Over at Digital Education, my colleague Ian Quillen highlights a bill just introduced in the U.S. House to help promote high-quality computer-science education in schools.
Last month, I wrote a story about recent initiatives to increase access at the precollegiate level to high-quality instruction in computer science. These efforts come as national statistics indicate that computing will be one of the fastest-growing areas for employment in coming years, but experts say the U.S. educational pipeline is expected to fall far short in producing college graduates in the field.
The House bill, introduced by Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, apparently is backed by some key stakeholders in the computer-science field, including companies such as Microsoft and Google, as well as the Association for Computing Machinery and the Computer Science Teachers Association.
A press release from the Association for Computing Machinery says: “The central part of the act proposes grants to assess the current condition of computer-science education in the states, and create state plans and actions for reform. It also calls for the formation of a commission to review the national computer-science education environment, and create strong teacher-preparation programs at institutions of higher education.”