Increasing the availability of Computer Science offerings for all students, especially those who are members of underrepresented groups, is going to require an “all hands on deck” approach. Ensuring all students are exposed to the highest-quality curriculum and experiences can be realized if we commit to aligning our programs to the CSTA Computer Science Standards.
When Gary Beach founded TECH CORPS almost 20 years ago, he had a belief that technology professionals could be a tremendous resource to schools if they could be effectively connected. In 1995, TECH CORPS was launched to be that connector, and since that time more than 10,000 technology professionals in the U.S. have shared their time and talents assisting schools with technology-related projects.
Early TECH CORPS projects focused on hardware, from wiring schools to setting up computer labs, but fast forward to today and a majority of our TECH CORPS projects and programs now focus on providing students with access to the technology competencies they need to be successful in the classroom today and workforce tomorrow.
As technical innovation plays an increasingly critical role in virtually every sector of the US economy, young people entering the marketplace without the necessary technical skills will not only be unemployable, they will be irrelevant in our global economy. TECH CORPS is dedicated to improving educational outcomes for students by providing high-quality, experiential learning opportunities in the areas of computer science and information technology.
It is that dedication that led to the creation of Techie Club. Techie Club includes 40+ hours of hands-on, interactive activities for 3rd through 6th grade students. The lessons focus on a variety of computing topics, promote 21st century skills and provide students with an awareness of technology and STEM-related careers. Over the course of a school year, teams of TECH CORPS volunteers deliver the lessons to groups of up to 20 elementary school students.
When CSTA released the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards in 2011, our staff was interested to see how our Techie Club lessons aligned. After a couple of very productive working sessions with the CSTA team we started mapping our curriculum to the standards using the curriculum crosswalk template. I am extremely proud to say that not only did our lessons meet the CS Standards for the Level I 3-6 grade band but some also aligned with the Level II 6-9 grade band as well.
CSTA encourages districts and states to demonstrate that their curricula align to the learning standards detailed in the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards. I encourage all informal education organizations creating materials or delivering programs to support K-12 Computer Science education do the same.
Lisa M. Chambers
National Executive Director
TECH CORPS

Each year during CS Ed Week I invite alumni to return to my school to talk about their education and careers with the junior class. I open it up to any alumni who feels that Computer Science and computational thinking is a large part of what they do on a daily basis. I believe it is important to bring people in who aren’t necessarily in the software field, but who use computational thinking skills in their work and who realize the value of those skills in what they do.
One of the visitors this year is a young woman who I taught several years ago and who is now a neurobiology doctoral student at MIT. She conveyed the important message that her computing skills are what have enabled her to be an immediate contributor to the labs she works in. As a Ph.D. student, she rotates through labs monthly so there is a small window to make herself helpful and to make herself known. She said that the majority of people with whom she interacts do not have computer science skills and are reluctant to try to develop them to solve a problem. She has quickly become a go-to person because she knows how to code and she is not afraid to try to figure out a new language or piece of software to get the job done. She attributes that to her background in Computer Science, even though she does not consider herself a programmer.
Although she is in the biology field, she talked about how important it is for a scientist today to have the ability to work with and manipulate data. What I found particularly interesting was that she herself never understood the importance of Computer Science to her education and work until now. It was good feedback for me as a teacher to hear that what she learned in high school and in college held no real relevance to her. She was a good student and did well in my course. However, she said the assignments at the time seemed disconnected and if she had been asked to build something to accomplish a real-world task that held meaning to her personally, it would have had a bigger impact on her.
One might question whether maturity and finding her true calling allowed her to finally make the connection, but as a teacher, it makes me think that I need to try to come up with projects that can make a personal connection for students. This young woman had a great message for my students, and a great message for me too.
Karen Lang
CSTA 9-12 Representative

I was in the Chicago area this past weekend as part of the Conference Committee. While I can’t tell you everything you may want to know about our summer conference, I can say that it looks like it will be the best program we’ve ever had!
So many great proposals make it easy to put together a conference program that is varied and relevant, but hard to winnow them down to the number of concurrent sessions we can run. I am confident every CSTA member will be able to find several sessions they don’t want to miss on this year’s agenda!
Pheasant Run Resort was under snow when I got there and decorated for the holidays, however, I could see that the resort has much to offer your family if you choose to bring them to the conference with you. Three pools, a golf course, a spa, and an indoor version of Bourbon Street are just the beginning. A full theater and comedy club as well as five different restaurants ranging from the award winning Harvest, serving gourmet cuisine with regional ingredients, to the fun Jambalaya for Cajun fare. The golf course is large and very close (it made a beautiful snow scene) and they have a Pro Shop in the Lounge. While we were there, the resort had many activities aimed at children, so I’m sure yours will find something fun to do while you are in the conference! I hope to see you there.
Tammy Pirmann
District Representative
Conference Committee Member

Wisconsin is one of the few states to have a distinct license that is required for teachers of computer science courses in high schools. This license, created in the 1980s, helped Wisconsin develop a strong cadre of computer science teachers. However, over the past 20 years, as computer science was replaced by computer literacy in schools, the number of practicing computer science teachers in the state dwindled. Due to lack of demand, schools of education dropped their computer science licensing programs, leaving fewer and fewer qualified computer science teachers in high schools.
Why is licensure so important? Teachers in Wisconsin cannot teach computer science without this certification. When schools of education dropped their licensure program in the early 2000s they made it impossible for schools to hire new teachers to teach computer science classes. The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has a “guidance rule” which says that any teacher can teach an introductory computer literacy course, as long as that course does not contain more than 25% programming content. CSTA-WI has asked DPI to use this rule to allow any licensed teacher to teach Exploring Computer Science, since this course is at an introductory level and has less than 25% programming. However, the current licensing rules require a Computer Science license in order to teach AP CS A and, most likely, AP CS Principles.
With these problems in mind, the CSTA Wisconsin leadership reached out to members of the Wisconsin university CS community. We found individuals at Marquette University and UW-La Crosse who shared our desire to revive computer science education in Wisconsin and agreed to write a NSF CE-21 grant with us. We call our consortium PUMP-CS, which stands for Preparing the Upper Midwest for Principles of Computer Science.
PUMP-CS reached out to the DPI and asked them to partner in our CE-21 proposal. This was an important move because, when the NSF awarded us the grant, we were then able to ask the DPI to step forward to make change.
The DPI set up a meeting in December that included high-level DPI staff and the consultants responsible for Mathematics and Business and IT professional development. The DPI members in the group had already had internal discussions about the definition of computer science, why it is vitally important to teach it in grades K-12, and why a computer science license helps to promote quality instruction. In fact, they made copies of the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards and passed them out to everyone in the room!
Our team, led by Dennis Brylow of Marquette University and Tom Gendreau of UW-LaCrosse, presented information to the group about a wide variety of topics, including a definition of computer science, the state of computer science education in Wisconsin, and the goals of our grant.
The DPI team then explained that they wanted to help us update the Computer Science license requirements developed in the 1980s and put computer science at an equal level with other academic subjects. In other words, they wanted the new standards to define what teachers should know and be able to do and bring them into accordance with the NCATE teacher education standards developed by ISTE and CSTA.
The current political environment is highly charged with regards to the adoption of any kind of standards, so the DPI asked us to be patient and to work internally while they assemble a group of expert computer science teachers and teacher educators, to create the student CS standards and the teacher CS standards that would form the basis of all of DPI’s further decisions. CSTA-WI is meeting this request but we are also looking at alternative licensure pathways. Current legislation would allow our PUMP-CS consortium to create an alternative licensure pathway for our cohort participants that can either go through a traditional school of education (such as Marquette University or UW-La Crosse) or can be implemented by the Wisconsin CSTA! We are carefully looking at this option as a means to get more current teachers a CS license without an unwieldy amount of time and money.
CSTA-WI members also found a provision in Wisconsin’s licensing law that allows teachers with certain licenses to earn additional licenses in related areas by passing a content test. For instance, a teacher with a Chemistry license can earn a Physics license by passing a Pearson or Praxis test in Physics. This provision, however, was not being used for computer science because the Wisconsin DPI had not found a CS content test that they could use.
CSTA-WI pointed out to the DPI that other states had tests in place and we began to discuss how Wisconsin could utilize this forgotten provision. Once Wisconsin adopts Teacher Standards for CS, the DPI can approve a current national exam, or pay to have one created that matches the standards that Wisconsin adopts. While politically unlikely at this time, it is also possible that the DPI could modify the provision in the licensing rules to allow teachers with other certifications, such as Business Education or Technical Education, to use the test as a path towards Computer Science licensure.
The team that writes these standards has an important and far-reaching task, one that will affect computer science education in our state for years. CSTA-WI is using our member list to identify and recommend computer science content experts with extensive classroom experience. We are reaching out to these people and providing their names to the DPI in order to populate the committee with members who understand what it means to teach computer science.
Andy Kuemmel
CSTA-WI Chapter