Communications of the ACM
What It Will Take to Make Computer Science Education Available in All Schools
Marie desJardins, University of Maryland, Baltimore County associate dean for Engineering and Information Technology and CS professor, sees a great need to expand computer science education in the K-12 grades.
Credit: Berkeley Lab, CC BY-NC-ND
With student interest in computer science (CS) on the rise, Marie desJardins, University of Maryland, Baltimore County associate dean for Engineering and Information Technology and CS professor, sees a great need to expand CS education in the K-12 grades.
"Often students who want to major in computer science...do not have the computational thinking or mathematical preparation to succeed in college-level coursework," desJardins writes.
She also cites a lack of sufficient effort among educators to widen interest in computing.
"The vast majority of students in the U.S. do not take even a single computer science course throughout their K-12 education," she notes. DesJardins partially attributes this to there being no states that have designated a CS class as a graduation requirement. Although many states are now striving to more deeply embed computing instruction within K-12 education, desJardins observes full statewide universal K-12 CS education remains nonexistent.
"Moreover, the standards that have been adopted by states focus more on low-level skills than on abstract computational concepts, and therefore do not prepare students well for more advanced college-level computing courses," she warns.
DesJardins points to a lack of qualified CS teachers as one limiting factor, while inconsistency in CS education standards across states is another.
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