Posts tagged ‘AP CSP’
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.
Barbara Ericson’s AP CS Report for 2018 and her new blog cs4all.home.blog
Barb has written her blog post about the 2018 AP data (see 2017 report here and 2016 report here), and this year, she’s using it to launch her own blog! Find it at https://cs4all.home.blog/
Every year I gather and report on the data for AP CS from the College Board which is at http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/
There was a huge increase in Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science Principles (CSP) exam takers nationally (from 43,780 in 2017 to 70, 864 in 2018 – a 62% increase). The Computer Science A (CSA) exam also grew (from 56,088 in 2017 to 60,040 in 2018 – a 7% increase).
Source: AP CS Report for 2018
Helping students succeed in AP CS: GT Computing Undergraduate Female Rising Up to Challenge in CS
There’s a common refrain heard at “CS for All” and BPC events in the US these days. “AP CS A is just terrible. AP CS Principles will fix everything.” The reality is that there are bad AP CS A classes, and there are good ones. There is evidence that just having good curricula doesn’t get you more and more diverse students. The more important reality is that AP CS A accurately matches most introductory computer science classes in the United States. If you want students to succeed at the CS classes that are in our Universities today, AP CS A is the game to play at high school.
That’s why Barbara’s Rise Up programs are so important. She’s helping female and African-American students succeed in the CS that’s in their schools and on University campuses today. And she’s having tremendous success, as seen in the story below about a female high school football player who is now a CS undergraduate.
Barbara’s work is smart, because she’s working with the existing CS infrastructure and curricula. She’s helping students to succeed at this game, through a process of tutoring and near-peer mentoring. This is a strategy to get more female CS undergraduates.
That’s when she discovered Sisters Rise Up 4 CS, a relatively new program developed in Fall 2014 at Georgia Tech by Barbara Ericson. The program was based on Project Rise Up 4 CS, which aims to help African-American students pass the AP Computer Science A exam. Sisters Rise Up does the same for females.The program offers extra help sessions in the form of webinars and in-person help sessions, near-peer role models, exposure to a college campus, and a community of learners.“The program helped me get hooked on computer science,” Seibel said. “I started to actually learn. Seeing that some of the girls in the program had interned at Google or other places like that, and that they really loved CS, it gets you excited about it. They were only a few years older than me, and I was like, ‘Oh. That could be me.’”
Source: GT Computing Undergraduate Sabrina Seibel Rising Up to Challenge in CS | College of Computing
Report from Jan Cuny on Computer Science Education for Everyone: A Groundswell of Support
Jan Cuny wrote a blog post about where we are in the effort to provide CS education to everyone. Next month is important for the CS for All effort — the first offering of the AP CS Principles exam is May 5. Last I heard, over 46,000 students had turned in materials for their digital portfolios as part of the AP CSP exam. I’m eager to hear how many actually take it!
Progress has been dramatic. Many school districts and states now require CS in all K-12 schools – examples include New York City, San Francisco, Broward County (FL), Rhode Island, Virginia, and in 2016, Chicago became the first major district to make CS a graduation requirement. Also in 2016, a new organization — CSforAll.org— formed to build community among national stakeholders and provide resources for parents, teachers, school districts, and education researchers. And the new AP CSP officially launched this year with 2,700 teachers, putting it on track to be the largest AP launch ever.
The Limitations of Computational Thinking: NYTimes
The New York Times ran a pair of articles on computing education yesterday, one on Computational Thinking (linked above and quoted below) and one on the new AP CS Principles exam. Shriram and I are quoted as offering a more curmudgeonly view on computational thinking. (Yes, I fixed the name of my institution in the below quote, from what how it is phrased in the actual article.)
Despite his chosen field, Dr. Krishnamurthi worries about the current cultural tendency to view computer science knowledge as supreme, better than that gained in other fields. Right now, he said, “we are just overly intoxicated with computer science.”
It is certainly worth wondering if some applications of computational thinking are trivial, unnecessary or a Stepford Wife-like abdication of devilishly random judgment.
Alexander Torres, a senior majoring in English at Stanford, has noted how the campus’s proximity to Google has lured all but the rare student to computer science courses. He’s a holdout. But “I don’t see myself as having skills missing,” he said. In earning his degree he has practiced critical thinking, problem solving, analysis and making logical arguments. “When you are analyzing a Dickinson or Whitman or Melville, you have to unpack that language and synthesize it back.”
There is no reliable research showing that computing makes one more creative or more able to problem-solve. It won’t make you better at something unless that something is explicitly taught, said Mark Guzdial, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech who studies computing in education. “You can’t prove a negative,” he said, but in decades of research no one has found that skills automatically transfer.
Call for AP CS Principles Readers
Guest blog post from Barbara Ericson, copying a message from Paul Tyman:
Please consider signing up to an an AP CS Level A or CS Principles reader. We will need lots of new readers for the CSP exam. I did the pilot reading last year and it was interesting to see what the students submitted for their paper about a computing innovation and their code for the create task. The readings are really a great professional development opportunity for you. There is always an invited speaker and demos in the evenings. You will meet lots of great people who care about computer science education, both in high school and higher education teaching. We have a social space in the evenings which is quite busy with lots of card games, board games, and music. There are also groups who walk, do yoga, run, etc. They pay for your travel, hotel, meals, and pay you a stipend as well.
Barb Ericson
Georgia Tech
From: Paul Tymann <pttics@rit.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 1, 2016 9:54 AM
Subject: CSP Readers Needed!!
All,
Current estimates indicate that we will need more than 200 readers to score the AP CS Principles exam that will be administered in May 2017. I need your help recruiting new readers. Could you reach out to a couple of your colleagues and encourage them the apply to be readers? As former readers you are in an unique position to explain the reading process and the benefits of participating.
Potential readers can find out more information about becoming an AP CSP reader, and more importantly can sign up to become a reader, by pointing a browser to:
Please contact me if you have any questions. I hope to, no will, see you in Kansas City!!
—
Paul.
Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take 
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