PCAST on STEM (and CS) education

A new PCAST report is out, and this one explicitly calls out CS education issues. Susan Rodger’s email to SIGCSE-Members had several great quotes from the report, including:

To date, most states have no standards in technology and engineering subject areas. Yet, a basic understanding of technology and engineering is important if our children are to contribute to and compete in a rapidly changing society and an increasingly interconnected global community. We support recent efforts to develop assessments of technological learning and to incorporate aspects and examples of technology and engineering (and design principles) both in mathematics standards and in the framework for science standards.

We also believe that there is an urgent need for well-designed courses in technology and engineering, with high-quality instructional materials, particularly in high schools. Computer-related courses should aim not just for technological literacy, which includes such utilitarian skills as keyboarding and the use of commercial software packages and the Internet, but for a deeper understanding of the essential concepts, methods and wide-ranging applications of computer science. Students should gain hands-on exposure to the process of algorithmic thinking and its realization in the form of a computer program, to the use of computational techniques for real-world problem solving, and to such pervasive computational themes as modeling and abstraction, modularity and reusability, computational efficiency, testing and debugging, and the management of complexity.

Find the report here:

PCAST STEM Ed Report

On September 15, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a plan for improvements in K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education.

via President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology | The White House.