Code.org Is Crowdsourcing Database of US K-12 Schools That Teach, Or Don't Teach CS

Longtime reader theodp writes: Nonprofit Code.org, which is bankrolled by the likes of Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Infosys, has teamed up with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and is "calling on all educators and parents" to "help us build a database of all schools that teach (or don't teach) computer science" (via direct responses and email advocacy tools). Called the K-12 Computer Science Access Report, Code.org says "the database will be a resource that everyone in the CS community can use." For what purposes, however, is not entirely clear, although the Code.org Medium post indicates the database will be used by the nonprofit and the CS community to "make our shared vision [for every school to teach computer science] a reality." The post cites a 2016 study conducted by Google and Gallup -- which took principals to task for being clueless about what constituted "computer science" and misgauging parental and student demand for CS -- and goes on to add that the new database will allow the organization to "be able to report more precisely which schools do or don't offer this opportunity to their students." As far as a timeframe for the naughty-or-nice K-12 CS school database goes, Code.org reports, "our goal is to gather data for 100% of US schools by the end of 2018." In earlier posts, Code.org has thanked its partners for their help in "changing [K-12 CS] education policies in forty states" (make that 43 states!) and claimed credit for "pressing lawmakers" into unlocking Federal funding for K-12 CS with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Comments

School Leaders Feel Pressured to Expand CS by Tech

[theodp]

In related news, "Forty-seven percent of the school leaders surveyed by Education Week said they feel mild or strong pressure to expand computer science from vendors and the technology industry. That's compared with 28 percent who said they feel such pressure from parents and 23 percent from teachers."

Programming should be required - as part of Civics

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people (including most CS majors) have no native talent for programming, and never become employable as programmers. Programming isn't a mass-employment program.

It should however be taught at a basic, Hello World/Logo-Robot level to everyone. Computers already dominate our world, and control how information is gathered and how machines operate. This is going to be even more so in the future, with huge ramifications for our society. Everyone needs to have some sense of what they can do, and how they are made to do it (it's not magic/miraculous). Being able to constructively engage with the world humans have made is what Civics is for, so programming should be made part of it. Civics may need to be stretched out to a couple of years, not just one semester.