from program partners that students can use to learn how to code from home. At the same time, the Challenge launched its first-ever pre-registration program, allowing over 1,000 students to vet their own eligibility and begin coding prior to the official launch of the competition. Through the fall, the Congressional App Challenge presented the Back to School Webinar Series, a series of webinars, hosted in conjunction with supporters of the program, which provided free training and mentorship opportunities for over 900 App Challengers in 49 states.
Over 6,000 students registered for this year’s competition, the second largest total in the program’s history. These students created 1,851 fully-functioning apps, with some congressional districts receiving dozens of applications. Members of Congress will be announcing their district winners between November 15th and December 31st, 2020.
In the six years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1,442 App Challenges across 49 states. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the Congressional App Challenge with staffing and support. Thousands of functional apps have been created by over 30,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.
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