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College Board Puts Code.org In Charge of AP CS Program

Posted by Soulskill on from the must-pass-recruitment-test dept.

theodp writes: "The College Board," reports GeekWire, "is endorsing Code.org as a coursework and teacher training provider for its upcoming AP Computer Science Principles course and will help Code.org fund the teacher training work required to establish new computer science classes." So what's the catch? "Schools that commit to using the [new] PSAT [8/9 assessment] to identify middle school students who have potential for success in computer science will be eligible to receive curriculum, training, and funding for programming classes." The organization is bankrolled by some of tech's wealthiest leaders and their corporations. Code.org board member Brad Smith, Microsoft's General Counsel, proposed the idea of "producing a crisis" to advance Microsoft's "two-pronged" National Talent Strategy to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas. Just months thereafter, nonprofit organizations Code.org and Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us, which is lobbying for H-1B reform, were born.

2 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I knew there was some liberal catch here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    As every good liberal knows, true diversity comes from the color of your skin and the type of genitals you have (and even if you accept those genitals as your own). It has nothing to do with a diverse upbringing, people having multiple ideas/methods of solving problems, or just having different interests. I'm happy to be a formerly poor Appalachian white boy who had to teach the computer science teacher how to program, was able to learn a lot in the process of teaching myself, and ended up with a software development job that I thoroughly enjoy. And my story is far from unique. .....and as I hit preview to submit this post, the captcha word was "travesty"

  2. Am I missing something with Code.org? by Hasaf · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am a middle school teacher and I have been using hour of code to introduce my students to "the coding mindset." However, other than the puzzle tutorial I don't see much that is1. interesting to students and 2. contains a grading metric.

    Is there a teacher handbook? I do have access to the teacher site; but I really don't see much. I would like to be able to assign, and track progress in, other modules and activities; but it has the 20 activities that I can track and view in the teacher screen, then it has a more advanced set of puzzles (that I cannot track progress). Then is an "Elsa" on ice module, that, again, I cannot track progress in at the same time I am tracking the students who have not finished the basic module.

    At that point it kicks the students off to Kahn academy with no teacher tracking at all.

    Yes, the tracking is essential as most students will not do the activities if they do not see it, directly, translating into a grade. I have students who have had 18 weeks and have not started the first 20 activity module. They plan to find out how many points they need for a C (or D) after the final and then do only that many activities in the Hour of Code lessons.

    I would like to do more with Hour of Code and Code.org; but on the teacher side of the program there isn't much there.