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

[Edward Cherlin]

I don't know the details on this issue, but I am aware of several more
general problems.

One is that nobody knows what CS is or should be. I got into it before
there were CS departments, from Foundations of Mathematics,
specifically Incompleteness and Undecidability and Non-Standard
Arithmetic. Then I gave myself doses of Computational Complexity,
algorithms, data structures, proving programs correct/deriving correct
programs, concurrent programming, language design and implementation
(including OOP), numerical analysis, relational database theory,
security, and various other topics. I put considerable effort into
understanding different models of computation, as different as
FORTRAN, LISP, APL, PostScript, and FORTH. Currently I am looking at
Parrot, the all-singing, all-dancing virtual machine for dynamic
languages.

I look at CS as the study of everything related to programming that
computers should do automatically so that programmers don't have to
keep reinventing the wheel.

Looking at the Course Description for Computer Science A available at

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_compscia.html
http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-computer-science-course-description.pdf

I see that

o Use of a specified subset of Java is required.

o Both teachers and students must have sufficient background in math

o and have some competence in written communication (for documentation).

o A minimum of three hours a week of exclusive access to a capacious
and fairly fast computer is required for each student, and more is
recommended.

o After-hours access to the computers is recommended.

o The content changes from year to year, so teachers must be prepared
to update their skills.

Each of these requirements places a significant burden on schools that
want to offer such a program. For example, it is necessary to use a
textbook on the AP Java subset, not any of the free Java textbooks.
This makes AP CS an easy target during a time of cutbacks.

Much of the content of the exam is properly software engineering
rather than CS. Legal and ethical issues are also included.

IMNSHO, there are major conceptual errors in the course design. For example,

"...there are three standard sorts that are required for the AP
CS A course: the two most common quadratic sorts—Selection sort and Insertion
sort—and the more efficient Merge sort. Of course, the latter implies
that students
know the merge algorithm for sorted lists.

"Students in the AP CS A course are not required to know the asymptotic (Big-Oh)
analysis of these algorithms, but they should understand that
Mergesort is advanta-
geous for large data sets and be familiar with the differences between
Selection and
Insertion sort."

Where is Quicksort?

I/O is excluded because it is not standardized in Java. Also, looking
elsewhere, where is the Web? Where is the Chomsky hierarchy of
language types (regular, context-free, context-sensitive,
unrestricted) and their recognizers? (finite-state machine, stack
machine, bounded Turing machine, Turing machine) Where is BNF? There
are other major omissions.

I find that the course described is simultaneously overambitious and
severely dumbed down. The sample exam questions are frightfully
low-level compared with the AP Biology I took in 1962. Most of these
problems come out to one-liners in APL or J, including the OOP
questions, which J handles in Namespaces. Some of the practical
problems are incorrectly stated for the intended problem domain. For
example, clear a check and a per-check fee from a bank account, with
no provision for handling checks that are too large. (Do we just pay
them? Charge an overdraft fee? Bounce them and charge a fee?)

I am working on how to teach CS ideas in third grade using tools such
as Etoys Smalltalk, UCBLogo, and Turtle Art, all of which are packaged
in Sugar for the OLPC XO and other Linuces. Etoys and UCBLogo are
available for numerous platforms, and Turtle Art is written in Python,
making it easy to port. We already have more than 40 years experience
teaching programming in elementary schools with Logo and Smalltalk.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 4:44 PM, kirby urner<kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>>
>
> Per my recent meeting with some pro teachers at Sherwood High School
> on August 7, myself and Lindsey representing ISEPP (isepp.org), the
> politics are thus:  in Oregon State, three years of high school
> mathematics are mandated by law, and this has traditionally meant
> something called "algebra" upon entering high school, and something
> called "geometry" the year following, leaving the third year somewhat
> up for grabs.
>
> Enter computer science teachers, already at a huge disadvantage
> because their subject is "elective" whereas the math teachers have
> this legal mandate to enforce three years of their discipline, or the
> degree might be denied.
>
> Solution:  make a digital math offering that fulfills the State's 3rd
> year requirement, competing with Stats and/or Trig or whatever
> students take after Algebra, Geometry.
>
>> 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?
>>
>
> My view is a kind of hyper-specialization run amok somewhat paralyzed
> the system from making real change, to where a sort of para- and/or
> quasi- legal infrastructure, including home schooling and militant
> parent led alternative schools within the public system (charters or,
> in Portland, schools within schools), was needed to goad the balance
> into adopting similar changes.  It's basically the usual bell curve of
> early adopters, then the bulge, then the laggards.  The traditional
> "bandwagon" effect.
>
> The upshot is we're looking at a gradual displacement of the
> calculator generation textbooks with the newer Litvins style
> textbooks, whether PDF or dead tree or Amazon reader, is for another
> thread (already completed?).
>
>> 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!
>>
>
> This is all good, and whatever the CS folks come up with, we can rip
> off and use to recruit for our digital math pilots, be these single
> courses or gateways.
>
> The reason I say gateways is kids increasingly enter high school
> already knowing quite a bit of the algebra/geometry stuff, e.g. our
> geek Hogwarts Winterhaven placed freshman directly into math-intensive
> chemistry, with moles 'n shit, and the kids did OK, just out of middle
> school.  So that leaves room for green field development i.e. we don't
> hafta wait 'til some "third year" to start with the digital
> mathematics (aka discrete, concrete, post-analogy, computer-based, or
> whatever community standard).
>
>> 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.
>
> Well said.  We either control them, or we let our misleading fantasies
> about them, born of ignorance, control us.
>
> Here's some more of that CS / math hybrid I'm talking about:
>
> http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1979894&tstart=0
>
> Kirby
>
>>
>> -Jeff
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-- 
Edward Mokurai Cherlin
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name, and
Children are
my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/