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The College Board Pushes To Make Computer Science a High School Graduation Requirement
theodp writes: Education Week reports that the College Board wants high schools to make it mandatory for students to take computer science before they graduate. The call came as the College Board touted the astonishing growth in its Advanced Placement (AP) computer science courses, which was attributed to the success of its new AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) class, a "lite" alternative to the Java-based AP CS A course. "The College Board is willing to invest serious resources in making this viable -- much more so than is in our economic interest to do so," said College Board President David Coleman. "To governors, legislators, to others -- if you will help us make this part of the life of schools, we will help fund it."
Just two days before Coleman's funds-for-compulsory-CS offer, Education Week cast a skeptical eye at the tech sector's role in creating a tremendous surge of enthusiasm for K-12 CS education. Last spring, The College Board struck a partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with a goal of making AP CSP available in every U.S. school district. Also contributing to the success of the College Board's high school AP CS programs over the years has been tech-bankrolled Code.org, as well as tech giants Microsoft and Google. The idea of a national computer programming language requirement for high school students was prominently floated in a Google-curated Q&A session with President Obama (video) following the 2013 State of the Union address.
Just two days before Coleman's funds-for-compulsory-CS offer, Education Week cast a skeptical eye at the tech sector's role in creating a tremendous surge of enthusiasm for K-12 CS education. Last spring, The College Board struck a partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with a goal of making AP CSP available in every U.S. school district. Also contributing to the success of the College Board's high school AP CS programs over the years has been tech-bankrolled Code.org, as well as tech giants Microsoft and Google. The idea of a national computer programming language requirement for high school students was prominently floated in a Google-curated Q&A session with President Obama (video) following the 2013 State of the Union address.
There is a difference between Compute Science and computer skills. All students should have computer skills, but not all need computer science.
The overlords will never learn that they'll never be able to produce legions of cheap engineers, programmers, or whatever else.
The College Board want's to make something that will almost certainly be dominated by AI in the near future a requirement? Who's going to work on my car? My plumber makes six figures. Neither one needs to know how to "code" - whatever that actually means.
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Still canâ(TM)t speak any other language than what was required. Go for it.
Those are two very different things. Almost anyone can become a code-monkey.
They should just call it what it is: computer programming. When I graduated that what they called it. It was a class on programming BASIC on the Apple ][.
But that's the trend these days - to make things sound more important that they are.
You may not graduate without watching it!
Requiem for the American Dream
Don't eat Tide pods.
The problem with making it a requirement is that you really can't get into any sort of detail without losing half the class. I've been systems-engineering my way through life for 20+ years, and I'd only consider myself slightly above a code monkey skills-wise. It's clear that some sort of exposure to logical thinking, troubleshooting, etc. helps. But, even with templating I would find it very difficult to open up Visual Studio and crank out a full-stack web application that I'd dare show off to anyone. I can automate stuff, glue things together with PowerShell, etc...but actual development requires real skill, or 100 hour weeks running in circles until you get it right.
Also, my example is one of someone who is very interested in computers and systems engineering. Imagine trying to teach whatever they can call "computer science" to a disinterested bunch of high school students. Same goes for requiring a foreign language...you can't get too far down into details or most of the students won't be able to pass the class.
I don't know what to think about what makes a good education before. Most of the jobs people are doing now are going to be gone, and SW development is almost sure to be done automatically through abstraction or entirely in India very soon. Maybe all those liberal arts majors we used to laugh at are going to have the last laugh after all...
Is Computer Science science with a computer, science on a computer, or science of a computer?
ISn't this where appy app guy is supposed to appear?!?
The kids will write apps and sell em to each other for $1.99 to survive. Surely we must teach survival skills :O If we don't have millions of new coders all the apps will dry up and disappear soon right.
I suppose exposure is good. I suspect a module in English/Science/whatever? class would be enough however.
Not everyone wants the skills.
Not everyone has the inclination.
Not everyone needs it.
Making it a requirement is elitism and simply pushes up the cost of education with no meaningful benefit.
as long as Microsoft Office is never a requirement, i'm ok with it.
However, they're missing the point. It isn't that they need programmers, but they need to teach students to think, and that, at least in Gwinnet county, GA, Us, they are not.
in America "The College Board" is the company that makes the standardized testing for college here (the SAT). My guess is they'd like to add CS to their test having determined that doing so would be profitable. They're another one of those "non-Profits" who makes hefty profits for it's owners. Like Goodwill if you've heard of them.
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that's really all there is to it. There is zero reason for "Computer Science" to be a graduation requirement. The math they cover is already more than sufficient. Anything more is a just a specialty branch of mathematics or just teaching people a trade. And there is zero reasons for computer focused trade schools. Between outsourcing and H1-Bs it's a dead end career. Sending someone off to computer themed trade schools is worse than cruel. It's a completely waste of everyone's time and money that only serves to devalue the wages of the few who've managed to eek out a meager living doing what's left of IT work in the States.
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in case you haven't paid any attention to what's coming out India already and what is rapidly coming out of the Philippians. But it's _never_ cheap enough. Ever. At least not until you're able to wake them up at midnight with nothing more than tea and a buscuit
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I suppose the fact that there is some sort of AP credit for CS now provides some direction, but in my day CS at the HS level was ill-defined. We had Computer "Math", Comp Sci 1 and 2, and Computer Lit. But a lot of schools would take what is taught in Lit. (Word, Excel, typing, etc) and call it CS. Considering a 4-year CS degree covers a wide variety of different computer-related subjects, what subset of that would constitute the typical 1-year HS CS credit? I'm assuming its probably a one-year coding course in a high-level and somewhat abstract language (Java, Python, etc), but lets at least be clear about it. A good thing to encourage participation in for those with any kind of math and hard-science focus or interest, but I'm not sure it should be required of everyone.
Reminds me of the Cisco Networking Academy. The idea was to prepare kids to step into all of the Network Engineering jobs that were going to be created in the coming years.
Funny thing happened, between virtualization, containers, and cloud computing demand for this skill plummeted. Now you have a bunch of kids who spent years learning Cisco's technology only to find no jobs waiting for them.
I suppose they could teach classical Computer Science (algorithms, data structures, etc.), but given the typical drop out rate in college after one semester of Computer Science I doubt it will stick for many students. The ones that do well would likely have done so without the requirement.
We are using C++ Institute curriculum offered for free through the Cisco Networking Academy. They also have Python and IoT curriculum.
College Board is just pushing the requirement to make more money with their test.
what about linux skills vs just the basic ms office stuff. or even some dos
What democratic countries really need to teach their kids is a bit of statistics and probability. Armed with a basic understanding of both, people will make better choices at the polling booth, be less prone to gambling, and less susceptible to marketing fluff. Humans do not have an instinctive understanding of these topics, especially where orders of magnitude are involved, making it very easy to deceive and mislead them.
I didn't need a computer science degree to be unemployed. I didn't need to graduate with honors at the top of my class to be unemployed. I didn't need to learn to code to be unemployed. I didn't need to code open source software to be unemployed.
I didn't need to waste my time and money getting a COMPLETELY WORTHLESS DEGREE IN A DEAD FIELD.
THERE ARE ZERO JOBS FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE GRADUATES.
ZERO.
Perhaps by "CS" they mean something other than programming. Topics might include:
There is a lot more of the above. This is stuff ./-ers take for granted, but most people have no clue about any of it.
And yet it is important for citizens in a modern society to know. Hence, it needs to be taught in school.
Math skills are necessary to life. Education is NOT only about employment!
A functioning democracy REQUIRES a basic education for the people to be able to rule themselves and do some critical thinking. The REAL reason you need free public education is because it is a fundamental requirement for a healthy democracy. You may not have a functional democracy anymore, but you can not keep one without it.
Critical thinking, ethics, and civics are infinitely more important to bring back for the sake of democracy, society and possibly even humanity itself. We did not get to where we are today by evolution - there is nothing separating us from primitive societies 10,000 years ago except the momentum of society progressing forward.
If you want some basic CS conceptual coverage, integrate some of that into a better MATH education. People who are good at math have an easier time picking up CS (especially the real classic CS which IS math! CS started out from the math dept in most places.)
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Of course, everyone will have a different idea of what goes into that coursework. Vocational, targeted at the latest web framework or social networking? More abstract and low level, a successor of the old school BASIC courses? High level (noncommercial) video game development using scripting languages, or maybe gestures? There are other possibilities too of course.
I'd be happy if our engineers even had basic windows skills.
you're being downmodded because your post isn't relevant to the topic.
Did Zuckerberg really create another phony "philanthropy" organisation just to inflate his ugly chink wife's ego? Yes, the primary function is a cover to sell various FaceTech to school boards, but Jesus Christ, she is an ugly, ugly fucking piece of shit. Mark is hideous too - but you'd think a billion dollars would at least buy you a wife that didn't look like some pan-faced mongoloid from a banana jungle. Shit. I really hope their children die.
Epic play. If they succeed then it's probably the beginning of the end for state control of education.
AP is supposed to college level, but according to teachers I know, there're bucketloads of sophomores that take the class, and pass it.
Apparently the other course is harder, but again tons of sophomores pass it.
Obvious conclusion, it's bollocks that these courses are "college level."
my public high school (a 'normal', traditional school and curriculum in minnesota, not a 'charter', 'prep' or 'tech' school) required computer science courses for graduation back in the 1980s.
DOS and Linux will do very little good outside of very specific communities. General, more commonly used software for high school will be more useful overall.
code.org material for AP CS is great.
The AppLab environment gives them enough IDE-like introduction and the sandbox'd Javascript and execution emulator is worthy. We also use GitHub for class assignments and I have them turn in everything as straight up ASCII files in their student and class private repositories. We use Atom editor bolted up to GitHub for everything outside of AppLab.
75% of the students appreciate the material. The other 25% do not. Meh
that's the only thing left. It's got a high barrier to entry and a strong Union (the AMA). You might still get automated away, but right we all take our chances.
If you've got the chops for it there's still a career in mathematics. But don't confuse "working with computers" with mathematics. If you can't hack it in at least a 400 level math course then you have little future doing anything with computers for a living. You just can't compete with the double whammy that is offshore + H1-B.
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A significant percentage of students don't care about computer skills, and will slack off, and cheat, if you make them take the course. A significant percentage of students don't need to have computer skills anyways. With the large amount of computing power today, computer interfaces can be made very graphical, and brain dead.
Just like with the "everyone should code" shit, instead why not teach young people (and even adults) about using proper skepticism with content, properly using security procedures that CS definitely doesn't teach you, and realising that if it's online everyone else in the world can see it (something evidently people still don't understand)?
Maybe then I can see one less post about how Facebook will be charging soon or friend requests from some other user is a superhacker, or The Onion *just may be true this time*, or "Oh, so if I put up dancing videos of myself perverts will indeed re-share them, but how is that possible?!" And so on.
They don't need to know how the shit works any more than they need to know how a car engine works, they need to learn how to compute safely and logically, just like they need to learn to drive properly.
And often politicians and so forth just prove their technology ignorance more by making this dumb ass leap. You aren't going to suddenly empower people other than to annoy actual experts around them because "hey, I took CS in high school, so *snort* I think I know a thing or two about how easy your job is*."
Thats often all thats needed. Someone at 1 am who is trustworthy on site to swap out hardware.
Someone who can read a log, work until staff, a contractor is on site.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is great, if everyone graduates high school with CS knowledge, we can significantly reduce the wages we pay computer programmers right now to the equivalent of the average retail worker. Great news for Google, Apple and Facebook for their bottom line and who employ thousands of (currently) expensive computer programmers.
It's payback for Gym class. That's where all the jocks felt superior and made fun of the physically inferior nerds. Now all the nerds get to laugh at the jocks because they can't understand the difference between a function and a procedure.
Just as other engineering disciplines are not for everyone and are certainly not a requirement to be a productive member of society, CS has absolutely no business being a mandatory subject. The same is even more true for theoretical CS. Might as well force everybody to take Topology or Mechanical engineering.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why would you teach kids a skill that is nearly 100% outsourced to cheap foreign labor already?
Then stop hiring the cheapest "engineers" you can find and pony up the money to hire some that satisfy your business' requirements.
What about economics? Or statistics? First Aid?
Don't stay in school
Were that I say, pancakes?
I taught a college programming course for freshmen for a number of semesters. This course was typically their first introduction to programming. Most of these children had not been prepared by their schooling to use either math or logic. To push computer science in high school is just bizarrely stupid. These children need a much better grounding in a number of subjects before attempting to learn programming.
Example: who among you confuses degrees of temperature with degrees of angles? Did you ever try to determine the sine of 37 degrees Celsius? This is the kind of poor preparation I saw among incoming freshmen.
My teaching ended before children became addicted to cell phones, so I can only assume they are much less prepared now than before the cell phone craze.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Twitter.
(Not Facebook! That's for old people, like my parents! That's funnnie!)
Also of course, proficiency with Siri.
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Math is foundational and necessary before pivoting to other disciplines. Programming or computer science are good things to learn. It's how I make my living although I don't have that particular degree (math major).
Those things can be picked up later. If pre-college education should give rounded skills to function in society, I would prefer financial education that involves understanding of interest rates and some parts of economics which if taught by the right person can be a stimulating subject.
Whenever someone wants to add something new to the school curriculum, they need to say what topics should be dropped to replace it. That might be fine- I expect many schools still teach cursive writing for example, but the tradeoff needs to be made
Personally I'd put economics ahead of computer science on things to be added to schools.
I only had critical thinking exposure in my education in the USA a few times. Some minor bits here and there may qualify but I can't recall any of them. Only twice, and 1 of the two was me actually taking a whole 4 credit philosophy course named "critical thinking." So I know how BS all the stuff is... We SAY critical thinking but we never do any of it.
We have weaponized and commercialized psychology being deployed on multiple fronts which heavily use modern technology to rob us of our ability to THINK. So you may have the training but if you let your emotions and impulsiveness take over, you've essentially put your brain to sleep. What NEEDS to be part of a REAL education in critical thinking is emotion and impulse control skill training... otherwise it's just an academic exercise.
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