[TOS] CS certification for K12 - what is out there?

Wed Aug 1 13:09:28 UTC 2012

All - 

Heidi summarizes the issues well below (depressing isn't it?).  I'd like to add / emphasize a few points:

a) most of the control for K-12 is at the state level, not federal.  That is unlikely to change. So any change requires getting 50 entrenched bureaucracies to do something. They all are under stress from budget problems and the federal push for accountability in education.  That makes doing something "new" (computing) a really tough sell.

b) parents and students are still not clamoring for more computing education.  It's difficult to argue for more spending in this area with this constituency being largely missing in action.  To some extent this is a chicken and egg problem, but still tough to solve.

c) there's a supply chain problem on the teacher side too.  If someone waved a magic wand and mandated computing education in every state tomorrow, there would be way, way too few competent teachers to deliver.  And schools of education are not ready to produce any large volume of computing teachers.  To top it off, even if the teachers exist, schools always struggle to hold on to competent computing teachers because many of them can earn more by going to industry.

So, we're woefully lacking in the policy/standards, the demand from stakeholders, and the means to produce and keep enough competent teachers.  It's a good problem to think about and work on, but I think it requires a multi-prong, long-term effort to make real progress.

Cheers,

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org [mailto:tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of Heidi Ellis
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 8:10 AM
To: 'Discussions about Teaching Open Source'
Subject: Re: [TOS] CS certification for K12 - what is out there?

Hi Folks,

As others have noted, the CSTA is working actively in the area of CS curricula for high schools and promoting the CS Principles course. I think that the larger issue is the current lack of computing within middle and high schools, a problem that TOS is not likely to be able to solve.

I am a prof. at Western New England University and we hold an annual high school programming contest. In addition, I have been working with a local high school computer science teacher to see how we can improve computing in the middle and high schools. I have done a few activities with her classes and have brought my undergraduates into her class. The feedback from the high school teachers is depressing. There are few resources to support CS and those are typically cut in times of tight budgets. 

I think that the major hurdle for getting more programming and computing (i.e., not Office) in the middle and high schools is that CS is not recognized as a "real" discipline. By this, I mean that schools in most states are not required to show that students have proficiency in any sort of computing beyond basic word processing skills. There are no standardized tests for CS in most states. Since there are no tests, there are little or no resources devoted to computing. Many schools have no computing at all. In others, computing programs are often treated like electives with no honors courses and in some cases, guidance counselors put special education students into computing courses. 

NSF has a push for new CS teachers (overview:
http://c2474712.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/ACM-Ed-Week-CS10K.pdf) :

"CS/10K Project Goal: To develop an effective new high school curriculum for computing, taught in 10,000 high schools by 10,000 well-qualified teachers by 2015."

I applaud this effort. However, the problem as I see it is that there is little incentive for middle and high schools to create or expand computing programs in this era of limited resources. I think that the root cause is a systemic issue. Feedback from my high school teachers indicates that until CS is a "real" discipline, it won't be given the emphasis and resources that it needs. It may be that the government at the US or state level will have to mandate that students need to achieve a certain level of competence in computing before computing will be widely adopted in middle and high schools. 

Just my thoughts on the matter.
Heidi

-----Original Message-----
From: tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org
[mailto:tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of Don Davis
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 3:12 PM
To: tos at teachingopensource.org
Subject: Re: [TOS] CS certification for K12 - what is out there?

I was certified in our state. The test was pretty simple pseudocode, some big O, and technical (e.g. file format) type questions.

Let's say there was a national set of standards for CS teacher certification
- would that help more students get involved in CS or have a better CS education?

Most of the 9-12 CS curriculum I've seen is all heavily Java centric based on AP test standards. Only a small percentage of the schools in my state have CS programs and the majority of the programs are near identical in scope, sequence, and materials - as it's done all in preparation for the AP CS test.

This approach does little to benefit CS matriculation and little to increase diversity.

It's seems that more CS0 programs are needed but schools won't support them as the only goal of a CS programming is to boost AP test taker numbers.

(Of course there are some very nice exceptions to this in my state but they are the exception.)

How might raising the bar on an already marginalized subject increase CS participation? (This isn't a strictly rhetorical question - perhaps there is a connection I do not see.)

Oh and an appropriate question for this list - supposing there is a core standard - who tests it? which language do they use? Test companies make policy more often than educators - will we be locked into Java only for the next 20 years? .net?

On 07/31/2012 01:50 PM, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> I was just talking with Selena Deckelmann about computer science in 
> K12, a conversation partially spurred by this report:
> 
> http://www.acm.org/runningonempty/
> 
> We were talking about the advantage of having a national CS curriculum 
> definition and reference certification. (Recognizing that states set 
> their own standards, yet the vast majority haven't, so providing a 
> reference certification may have some value.)
> 
> I'm curious if anyone knows of an existing K12 teacher certification 
> for computer science?
> 
> In other words, does it exist and just needs promoting? Or does it 
> need creating?
> 
> - Karsten
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