news
Society | DOI: 10.1145/2347736.2347743
Leah Hoffmann
Computer Science
and the three Rs
A growing sense of crisis prevails as computer science
searches for its place in the K– 12 curriculum.

NOt lOng AgO, the education- al crisis most talked about by computer scientists was the steep decline in the number of undergraduates who picked the field as their major. Today, with those declines in reverse at many U.S. universities, there is a growing recognition—both in the U.S. and internationally—that the real crisis lies not at the college level, but in primary and secondary school.

PhotograPh by roy kaltsChMIdt, Courtesy oF la WrenCe berkeley natIonal laboratory

“The college level is, in a certain
sense, too late,” says Stephen Coo-
per, an associate professor of com-
puter science at Stanford University
and chairman of the board of the
Computer Science Teachers Associa-
tion (CSTA), a membership organiza-
tion that serves U.S. K– 12 educators.
“Though young women decide what
they’re majoring in much later than
young men, they also decide what
they’re not majoring in much earlier
than men do. If they decide they’re
not interested in computer science
at the end of 8th grade, there’s noth-
ing we can do at the college level to
change that. We’ve missed the oppor-
tunity. But if we change K– 12, we have
a chance to solve this problem.”
Of course, it is not just about re-
cruiting majors or correcting the field’s
gender imbalance and lack of minori-
ties. Computer science has become an
integral part of nearly all science, tech-
nology, engineering, and mathemat-
ics (STEM) jobs, and it is of increas-
ing conceptual relevance to a variety
of other professions, as well. “There’s
really no science that doesn’t involve
computation in a pretty fundamental
way, and if you look beyond science,
what people need to know is what com-
putation can do for them. What are the
parts of your job that could be solved
computationally? Would you know
what kinds of tools to ask for and how

Elementary school students learn how computers enable science during a field trip sponsored by Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory in may 2010.

 

to put them together to solve your particular problem?” explains Jan Cuny, a program officer at the National Science Foundation who has headed a number of initiatives to support computer science education.

Yet over the past 20 years, Cuny
notes, the percentage of students who
take computer science in U.S. high
schools has dropped from 25% to 19%.
In many schools, the subject is simply
not taught; in others, what is covered
are soft skills like touch typing and the
use of Microsoft Office. Because of the
decentralized nature of the U.S. school
system, precise student numbers are
difficult to discern. However, accord-
ing to Running on Empty: The Failure
to Teach K– 12 Computer Science in the
Digital Age, a 2010 report released by
CSTA and ACM, only 14 states have ad-
opted recognized education standards
for computer science instruction, and
only nine states allow computer sci-
ence courses to count toward the hours
required to graduate for either science
or mathematics.