Communications of the ACM

I M A G E C O U R T E S Y O F W H I T E H O U S E . G O V / B L O G

A Decade of ACM Efforts
Contribute to
Computer Science for All

bit.ly/1O1haT1), which Stephenson
described as a “companion piece to
what eventually became the CSTA
K– 12 Computer Science Standards”
( https://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/
K12Standards.html), addressed the
link between K– 12 computer science
education and national technologi-
cal competitiveness and “provided a
strong call to policy makers to begin
addressing computer science educa-
tion at the state and local level.”
Among the organizations joining
the effort to get CS education into pub-
lic schools are the National Center for
IN LATE JANUARY, U.S. President Barack Obama asked Con- gress to approve $4.1 billion in spending in the coming fiscal year to support the Computer
Science for All initiative, aimed at pro-
viding computer science education in
U.S. public schools. Obama pointed
out computer science is no longer “an
optional skill” in the modern econ-
omy,” yet “only about a quarter of
our K– 12 (kindergarten through 12th
grade) schools offer computer science.
Twenty-two states don’t even allow it to
count toward a diploma.”
While many organizations have con-
tributed to the national effort to see
real computer science exist and count
toward graduation requirements in
U.S. public schools, former ACM CEO
John R. White said, “ACM has been
there from the beginning.” Indeed,
White contends Obama’s Computer
Science for All initiative “in a way rep-
resents the culmination of more than a
decade of effort initiated by the ACM.”
Computer science education in
public schools has been a main focus
for ACM since the 1990s. “This concern
for, and commitment to, K– 12 com-
puter science resulted in the formation
of the Computer Science Teachers As-
sociation (CSTA, http://www.csta.acm.
org/) in the 2004 timeframe,” noted
White. “Supporting the launch of CSTA
moved ACM’s efforts from a series of
task forces concerned with K– 12 com-
puter science education to a national
effort focused on supporting and grow-
ing the community of computer sci-
ence teachers.”
CSTA founding director Chris Ste-
phenson, who now is head of computer
science education programs at Google,
said that even before the official forma-
tion of CSTA, its future leaders were
working to raise the national con-
sciousness regarding CS education.

She said the ACM Model Curriculum,
published by the ACM K– 12 Task Force
in 2003, was “a germinal work, making
the argument that computer science
was a rigorous academic discipline
with a body of knowledge that could
and should be reflected in computing
courses in schools.”
In 2005, CSTA published its first of-
ficial white paper, The New Education-
al Imperative: Improving High School
Computer Science Education (http://

U.S. President Barack Obama discussing his Computer Science for All plan to give students across the country the chance to learn computer science in school.