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White House Announces Commitments to Computer Science Education

December 11, 2014
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This week marks 2014 Computer Science Education Week, the Obama administration’s call to the education, business, foundational, and nonprofit communities to help support and expand access to computer science education in American schools. On Monday, the administration announced several commitments aimed at providing millions of additional students with computer since education, including:

  • Partnering with Code.org to offer computer science courses at more than 60 school districts nationwide, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and the other four largest school districts in the country,  effectively reaching over four million students in more than 1,000 schools;
  • Philanthropic contributions to train 25,000 computer science teachers by fall 2016, with more than $20 million in donations coming  from individuals such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Napster founder Sean Parker, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and others;
  • National Science Foundation (NSF) partnerships with Teach for America, the National Math and Science Initiative, and the College Board to encourage additional computer science courses, expand professional development offerings in computer science, and establish an Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course designed to recruit students into computing; and,
  • Awards and outreach focused on increasing the participation of women and under-represented minorities in computer science.

As part of his announcement, President Obama released a video message on computer science education to promote Computer Science Education Week and the Hour of Code campaign, which provides a one-hour introductory course in coding.

In California, three bills related to computer science education were recently signed into law with bipartisan support. AB 1764 creates guidelines for a rigorous computer science course that can satisfy a high school math graduation requirement, SB 1200 recommends that the University of California and California State University systems recognize computer science toward college admissions, and AB 1530 seeks to align computer science standards with Common Core curriculum.

information technology, white house