Science

Google’s Stance on the Common Core: It’s Flawed

By Liana Loewus — December 10, 2012 1 min read
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In a Huffington Post piece, two Google representatives write about what they perceive as a “major flaw” in the Common Core State Standards: It doesn’t address computer science.

Standardization itself is a “significant improvement” from a system in which academic objectives vary widely from state to state, contend Maggie Johnson and Jordan Lloyd Bookie. Yet the fact that neither the math standards nor the Next Generation Science Standards include computer science is a “serious issue considering the key role computer science and computing plays in our economy, society and our everyday lives.”

Johnson and Bookie cite a projected 19 percent increase in employment in computer and mathematical occupations between 2010 and 2020. “We are systematically making the decision not to prepare our young people for these jobs,” they write. “We are doing a disservice to them by inadequately preparing them for the entirety of STEM professions, especially computing, which is and will continue to be a critical skill for most jobs in the future.”

The piece is timely, in that the nonpartisan advocacy group Computing in the Core has dubbed Dec. 9-15 Computer Science Advocacy Week.

What are your thoughts, teachers? Do you agree that students need to learn specific computer-science standards in order to be truly college and career ready, which is a central aim of the common core? Or does this negate another CCSS goal, which is to pare down the number of standards in order to teach more deeply?

(Ironically enough, I found the link to this article in a newsletter, just above a link to one about a Tennessee teacher who urges students to take a week-long break from technology. But perhaps experiencing the difficulties of a tech-free week would hammer home what a “critical skill” computing has become ... )

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.