A recent study by Robert Tai, assistant professor of science education at the University of Virginia, gives some important support to warning voices being raised about the impact of NCLB testing on high school computer science education.
As two recent articles in the CSTA Voice noted, the current emphasis on student performance in math and literacy is having a profound effect on high school computer science. Teachers and resources are being pulled from non-core courses to provide remedial learning to raise test scores, leading to the cancellation of computer science classes, especially in urban schools that are more reliant upon federal funding.
Tai surveyed 3,359 students who were in the eighth grade in 1988. He found that among students who expressed interest in science and yet made only average math scores, 34% graduated college with a science or engineering degree while
those with above-average math scores and no preference for science, had only a 19% likelihood of earning a science or engineering degree.
Tai’s findings suggest that mandatory testing policies, such as the No Child Left Behind Law might actually worsen the nation’s output of scientists by focusing to narrowly on math and literacy achievement.
“We’ve been so focused on achievement, on getting students to do better, we’ve pretty much ignored their interest,” Tai said in an interview. “And it’s their interest that’s going to pull them through.”
Tai’s findings are particularly important in light of the President’s concerns about national competitiveness in areas such as supercomputing and nanotechnology for which computer science education provides the conceptual building blocks. Decreasing opportunities for students to study computer science in high school deprives students of the opportunity to explore their interests and abilities in this field, and therefore only exacerbates the current pipeline crisis.

The other day I was talking to Geoff Sutcliffe at the University of Miami about a grant proposal he is working on that cleverly combines JETT workshops for teachers with funding for students who want to major in computer science or mathematics. Considering the cost of education these days, this sounds like a great idea to me, and according to a new report from the American Council on Education, Geoff may actually be addressing the key problem behind the under-representation of minority students in our field.
An interesting new report from the American Council on Education is shedding new light on why there are fewer Black and Hispanic students who graduate with university degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Contrary to the commonly-held belief that many minority students are simply not interested in these fields, the study indicates that Black and Hispanic students are about as likely as their white and Asian-American peers to enter college interested in majoring in the STEM disciplines.
The report, “Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology,” is based on a longitudinal study in which the U.S. Department of Education collected data over six years on the progress of 12,000 students who began college in the fall of 1995. The initial sampling of entering freshmen found that 22.7% of Hispanic and 18.6% of black students entered college interested in the STEM fields, compared with 26.4% of Asian-American students and 18% of white students.
It revealed that while Black and Hispanic students were just as likely as other students to get though the perceived gatekeeper courses in the first year, they seemed to run into trouble in their third year, and by the end of their sixth year of college, just 62.5% of those who had still been in STEM fields as of 1998 had obtained degrees in those areas, compared with 94.8% of Asian-American and 86.7% of white students who had remained in those fields.
Among the results of the study, these three stood out particularly for me.
* Nearly 42% of those who earned a degree in a STEM discipline on time had taken a highly rigorous curriculum in high school, compared with just 18 percent of those who did not finish on time.
* More than 64% of those who completed such degrees had at least one parent with at least a bachelor’s degree, and 47%t came from families with income levels in the top third nationally. Of the students who failed to earn their degrees on time, 38% had at least one parent with at least a bachelor’s degree, and 28% came from the wealthiest third.
* Of the students who graduated on time, 38.5% had received financial-aid grants exceeding $5,000 as freshmen, and 27.1% had worked more than 15 hours per week. In contrast, just 7.6% of the students who failed to obtain STEM-field degrees on time had received financial-aid grants of $5,000 or more as freshmen, and 42.6% had worked more than 15 hours a week.
What this tell us is that:
* Good high school courses matter
* Family matters
* Money matters
Much of our effort at CSTA is focused on convincing students that computer science is a rich, diverse, and rewarding field, one worthy of their dreams and their effort. And this is true. But what is also true is that to convince a child to dream and then not provide her or him with the tools to achieve that dream is not just unfair or unwise, it is cruel and irresponsible.
This is why we need to work together to make our programs more accessible to all students. This is one reason I hope that Geoff gets his grant.
Copies of the report can be ordered for $22 (plus $6.95 shipping and handling) from the ACE Fulfillment Service, Department 191, Washington, D.C. 20055-1091, or by calling (301) 632-6757.
Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

While it may seem like good news, President George Bush’s State of the Union promise to improve national competitiveness by supporting math and science education may turn out to be very bad news for computer science education.
In his State of the Union address, Bush promised to train 70,000 teachers to lead high school Advanced Placement math and science classes. Unfortunately, he didn’t say anything about computer science.
The problem is that computer science is a science and that it should be seen as a core component of all STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) initiatives. Training more math and science teachers will simply diminish the already shallow pool of qualified computer science teachers.
What we have, you see, is a communication problem. Too few people understand that computer science is as much part of the core of required knowledge for every educated citizen today as physics, biology, chemistry, or mathematics.
In addition, all of the government’s economic indicators point to the Information Technology industry as the primary field for job growth and resulting worker shortages over the next twenty years. Any government education initiative that does not improve support for computer science education will never improve our national competitiveness in key areas of innovation.
So what can we do?
It is essential that we help everyone, especially policy-makers, to understand a few simple things:
1. Computer science is a science and needs to be included in any STEM initiative for high schools.
2. Teaching students to use computers is only half the battle. Computer science education is the key to preparing students for tomorrow’s technology driven world.
3. Several fields in computer science over the next ten years will be among the fastest growing careers but the current lack of support for high school computer science education is contributing to the declining number of students pursuing studies in this field.
4. To keep the United States competitive, we need to effectively educate the future creators of advanced technology–the innovators and problem solvers.
And we need high school computer science and high school computer science teachers to do all of these things. We are already seeing school districts pulling good teachers out of computer science classrooms and putting them in math or science classrooms to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Legislation and this new initative will make the situation worse, not better.
Help CSTA get the word out! Talk to your congressmen and your senators. Help them understand why supporting computer science education in high schools right now is the key to long term innovation and economic survival.
Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

My friend Joe Kmoch emailed me this morning to let me know that my Letter to the Editor had been published in one of my favourite magazines… Edutopia, published by the George Lucas Foundation.
Joe also suggested that I post a copy of the letter for you, so here it is.
IT DOESN’T COMPUTE
I am so glad that Todd Oppenheimer (“Tech Made Easy,” October 2005) called attention to the fact that too few high schools teach computer science. When we talk about the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education for students, computer science is often completely ignored despite the fact that computing is now necessary for almost every single transaction and interaction in our society.
As a result, though considerable time and money have been spent on increasing and supporting integration of computing tools across the curriculum, computer science has been left to wither and die in many schools, school districts, and states. The result of this shortsightedness is that we continue to fall farther and farther behind on the indicators of high-level computing ability.
For example, U.S. universities no longer dominate in the prestigious ACM International Programming contest. The long-term effect of this problem is that, though we may excel at training students to use the tools that power our world, we are forgetting to train those who will build them, and everyone knows that it is the tool builders, not the tool users, who guarantee our economic future.
For some reason, there is an enormous misconception that there are no jobs in computing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every labor prognostication we have shows that the gap between the highly skilled workers we produce from our schools and the jobs that need filling in our society is growing, not shrinking. It is also probably safe to say that the great scientific breakthroughs of this century (especially in the combinatorial sciences such as bioinformatics) will depend on computing knowledge. We continue to ignore this fact at our peril.
CHRIS STEPHENSON
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
COMPUTER SCIENCE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

At a recent meeting of teachers and administrators from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), I happened to overhear expressions of concern about the College Board’s plans to conduct audits of AP Computer Science courses and the teachers who teach them. Basically the teachers were concerned that audits of teacher credentials would seriously diminish the district’s ability to find enough teachers for courses that are already challenging to staff.
Following up on this line of questioning, I contacted Gail Chapman, who is the Director for K-12 Consultant Training and Support at the College Board and my best professional source on all things AP Computer Science. Gail confirmed that while the exact details are still under discussion at the College Board, it is their intention to conduct course audits.
As noted on the AP Central website, the College Board sees the audit process as a central strategy for maintaining course quality and integrity:
“The goal of the AP Course Audit is to ensure that the newest generations of AP students are assured of the same level of consistent quality in their AP courses that continues to be manifest in the development and scoring of the AP Exams.”
It is important, Gail says, to understand that this issue is not just a computer science issue. Rather, the Universities have raised on-going concerns with the entire spectrum of AP courses because they feel that schools often provide AP credit for courses that are not AP in content. As a result, students are simply not sufficiently prepared for the rigor of a university-level course. If the College Board is to maintain its credibility with the post-secondary institutions, it must ensure that courses labeled AP provide instruction and content that reflects the AP Course Descriptions.
Gail also believes that ensuring that AP courses contain AP content and are taught by teachers who are adequately prepared to teach this content protects teachers as well. Too often, she notes, teachers are required to teach courses that are not within their discipline and this puts an incredible strain on them.
This does not mean, however, that the LAUSD folks do not have some grounds to worry. As we have seen with the requirements for “highly qualified” teachers under the NCLB legislation, sometimes the additional qualifications bureaucracy really does disenfranchise people who have the knowledge credentials but not necessarily the paper credentials. Appropriate wording to the course audit documents that will allow for the latter, but encourage the former is one of the things still in discussion.
Gail encourages teachers to provide feedback regarding the course audit that can assist in further defining the audit details.
For more information about the AP course audits, visit
http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/article/0,3045,151-165-0-46361,00.html
And as always, let us know what you think!
Chris