Does pre-service CS education reduce the costs and make more effective in-service PD? Paths to #CS4All

What we’re trying to achieve in CS education in the United States is rarely done (successfully) and hasn’t been done in several decades (see previous post on this).  We’re changing the education canon, what everyone is taught in schools.  It’s a huge effort, involving standards and frameworks, convincing principals and legislators, and developing teachers and curricula.

Right now, we’re mostly developing the teachers we need with in-service education — which is expensive.  We’re shipping around trainers, people providing professional development to existing teachers.  We’re paying travel costs (sometimes) to teachers, and stipends (sometimes) for their time.

I have argued previously that we have to move to a pre-service model, where new teachers are prepared to be CS teachers from undergraduate education.  It’s the only way to have a sustainable flow of CS teachers into the education system.  NYC is working on developing per-service programs now, because it’s a necessity for their CS education mandate.  No reform takes root in US schools without being in schools of education.

At a meeting of the Georgia CS Task Force, where talking about the high costs of in-service CS teacher education, we started wondering if the costs might be cheaper in the long-run by growing pre-service education, rather than scaling in-service.  Of course, we have to build a critical mass cohort of in-service teachers (e.g., to provide mentors for student teachers) — in many states, we’ve already done that.

Creating pre-service programs at state universities creates opportunities for in-service education that are cheaper and maybe more effective than what we’re creating today. Pre-service programs would require CS Education faculty (and likely, graduate students) at state universities.  These people are then resources.

• First, those faculty are now offering pre-service PD, which is necessary for sustainability.
• Regional high school and elementary school teachers could then go to the local university for in-service programs — which can be run more cheaply at the university, than at a downtown hotel or conference center with presenters shipped in from elsewhere.
• The CS Ed faculty are there as a resource for regional high school teachers for follow-up, and the follow-up is a critical part of actually instituting new curricula.
• Many education schools offer resources (e.g., curriculum libraries, help with teacher questions) that would be useful to CS teachers and are available locally with people who can answer questions.

Pre-service programs require more up-front costs (e.g., paying for faculty, setting up programs).  But those costs likely amortize over the lifetime of the faculty and the program.  Each individual professional development session offered by local faculty (either pre-service or in-service) is cheaper than each in-service  session created by non-local presenters/developers.  Over many years, it is likely cheaper to pay the higher up-front costs for pre-service than the long, expensive burn of in-service.

I don’t know how to figure out the cost trade-off, but it might be worthwhile for providers like Code.org and PLTW to play out the scenarios.