Goals for CS Education include Getting Students In the Door and Supporting Alternative Endpoints

ACM Inroads has published an essay by Scott Portnoff “A New Pedagogy to Address the Unacknowledged Failure of American Secondary CS Education” (see link here). The Inroads editors made a mistake in labeling this an “article.” It’s an opinion or editorial (op-ed) piece. Portnoff presents a single perspective with little support for his sometimes derogatory claims. I have signed a letter to the editors making this argument.

Portnoff is disparaging towards a group of scholars that I admire and learn from: Joanna Goode, Jane Margolis, and Gail Chapman. He makes comments about them like “had CSEA educators been familiar with both CS education and the literature.” Obviously, they are familiar with the research literature. They are leading scholars in the field. Portnoff chides the CSEA educators for not knowing about the “Novice Programmer Failure problem” — which is a term that I believe he invented. It does not appear in the research literature that I can find.

In this blog, I want to try to get past his bluster and aggressive rhetoric. Let’s consider his argument seriously.

In the first part, he suggests that current approaches to secondary school CS education in the United States are failing. His measure of success is success rates on the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles exam. He also talks about going on to succeed in other CS courses and about succeeding at industry internships, but he only offers data about AP CSP.

He sees the reason for the failure of US CS education in high school is that we have de-emphasized programming. He sees programming as being critical to success in the AP exams, in future CS classes, and in industry jobs. Without an emphasis on programming, we will likely continue to see low pass rates on the AP CS Principles exam among female and under-represented minority students.

In the second part, Portnoff lays out his vision for a curriculum that would address these failings and prepare students for success. He talks about using tools like CodingBat (see link here) so that students get enough practice to develop proficiency. He wants a return to a focus on programming.

What Portnoff misses that there is not consensus around a single point of failure or a set of goals about CS Education. In general, I agree with his approach for what he’s trying to do. I value the work of the CSEA educators because the problems that they’re addressing are harder ones that need more attention.

The biggest problem in US high school CS education is that almost nobody takes it. Less than 5% of US high school students attend any CS classes (see this blog post for numbers), and the students we currently have are overwhelmingly male, white/Asian, and from wealthier schools. Of course, we want students to succeed at the Advanced Placement exams, at further CS courses, and at industry jobs. But if we can’t get students in the door, the rest of that barely matters. It’s not hard to create high-quality education only for the most prepared students. Getting diverse students in the door is a different problem than preparing students for later success.

CSEA knows more about serving students in under-served communities than I do. They know more about how to frame CS in such a way that principals will accept it and teachers will teach it. That’s a critical need. We need more of that, and we probably need a wide range of approaches that achieve those goals.

A focus on programming is critical for later success in the areas that Portnoff describes. The latest research supporting that argument comes from Joanna Goode (as I described in this blog post), one of the educators Portnoff critiques. Joanna was co-author on a paper showing that AP CS A success is more likely to predict continuation in CS than AP CSP success. I’m also swayed by the Weston et al. article showing that learning to program led to greater retention among female students in the NCWIT Aspirations awards programs (see link here).

I also agree with Portnoff that learning to program requires getting enough practice to achieve some level of automaticity. CodingBat is one good way to achieve that. But that takes a lot of motivation to keep practicing that long and hard. We achieve reading literacy because there are so many cultural incentives to read. What will it take to achieve broad-based programming literacy, and not just among the most privileged? Portnoff tells us that his experience suggests that his approach will work. I’m not convinced — I think it might work with the most motivated students. He teaches in the same school district where the ExploringCS class was born. But Portnoff teaches in one of LAUSD’s premier magnet schools, which may mean that he is seeing a different set of students.

An important goal for CS Education is to get students in the door. I’m not sure that Portnoff agrees with that goal, but I think that many involved in CS education would. There is less consensus about the desired outcomes from CS education. I don’t think that CSEA has the same definition of success that Portnoff does. They care about getting diverse students to have their first experience with computer science. They care about students developing an interest, even an affinity for computing. They care more about creating a technically-informed citizenry than producing more software developers. Portnoff doesn’t speak to whether CSEA is achieving their desired outcomes. He only compares them to his goals which are about continuing on in CS.

There is a tension between preparing students for more CS (e.g., success in advanced classes and in jobs) and engaging and recruiting students. In a National Academy study group I’m working in, we talk about the tension between professional authenticity (being true to the industry) and personal authenticity (being personally motivating). The fact that so few students enroll in CS, even when it’s available in their school, is evidence that our current approaches aren’t attractive. They are not personally authentic. We need to make progress on both fronts, but considering how over-full undergraduate CS classes are today, figuring out the recruitment problem is the greater challenge to giving everyone equitable access to CS education.

I just learned about a new paper in Constructionism 2020 from David Weintrop, Nathan Holbert, and Mike Tissenbaum (see link here) that makes this point well, better than I can here. “Considering Alternative Endpoints: An Exploration in the Space of Computing Educations” suggests that we need to think about multiple goals for computing education, and we too often focus just on the software development role:

While many national efforts tend to deploy rhetoric elevating economic concerns alongside statements about creativity and human flourishing, the programs, software, curricula, and infrastructure being designed and implemented focus heavily on providing learners with the skills, practices, and mindset of the professional software developer. We contend that computing for all efforts must take the “for all” seriously and recognize that preparing every learner for a career as a software developer is neither realistic nor desirable. Instead, those working towards the goal of universal computing education should begin to consider alternative endpoints for learners after completing computing curricula that better reflect the plurality of ways the computing is impacting their current lives and their futures.