An interesting new report from Anita Borg Institute, CSTA and the University of Arizona called “Addressing Core Equity Issues in K-12 Computer Science Education: Identifying Barriers and Sharing Strategies shows that K-12 Computer Science education in the United States is in a state of crisis.” The state of crisis is no surprise to anyone who is teaching K-12 computer science or who talks to K-12 computer science teachers regularly. Enrollment is dropping in K-12 CS even if it is showing some improvement in higher education. One has to wonder if the upward trend in higher education will continue if the K-12 trend continues down.
The problems are complex though and are resistant to simple strategies or single efforts. Appropriately the report suggests a number of actions. One of them directly impacts me.
Engage industry representatives with K-12 teachers to provide an accurate and up-to-date picture of the computational thinking skills that a diverse body of students needs to engage successfully in the workforce.
It effects me because I am an industry representative. :-) In my current role I do spend a lot of time engaging with K-12 teachers. Recently I was at an advisory board meeting for the programming and web development program at a career technical high school where the main topic was what skills industry is looking for. I attend meetings like this at four different local career technical schools around Massachusetts and New Hampshire. These programs are vitally interested in talking to industry so that they can prepare students for future education and careers. Typically college prep programs are less interested. Not always of course but in general many college prep programs have their sights on what universities are looking for rather than industry.
To some degree that is ok. Most students, even from vocational/technical programs, are not going to get jobs right out of high school. But a few will. Most college students will also be looking for jobs in industry after graduation though. A lot of university programs are focused on creating graduate students rather than industry professionals and that can be a problem. Not that we don’t need more graduate students in CS, we do, but that is not the default option for most college graduates. Somewhere along the way they need to learn skills that will get them a job. If for no other reason than that they can be a success and donate lots of money to the schools where they learned those skills. :-)
But actually I think the point should be that these computational thinking skills and other computer science concepts are needed across many fields and even in university and graduate programs. We have to understand that if industry and academia get too far apart both sides lose out.
The announcement of the report is at NEW REPORT FROM ANITA BORG INSTITUTE, CSTA AND UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ADDRESSES EQUITY ISSUES IN K-12 COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATIONS and the summary there is worth the read because it will get you interested in reading the whole report.
Alfred, thanks for using your blog to make people of aware of this report. Your point about the importance of industry engagement is well taken. One of the primary reasons that CSTA was part of the team that put this report together is that we felt that too often all of the burden of improving (in some cases saving!) high school computer science gets placed on teachers. It really is time for all of the stakeholders to work together on this issue.
It is amazing how many of my kids do get techie jobs right out of high school. Best Buy Nerd Herders, campus computer help line operators and cable pullers for housing contractors. They are all helping to pay for college with these jobs. These simple skills that colleges and many high schools do not want to teach sure come in handy for paying bills on the way to becoming a graduate student. Knowing how to fix computers is so much more marketable initially, than knowing how to program them. Every high school should be required to have a "Troubleshooting 101" in their CS curriculum.