[Edu-sig] Significant drop in CS interest in high schools

[Helene Martin]

I don't think members of the K-12 CS education community were entirely
comfortable with the way the article you quote interpreted the
research or even the research itself.  For example, the survey is of
self-identified CS teachers rather than of schools.  Mark Guzdial had
a good post on the subject with a response by Alan Kay:
http://computinged.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/questioning-the-report-that-high-school-cs-is-declining/

I'll be starting a CS program in a Seattle school in a couple of
weeks.  I continue to be amazed at how little programming/computer
science/technology is available to students in the district.  After
all, we have Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc at our doorstep.  But
administrators don't understand what programming is, knowledgeable
teachers are hard to retain, curriculum is pretty spotty and students
are scared of being labeled as nerds.   And then as Kirby mentions,
there are a million and a half bureaucratic hurdle to go through.
Restrictive graduation requirements is a good example, teacher
certification is another.

If anyone is interested in taking a look and maybe providing feedback,
two of my courses -- Exploring Computer Science and Creative Computing
-- will use Python quite a bit.  Right now http://garfieldcs.com/ only
has marketing materials but I'll be posting assignments, etc as the
school year starts.

A number of us K-12 computer science instructors have been trying to
put together a social network (http://csteachers.ning.com/) that
hopefully will one day be taken over by CSTA.  The idea is to get
teachers talking about policy issues affecting them, share curriculum
resources and just be aware of who is out there interested in K-12
CS/programming education.  There's already a vibrant AP CS
mailing-list-based community but there isn't such a thing for those of
us teaching Python or other languages/tools/courses.  It would be
wonderful to get some Python experts involved and starting some
conversation.  Please join us!

Best,

Hélène.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Jeff Rush<jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
> wesley chun wrote:
>> AP CS Courses (and Students) on the Decline, CSTA Survey Finds
>>
>> This spring, the 2009 CSTA National Secondary Computer Science Survey
>> collected responses from some 1,100 high school Computer Science
>> teachers. The results: only 65 percent reported that their schools
>> offer introductory or pre-AP Computer Science classes, as compared
>> with 73 percent in 2007 and 78 percent in 2005. Only 27 percent
>> reported that their schools offer AP CS, as compared with 32 percent
>> in 2007 and 40 percent in 2005. And 74 percent offer CS content in
>> courses other than introductory or AP CS, down from 85 percent in
>> 2007.
>>
>> "The continuing drop in students taking AP CS is a serious
>> warning sign about the state of computing in this country, as a
>> student taking AP typically indicates his or her interest in majoring
>> in that field in college or pursuing a career in that area," said
>> Chris Stephenson, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers
>> Association.
>
> I'm not involved in the education industry so I'm having a slight logic
> disconnect with this article.
>
> The title implies that students are not -choosing- to major in CS but
> the body talks about fewer schools -offering- the classes.  I'm not
> clear to what degree students influence the offering of classes versus
> school leadership deciding that.  Is this more a perception of viability
> issue among management or students?  Or perhaps a problem with schools
> not being able to supply teachers that can teach it, and thereby
> dropping classes?
>
> Maybe CS needs a good PR campaign, showing how fun it is, how it
> directly impacts the qualify of life for society and how empowering it
> is to understand and be able to take control of the technology around
> us.  It also is one of the cheapest fields in which to get started as
> everything you need is free - software tools, online books, video
> classes.  You don't need organizational permission to participate like
> you do with many majors like nuclear physics (my original major) or
> medicine and it doesn't even require expensive/messy raw materials like
> electronics, chemistry or biology.  Instead you work with the stuff of
> dreams, in an air-conditioned clean environment!
>
> I didn't know about the Computer Science Teachers Association and I see
> they have a very nice website.  Thanks for the tip -- I'll be checking
> it out as I feel for the democratization of society we definitely need
> more people working on computers.  Computers (being amplifiers of
> thought mostly for those who program them) are the only tool developed
> by Mankind that has such immense power to enslave society if left in the
> hands of a few.  Just look at the information sieving and social
> monitoring facilities springing up around us.
>
> -Jeff
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