Communications of the ACM

I M A G E C O U R T E S Y O F C O M P U T I N G F O R A L L . O R G

plications? Why doesn’t computer sci-
ence education really exist in the K– 12
space? Is this a curriculum problem? Is
this an image problem? Is this a policy
problem? The more the community at
large looked at these issues, it was defi-
nitely all of those.”
That was the impetus for the for-
mation of the ACM Education Policy
Committee (EPC), chaired by Rob-
ert (“Bobby”) Schnabel, who only left
the group in November to take on the
roles of ACM CEO and executive direc-
tor. The goal of the committee, Wilson
said, “was to unpack the policy issues
around computer science education
and to figure out what we could do to
advance the field in K– 12 education.”
It took several years to find their
way, Wilson said, “in terms of fig-
uring out just what are the policy
issues, because it turns out in edu-
cation that policy and implementa-
tion, which means what actually gets
taught, are deeply linked so the poli-
cies that are at the state or federal
or local level are all contributing to
an ecosystem of what actually gets
taught in schools. Part of our goal
was figuring out what are the policy
levers that you would need to pull to
expand CS K– 12 instruction.”
The EPC determined it needed to
assess the state of CS education for
each of the 50 U.S. states, resulting in
the 2010 report Running on Empty: The
Failure to Teach K– 12 Computer Sci-
ence in the Digital Age, (http://runnin-
gonempty.acm.org/). In that study,
Wilson explained, the EPC tried to an-
swer two policy-related questions:

˲ To what extent do states have education standards around computer science?

˲ Do computer science courses at the high school level count toward a core graduation requirement or are they simply elective?

Wilson worked with co-authors
Leigh Ann DeLyser of Carnegie Mel-
lon University (now at CSNYC.org, an
organization established in 2013 to
ensure all New York City public school
students have access to CS education),
Mark Stehlik of Carnegie Mellon, and
CSTA’s Stephenson. Wilson said the re-
port found that “states don’t have stan-
dards around computer science edu-
Women and Information Technology
(NCWIT, https://www.ncwit.org/) the
National Science Foundation (NSF,
http://www.nsf.gov/), and Code.org, as
well as corporations such as Microsoft
and Google.

White said two major events “really helped move the K– 12 computer science education effort into high gear.” One was the release of the CSTA/ACM-EPC report Running on Empty, which highlighted the deplorable state of computer science education in the 50 states; the other was Congressional action to create Computer Science Education Week (https://csedweek. org/), an annual program dedicated to inspiring K– 12 students to take interest in computer science launched by the Computing in the Core Coalition and now organized by Code.org. “These events, along with NSF’s efforts to nurture the emergence of new high school level computer science courses, set the foundation for a real transformation in high school-level computer science education.”

Early Days

In 2005, Cameron Wilson joined ACM as director of the ACM Policy Office in Washington, D.C. He recalled that early on, he, ACM CEO White, and CSTA’s Stephenson wanted to evaluate the state of CS education in U.S. public schools, only to learn “ computer science really isn’t represented in K– 12.” In trying to pin down what was keeping CS education out of schools, they asked, “what are the policy im-