Computer Science for All Initiative Funnels $4 billion to K-12
The call for a comprehensive, nationally led initiative putting the spotlight on Computer Science skills and education has grown strong in recent years, and yet the United States has only managed to lag further behind other developed countries.
In 2015, only 29% of Americans rated K-12 STEM education in general as above average or best in the world, and the data supports it. Of the 64 countries that utilize the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing system, the United States ranked 35th in math and 27th in science. Among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (of which there are 34), the U.S. ranked 27th in math and 20th in science.
Suffice it to say the United States is being outperformed by most developed countries in almost all components of STEM education. Which is why a recent announcement by President Obama is such a welcome message to those who feel we are falling too far behind. The “Computer Science for All” initiative is poised to funnel $4 billion into the K-12 education system in the United States to support not just the improvement of STEM education, but specifically the growth of computer science programs.
The State of Computer Science Education
As a symptom of the lag in STEM education, computer science continues to be an underserved curriculum in most US school districts. More and more jobs require these skills, with 600,000 STEM jobs left unfilled in 2015 and an estimated 50% of all STEM jobs requiring some form of computer science skills. That’s more than a quarter million jobs that could be filled if the US workforce was better trained in a computer science curriculum.
And yet while 90% of parents want this curriculum to exist, only 25% of schools offer it, and in 22 states, those programs that do exist don’t count towards graduation for students who take them. Even where this education exists, students are being discouraged from taking advantage of it as they prepare for college.
While a large percentage of US students don’t have access to the computer science education they need, it’s even worse for minority students who make up a small percentage of those enrolled in these classes.
In 2015, only 22% of AP Computer Science students were female and only 13% were African American or Latino. These demographics directly feed into the workforce makeup of the biggest technology companies, which in turn inform much of the development and thought innovation offered by the United States from a technology standpoint. To put it simply, our technology output remains very homogenous despite years of development in other sectors of the economy.
The Obama Computer Science for All Initiative
All these factors directly feed into the need for an initiative like the one Obama proposed during his 2016 State of the Union Address. Specifically, the new initiative will provide the following for a generation of American students as the digital economy becomes the backbone of US production:
- $4 billion will be allocated for funding of these programs in states with $100 million going directly to school districts in the upcoming budget. This initial investment will be used to fund training for teachers, increasing access to teaching materials, and creating new partnerships.
- Computer Science funding made available in the immediate calendar year from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- Getting Governors and state legislatures more involved in the process to match the efforts of states that have already been doing this. This includes states like Washington, Hawaii, Arkansas, and Delaware, along with 30 other individual school districts that President Obama lists in the initiative proposal.
- Getting more people involved from all sectors of the private and public space including technology CEOs, creative media, educational professionals, philanthropic organizations and individuals, and technology thought leaders and professionals. As of the original posting of this initiative, there have been 50+ organizations to make commitments to the program. The list is expected to grow as things start to roll out.
The goal with this program is not just to increase access to the existing education — which alone would be commendable (and has long been necessary) — but to build an infrastructure that supports this kind of learning across the education system. To be competitive at a global level, we need a global computer science curriculum — the new initiative will allow us to start doing that.
Building a World Class Computer Science Infrastructure
It’s not as simple as creating new courses and hoping students hop into them. An entirely new infrastructure needs to be created. Existing programs already exist that have helped to boost broadband access and hardware availability in the classroom.
Now we need the courses, teacher preparation, and training needed to use that infrastructure to teach computer science, while continuing to grow the work that’s already been started and ensure all students have access to the most basic tools needed to learn computer science skills.
In the last few years along, the National Science Foundation has helped develop new courses like Exploring Computer Science and an AP course, Principles of Computer Science. New developments are also being rolled out for earlier entry level courses like Boostrap, which will allow freshmen in high school and middle school students to start studying computer science. Supporting all of this is a new training program to help teachers be ready to teach the courses. Here are some of the ways that is being developed:
- CNCS offers AmeriCorps Computer Science training which is accessible to a wide range of educators.
- Other organizations like 100kin10 are helping to build new curriculum related to a range of subjects.
- Government offerings include CS Teacher Institutes, 21st Learners and Coders, Future Ready Schools initiatives, and the ConnectED initiative.
- There are secondary private sector initiatives from technology companies that help fund new infrastructure in schools, reduce costs for new equipment, or help with training. Some companies who have already committed include Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce.org, Code.org, Qualcomm, and even the Cartoon Network.
It’s going to take time and many school districts are starting from scratch, but if the initiative can move forward with budget approvals where needed, it’s a much needed leap forward.
What’s the Next Step
The good news is that there are already several school districts that have made computer science education a priority. The New York City school district, for instance, has committed to ensuring every public school student learns computer science by 2025. Others, like those in Delaware have been rolling out extensive training programs for the last several years, and in Washington where technology companies regularly invest in and assist in the growth of these programs, the curriculum has been available for some time.
But how do you scale something like this? Even giving access to students to something as simple as a laptop has proven difficult in some of the country’s largest school districts. How do we tackle both that problem and the problem of spreading a vital new curriculum to those schools without getting bogged down in the same politics, poor planning, and lack of preparation we’ve seen before?
It will take time.
It’s frustrating and the gap is only getting larger, but rolling out this type of expanded, in-depth update to how our children learn will take time, and it will be well worth it once implemented.
Universities are already well-prepared to teach students what they need to know. Corporations have programs in place to guide interns and young people eager to get into the field. But without courses that actively teach students the fundamentals needed to get there, the gap will never close. And without those courses being universally available, and hopefully required, the diversity gap will remain as large as it has been for the last two decades.
At least now we’re off to a strong start and there is a very real opportunity for change in an area where we’ve fallen woefully behind in recent years.
Sources:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-all
http://fortune.com/2016/01/31/obama-computer-science/
http://www.nationalservice.gov/CSforAll
http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/education-vision-2015-computer-science.page
