Analyzing CS in Texas school districts: Maybe enough to take root and grow

My Blog@CACM for this month is about Code.org’s decision to shift gradually the burden of paying for CS professional development to the local regions — see link here.  It’s an important positive step that needs to happen to make CS sustainable with the other STEM disciplines in K-12 schools.

We’re at an interesting stage in CS education. 40-70% of high schools have CS, but the classes are pretty empty.  I use Indiana and Texas as examples because they’ve made a lot of their data available.  Let’s drill a bit into the Texas data to get a flavor of it, available here.  I’m only going to look at Area 1’s data, because even just that is deep and fascinating.

Brownsville Intermediate School District. 13,941 students. 102 in CS.

Of the 10 high schools in Brownsville ISD, only two high schools have anyone in their CS classes.  Brownsville Early College High School has 102 students in CS Programming (no AP CS Level A, no AP CSP).  That probably means that one teacher has several sections of that course — that’s quite a bit.  The other high school, Porter Early College High School has fewer than five students in AP CS A.  My bet is that there is no CS teacher there, only five students doing an on-line class.  That means for 10 high schools and 13K students, there is really only one high school CS teacher.

Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District, over 10K students, 92 students in CS.

This is a district that could grow CS if there was will.  There are 6 high schools, but two are special cases: One with less than 5 students, and the other in a juvenile detention center.  The other four high schools are huge, with over 2000 students each.  In Economedes, that are only 9 students in AP CS A — maybe just on-line?  Edinburg North and Robert R Vela high school each have two classes: AP CS A and CS1.  With 21 and 14, I’m guessing two sections.  The other has 43 and 6. That might be two sections of AP CS A and another of CS1, or two sections of AP CS A and 6 students in an on-line class.  In any case, this suggests two high school CS teachers (maybe three) in half of the high schools in the district.  Those teachers aren’t teaching only CS, but with increased demand and support from principals, the CS offerings could grow.

It’s fascinating to wander through the Texas data, to see what’s there and what’s not.  I could be wrong about what’s there, e.g., maybe there’s only one teacher in Edinburg and she’s moving from school-to-school.  Given these data, there’s unlikely to be a CS teacher in every high school, who just isn’t teaching any CS. These data are a great snapshot. There is CS in Texas high schools, and maybe there’s enough there to take root and grow.