Dive Brief:
- Chicago Public Schools officials are saying that they're ready to advance an initiative to mandate coding classes for high schoolers, initially proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013.
- CPS already has an existing partnership with Code.org, which provides free computer science curriculum and professional development for teachers, and computer science courses have already been implemented at 107 CPS schools.
- If the state Board of Ed passes the new measure, then students, beginning with the 2016-17 freshman class, will have to take at least one computer science class to graduate.
Dive Insight:
As of June 2015, 14 states required schools to accept computer science courses to fill graduation requirements in math, science or foreign language. The fact that 250 teachers and administrators in the district are already computer science certified will help make the transition, should one occur, easier for CPS.
In the Avondale Elementary school district near Phoenix, AZ, coding is already being incorporated as a mandatory staple of K-8 curriculum. New York City schools have a 10-year rollout plan for their use of computer science content. As of 2014, more than 60 school districts had already committed to computer science. Both Arkansas and Washington state require computer science classes to be offered.
Additionally, President Barack Obama requested $4 billion to boost computer science literacy in U.S. elementary and secondary schools in his budget proposal for fiscal year 2017, and experts in the field have stressed that it would be highly advantageous for some of that money to go toward teacher training.
Despite the momentum, hurdles still exist. A major roadblock is the fact that district administrators must be convinced to invest in an area that standardized tests currently don't measure.
