As digital technology and artificial intelligence play an ever-increasing role in everyday life, Louisiana wants students from kindergarten through high school to learn the basics of computer science.
In May, the state legislature passed a law that will eventually require all public schools to offer computer science courses. And next week, the state board of education will review new computer science learning standards for grades K-12 developed by a group of Louisiana teachers, professors, parents and students.
By teaching students about “digital literacy,” Louisiana has a great opportunity to give them a head start on college and the workforce, said Ashley Townsend, deputy chief of policy for the Louisiana Department of Education.
“There’s a huge industry” for computer science, she said. “How do we make sure we have workers here who are ready to be hired so we can get some tech companies in the state?”
Technology is a growing industry, with thousands of computer science job openings in Louisiana paying an average salary of $82,545, according to the state’s computer science education plan. However, only about 1 in 3 Louisiana high schools offered courses in computer science fundamentals during the 2022-23 school year, the report said.
Under the new law, Act 211, which took effect Aug. 1, public schools with students in grades 6-8 must begin teaching the basics of computer science in the 2026-27 school year. Students starting high school that year will be required to take at least one computer science course before graduating. Primary schools must start teaching computing by the 2027-28 school year.
Teacher training programs must begin adding computer science classes in 2026, the law says. Although not currently required, nearly 2,000 K-12 teachers across the state have already completed some form of computer science training, according to Townsend.
“We’ve really seen a lot of interest,” she said.
The new standards should help schools develop computer science courses by listing all the concepts students should learn, Townsend added.
“There hasn’t really been any standardization or consistency in terms of what you can expect in a computer science course.” ago, she said.
The standards add new concepts with each grade level so students get a cohesive computer science education, said Suresh Chiruguru, a computer science teacher who helped draft the standards.
The standards cover five core concepts: computer systems, which help students learn how to solve problems; networks and the Internet, which teaches students how networks connect computers to other systems and how to assess the reliability of a network; data and analysis, which teaches children how to evaluate and present data; algorithms and programming, which shows students how to code; and the impacts of computing, which examines the ways computers affect the way people live and work.
“These are the things students are supposed to know by the time they graduate high school,” Chiruguru said.
The standards are grouped into grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12, rather than specifying what students should learn each year. The goal, Townsend said, is to give teachers some wiggle room and allow students to learn at their own pace.
“You can have some flexibility to bring some of those skills into kindergarten in first grade, or if they’re really getting it in kindergarten, let them go on and pick up some of those skills first grade too,” she said.
Chiruguru said teaching students computer science can also improve their digital literacy and ensure they are less susceptible to cyber-attacks and harassment.
If approved by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the curriculum is expected to be finalized in February. In the meantime, the state plans to help districts prepare to begin implementing the standards.
Partly to ease the burden on elementary school teachers, the standards place a heavy emphasis on incorporating computer science into existing lessons, rather than creating new ones.
Computer science skills are transferable to other subjects.
A former elementary school teacher in Ascension Parish, Townsend said that when she started teaching computer coding to fifth-graders, she was shocked not only by how quickly they caught on and enjoyed it, but also by how much their work improved. them at school.
After that, she taught computer science to elementary school students in all grades—some as young as kindergarten. Last year, some of her former students traveled to Boston to compete in a national robotics competition.
“You just think, ‘What else are kids capable of that we don’t even know about yet?'” she said.
©2024 The Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.