Sometimes it feels like you are up against a brick wall. Your own principal threatens to cancel your AP CS course due to low enrollment and budgetary restrictions. It’s funny (or not) how the enrollment minimum keeps increasing each year. Two years ago a course would run with 8 students. Now, the minimum is 18. This, and various other budget issues put your job in jeopardy.
So you convince the administration to offer your AP CS course. Of course, for this to happen, you agree to teach the course in the same room and at the same time as your Intro to CS course (a course in a different language).
What other teacher in what other discipline would agree to do this?
Would the AP Chemistry teacher agree to teach AP Chemistry at the same time and in the same room as an introductory chemistry class?
Does the Spanish teacher teach introductory Italian in the same room at the same time as AP Spanish?
What other disciplines are asked to do what you are asked to do? Who wins in a situation where the teacher is asked to do two jobs at the same time? What does it mean to “win” or to “lose”? How do you keep your sanity? Are the students getting shortchanged? How do your non-computer science colleagues feel about this?
If you are a teacher experiencing a “split personality,” what are your secrets to success?
Fran Trees
CSTA Chapter Liaison

One of the concerns we frequently hear from our members is that administrators and policy makers are not convinced of the need for students to have access to rigorous computer science courses in high school. I think perhaps the best evidence for this need comes from industry.
The figures on jobs provide ample evidence of the growing need for highly skilled computer scientists. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the IT workforce has grown steadily:

Between 2008 and 2018 the total US employment is projected to increase by 15.3 million jobs, or 10 percent, which is about the same as the 15.6 million jobs or 10 percent increase that was projected from 2006 to 2016. While overall job growth is expected to slow, the increasing retirement of the aging baby boomers is also expected to create a significant number of job openings (which are not counted in the projections of new jobs). Of these 15.3 million jobs, the professional IT workforce is projected to add a little under a million new jobs, (814,900) an increase of about 22 percent.
But what is the connection to high schools? Recent information provided by Google and Microsoft indicates that exposure to computer science in high school is critical.
In the summer of 2010 Google conducted a survey of a sample of its U.S. employees about their exposure to computer science prior to college. They compared the results of those who majored in CS in college to those who majored in another subject. Here are the key findings:

Based on these findings, Google concluded that exposing students to CS before college is crucial to growing interest and enrollment in computer science majors and careers.
When I asked Kevin Schofield, General Manager for Strategy and Communications at Microsoft Research if this conclusion was consistent with Microsoft’s employment research, Kevin said:
Microsoft sees early exposure to computer science as critical to getting kids informed and excited about both the importance of CS to the national economy and the career opportunities it provides. The company supports thousands of its own employees to share their knowledge and expertise with local school districts as frequent visitors and speakers at schools through a program called EduConnect.
Over the past few years Microsoft and Google have been extremely active supporters of CSTA’s efforts to support and improve computer science education in K-12, precisely because they know that early exposure to CS is critical for students, for companies, and for the national economy.
Maybe it is time for administrators and policy makers to be required to explain how they can continue to deny students access to critical skills and career opportunities.
Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director

The calendar has now reached the beginning of spring. With the arrival of the birds singing and flowers blooming also comes eighth graders and high school students choosing classes for the coming school year.
Attracting students to Computer Science classes can be a challenge. Computer Science teachers are working against the stereotype that CS is geeky and only for boys. With school funding becoming an issue nationwide, keeping students enrolled in CS classes has become a possible lifeline for not only the offering of the classes but the teaching position.
Where have seen success in attracting students to your CS classes? Share what works for you so that others can duplicate your success.
Dave Burkhart
CSTA Board of Directors

President Obama wants to spend $90 million on ARPA-ED, an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Education. The goal is to fund porjects that will “transform teaching and learning in ways similar to how the Internet, BPS, and robotics have transformed commerce, travel, warfare, and the way we live our daily lives.” This is generally interpreted to mean “let’s put more technology into education.”
My view? Before we put more technology into education, let’s make sure that educators and the existing educational process are valued. Let’s put $90 million (and then some) into increasing teacher salaries. If teachers were paid what some lawyers are paid (if teachers were paid even half of what some lawyers are paid!), we’d have amazing schools, and we’d turn out incredible students. All the cool technology in the world won’t improve education if we don’t have high quality well paid teachers delivering education in well supported schools.
Valerie Barr
CSTA CT Task Force Chair

What is the big deal with Java?
I teach at a public school of excellence that can best be described as a magnet school for the state. We are currently in our recruiting season where we have information sessions and students visiting for the day. I feel like I am constantly on defense when I tell prospective students (and their parents) that the language we use in our course is Racket, formerly Scheme. I tell them the reasons why we use Racket: that it is an incredibly effective introductory language with simple syntax. I also explain that in their second year with us, when they are seniors taking courses at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, they will use Racket in their introductory freshman CS course. I explain that language is irrelevant, that what they are learning is how to problem solve using a particular tool. I tell them that they are 11th graders in high school and that they will have many years to learn many languages, but the concepts are what are important.
Often, I experience the prospective student who has taught himself Java and has programmed numerous advanced programs. He looks at me dumbstruck, like I just dashed all his dreams by telling him he’ll be learning an obscure language that is not used by Apple and Microsoft and Electronic Arts so why would it ever be useful.
The students who seem to get the most out of the course are the ones who don’t have any pre-conceived notions of programming, who have heard of Java and C++ but don’t really have a clue what those terms mean. I think many of the experienced programmers just feel as if they are biding their time to get through my course in order to move on to the more mainstream languages they’ll learn at WPI and in college. They don’t see it as an opportunity to learn something new, but a penance they have to bear to move on. I do get the occasional uh-huh moment with some students when they finally see some of the benefits of a functional language like Racket. But those are few.
What has been your experience with choosing a language to teach?
I know introductory language choices are up for discussion on many CS education listservs.
Do you have any thoughts on talking points that I can use with my students?
Karen Lang
CSTA Board of Directors

I am part of the organisation that trains and selects students to represent New Zealand at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). We attract some government funding by circuitous routes for the students to attend, but none for the leaders. Last year was our country’s best overall performance at the Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Informatics Olympiads, and the suggestion was made that we analyses the results, hopefully helping our case for fundraising.
I enlisted the help of a student during our summer camp and gave him the results for the last three Informatics Olympiads. I asked him to weight the gold, silver, and bronze medals won appropriately and then rank the country on performance with respect to population size.
Naturally India and China don’t look so good when you do that and adjusting by population is a bit spurious! But, in those three years, the same 10 countries were always in the top 10.
They are, in alphabetical order: Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Singapore and Slovakia.
Nine of these are ex soviet block countries and I claim to know nothing much about them, with the exception of a little about Lithuania. Lithuania has a small band of people who work tirelessly within the education ministry (they have a centralized education system) to promote computer science, one of whom, Valentina Dagiene, attends the IOI. She has an impressive record of advocating for informatics, teaching, and producing textbooks for high schools.
If you know of the education systems in these other countries, or the state of CS in their high schools, we would love to know more. Please share you information with us by commenting!!
Margot Phillipps
CSTA International Director