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United States Education Programming

Louisiana Becomes 10th US State to Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement (linkedin.com) 89

Posted by EditorDavid from the let-the-good-times-roll dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "Great news, Louisiana!" tech-backed Code.org exclaimed Wednesday in celebratory LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter posts. Louisiana is "officially the 10th state to make computer science a [high school] graduation requirement. Huge thanks to Governor Jeff Landry for signing the bill and to our legislative champions, Rep. Jason Hughes and Sen. Thomas Pressly, for making it happen! This means every Louisiana student gets a chance to learn coding and other tech skills that are super important these days. These skills can help them solve problems, think critically, and open doors to awesome careers!"

Representative Hughes, the sponsor of HB264 — which calls for each public high school student to successfully complete a one credit CS course as a requirement for graduation and also permits students to take two units of CS instead of studying a Foreign Language — tweeted back: "HUGE thanks @codeorg for their partnership in this effort every step of the way! Couldn't have done it without [Code.org Senior Director of State Government Affairs] Anthony [Owen] and the Code.org team!"

Code.org also on Wednesday announced the release of its 2023 Impact Report, which touted its efforts "to include a requirement for every student to take computer science to receive a high school diploma." Since its 2013 launch, Code.org reports it's spent $219.8 million to push coding into K-12 classrooms, including $19 million on Government Affairs (Achievements: "Policies changed in 50 states. More than $343M in state budgets allocated to computer science.").

In Code.org by the Numbers, the nonprofit boasts that 254,683 students started Code.org's AP CS Principles course in the academic year (2025 Goal: 400K), while 21,425 have started Code.org's new Amazon-bankrolled AP CS A course. Estimates peg U.S. public high school enrollment at 15.5M students, annual K-12 public school spending at $16,080 per pupil, and an annual high school student course load at 6-8 credits...
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Louisiana Becomes 10th US State to Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement More

Louisiana Becomes 10th US State to Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement

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  • However... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Saturday June 08, 2024 @03:41PM (#64533947) Homepage

    In other news, learning about this [wikipedia.org] in the CS course is banned in Louisiana, as are these pieces of hardware [av-connection.com].

  • Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Saturday June 08, 2024 @03:56PM (#64533997) Homepage
    It really is ridiculous to make CS a requirement, especially these days. By the time they start working everything is replaced with AI. CS should, as always has been, a class for people who are really interested in it. The dangers of using the internet, like phishing etc should be part of home economics.

    • Not Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)

      by crow ( 16139 ) on Saturday June 08, 2024 @04:25PM (#64534049) Homepage Journal

      People should have at least a general understanding of how things work. Computer Science fits in with biology and chemistry as useful general knowledge for making sense of the world we live in. Also, exposing kids to a broad spectrum of knowledge helps them to find things that inspire them to pursue in further education and careers.

      Now perhaps CS should just be a science option, but if that were the case, then many schools wouldn't offer it or wouldn't offer enough classes for everyone that wanted it.

      In any case, I'm very glad that I was able to take AP Computer Science in my high school a few years ago (well, many years ago).

      • Yeah there is a dinstinction to made betweeen "Computer Science" and "Science of Computers" and we are probably talking more about the latter. People are going to interact with these things for their entire lives (hopefully) so they should not be black boxes of mystery.

        That doesn't mean they should necessrilly know how to code but you should know the theory behind how these things work, what all the parts do, TCP/IP basics, foundations of security, i am sure we could all come up with a pretty good syllabus

        • Why in the world does the average person need to know about Ohmâ(TM)s Law?

          • "Why in the world does the average person need to know about OhmÃ(TM)s Law?"

            The guy whose house burned down because of an electrical short sure wishes he'd understood it better!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ghoul ( 157158 )
            Dont put a device rated for a 110 V connection into a 220 V connection. Ohms law says V/I=R. For the same R a larger V will pull a larger current (I). Now the heat generated is proportional to the power ( I*I*R) so a large current will burn your wires down as they are not rated for that current and heat.

            • Do 110v and 220v devices use the same plug? If so, fix that. It's easier than teaching everyone Ohm's Law and hoping they run the equations every time they plug something into a socket.

          • The average person deals with volts, amps, watts and resistive loads (anything you plug into a socket) every single day for their entire lives, what's the case for not teaching them literally the simplest rule that explains so much of that interaction?

          • I'm happy I was taught those things in school. I don't need to call an electrician to know how many high powered devices I can expect to put on a single circuit, for example. Sure you can change a wall outlet without knowing Ohms law but it's a lot safer and easier if you know the difference between voltage, current, and resistance and the relationship between them. Say if you are planning to put a bunch of 240V heaters in your house or something. Just understanding why 240V is better than 120V for some

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )
        Kids struggle with algebra, and you want to make them take this?!?

        • Kids struggle with algebra, and you want to make them take this?!?

          Students struggle with algebra because they don't understand the abstractions. What does "x" mean?

          Programming has fewer abstractions. If you are drawing pixels on the screen, then "x" and "y" are the screen coordinates where the pixel appears, and "r", "g", and "b" set the color. That's a visible relationship. Most students "get it".

          If a student is programming G-Code to machine aluminum in a CNC vertical mill, the variables are the cutting tool's position, feed rate, and rotational speed. A bug in the scrip

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )
          CS is easier than algebra and kids use computers at home all the time. Not many use algebra at home

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hodr ( 219920 )

        If they make computer science a requirement to graduate, then they will have to make such that EVERYONE can pass it. Final exam won't ask you to design a recursive sorting algorithm to sort the data in a given set, it will ask you questions like "what's the smallest unit of data used in computers: A) bit B) byte C) milligram D) CO2"

      • Computer Science fits in with biology and chemistry as useful general knowledge....

        Those are subjects that people core dump immediately after turning in the final exam.

        • Those are subjects that people core dump immediately after turning in the final exam.

          The four years of HS English we all took is doing a hard side eye.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ghoul ( 157158 )
            4 yrs of high school English is not a requirement as long as you score 500 on the English SAT. I know kids you graduated high school in 3 years so 4 years of anything was impossible.

          • What I'm hearing is, learn your ABCs but leave the higher-level thinking up to ChatGPT?

      • It would be more useful for most people to know how a car works.

        I don't see anyone pushing to make auto shop mandatory.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )
          Now that most cars are going to be EV and auto mechanics will no longer be fixing ICEVs , schools WILL start teaching how to fix an ICEV.

        • It would be more useful for most people to know how a car works. I don't see anyone pushing to make auto shop mandatory.

          Once upon a time intro wood shop and intro metal shop were commonly the defaults for the two required shop classes. Partly motivated by vocational opportunities at the time but also practical application like light home repair. I think it was possible to replace these with auto shop, graphics arts (industrial photography and printing), technical drawing (drafting), etc but it was pretty common to just take these as additional classes. The technical drawing class might have been required for kids on the coll

      • People should have at least a general understanding of how things work.

        Back when I studied CS, you hade to build your own 8-bit computer and program it in machine language. Given that that is no longer a requirement, I guess most people who study CS now and in the near past don't really understand how computer really work.

        Making CS a graduation requirement is pointless. Teach them other computer related matter. Online safety, your posts last forever so be mindful of what you post. How to spot scams and/or disinformation. Etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          Back when I studied CS, you hade to build your own 8-bit computer and program it in machine language. Given that that is no longer a requirement, ...

          Sounds like a CS program that was a little CE oriented. A common thing. Basically the CS majors were required to take a couple lower division EE classes that did as you described. IIRC we used an 8085 (yes 5 not 6) but memory, interrupt, serial, etc controllers were all the same ICs as on an IBM PC. Today I imagine they'd be using a microcontroller and connecting things on an i2c bus. Much of what we wired up back in the day now integrated into modern inexpensive microcontrollers.

    • I think they mean intro to computers but educators are idiots and LA comes with it's own idiot multiplier.
      Also the business community probably likes this because they think they're going to end up with an overabundance of "coders" bringing down the cost of labor to something that the wealthy idea guys of the state can stomach in pursuit of their lates app ideas. Which won't happen but eehy.

      It would be nice if high schools had programming classes that taught more than the smartest kids lear fucking off in t

    • Have you tried using AI to build an application? If you don't know how to program you won't be good at the prompting. I find myself being VERY specific in a lot of things because it's often almost as clueless as an MBA or management-type in terms of understanding what needs to be coded. The only thing is it saves a lot of typing. Until you start needing it to do something weird. Sometimes I have spent like 30 minutes coaxing the AI to write something I could have just typed in one minute. And no, it's not g

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Apparently, AI gets coding wrong 50% of the time. Sure, easy things you could have googled or written yourself with a few minutes more it can do. But it cannot do anything that needs the slightest bit of insight and it frequently overlooks special cases.

        And there is a second problem: Since AI gets trained on published solutions, and since more and more of these will now, with AI, not result in a page-view, up-vote or discussion, people will post and publish less and less coding solutions or post them in AI-

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Not everything, not even nearly. But most of the easy stuff you could have googled before might be. Or not. (Nothing new published would mean AI stagnates). But CS is an expert subject, like advanced math or advanced physics or numerous others. It is in no way something that most people need.

    • It really is ridiculous to make CS a requirement, especially these days. By the time they start working everything is replaced with AI. CS should, as always has been, a class for people who are really interested in it. The dangers of using the internet, like phishing etc should be part of home economics.

      Assuming AI does become that capable programmers just work on the next level of abstraction (like with compilers).

      Either way, I doubt physicists, biologists, or chemists are doing anything that looks like high school science classes either.

      High school courses have two objectives, first, teach the foundational skills in case a student wants to go further, and second, more importantly, to give them a basic understanding of the field to help them become a well rounded human being.

      I don't expect a high school C

    • High school is not job training. Its purpose Is shallow and wide general knowledge. It makes sense that CS is a requirement as much as math, geography, and chemistry.

    • It really is ridiculous to make CS a requirement, especially these days. By the time they start working everything is replaced with AI. CS should, as always has been, a class for people who are really interested in it.

      In short HS "CS" is a shop class, we are not talking about an AP class here. Once upon a time a couple of shop classes were required, most took a couple of intro classes. Wood shop and metal shop were sometimes defaults for vocational reason, and practical reasons like light home repair. It might be fair to view "CS" similarly.

      The dangers of using the internet, like phishing etc should be part of home economics.

      Let's not water down home economics. The topics they Arely cover are sorely needed. An entire new required class might be best, computer literacy.

  • Society needs people with lots of skills that have nothing to do with coding or computer science. Sure, everybody needs to learn how to be a competent user, but we still need lots of people with 'soft' skills and blue collar skills. And lots of people aren't good at math and related skills. It might be smart to mandate that every high school offers computer science, but to make it a graduation requirement is stupid, unless it's a dumbed down class that's not interesting to the more STEM-oriented kids.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      A tech skills class should be mandatory somewhere in primary school or middle school. That should include things like internet safety, using common productivity software and cautioning against the effects of social media.

      CS should be offered as a Science at High School Level. 4 years of Science should become compulsory - Physics, Chemistry, Biology, CS, Environmental Science should all be offered at beginner , standard and AP levels. So you could do year of each or do a year of Chemistry , a year of CS

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by marcle ( 1575627 )

        That sounds great. Can I subscribe to your newsletter? Would you like to run for Board of Education in our town?

  • Are they going to teach about Turing machines, lambda calculus, computational complexity, etc., or are we talking just code monkeying?

    • Re:CS? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday June 08, 2024 @05:53PM (#64534201)

      We probably talk about how to use MS office...
      That would be tragic, but at least make some sense, other than actual CS for everybody.

      • That's what the first college-level CS courses are, 20 years ago anyway. The course was called "Microcomputer applications" and it was how to use MS Office.

        Nowadays I would hope they mix in some basic cybersecurity (don't reuse passwords etc) and inoculation against scams and other social media shitshows.

        Programming would only be a big part of the AP courses.

    • I think code monkeying is generally useful. Too many people today are completely lost when it comes to looking at or creating "code". If understanding basic code logic was an early skill, we could see more applications leveraging that skill, be it a programmable thermostat, fridge, toaster, etc. Most things cater to "non-code" people because, by far, hardly anyone would use a custom code feature. Lots of cool things can be scripted, but generally that functionality is not common because of the low impact it

  • Only CS? (Score:3)

    by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Saturday June 08, 2024 @04:54PM (#64534099) Journal

    How about making woodworking mandatory? And plumbing, electicity, animal husbandry, farming, and all other basic generic knowledge?

    • We should, also self defense and civic mindedness (when you see someone in trouble, help etc).

    • Excellent list. I would add Music there as well, both Theory + Application.

    • I'd rank one week of internet safety training above all of those in terms of importance and relevance to everyone. Make that the first week of 9th grade CS and I'm sold.

    • How about making woodworking mandatory? And plumbing, electicity, animal husbandry, farming, and all other basic generic knowledge?

      I don't expect most people to know how to make a chair, or to engage in farming.

      But the plumbing and electricity is a good idea, most everyone lives in a house of some kind and it's helpful to understand how it works.

      • If most everyone lives in a house of some kind, most everyone has a yard of some kind. Most everyone needs to eat, so why shouldn't most everyone farm?

        • If most everyone lives in a house of some kind, most everyone has a yard of some kind. Most everyone needs to eat, so why shouldn't most everyone farm?

          People should understand how to maintain a house/apartment because they live in one and will need to use those skills.

          People don't need to understand farming in order to buy food from a grocery store.

  • I don't feel like reading through the articles or even asking chatgpt.

  • open doors to awesome careers

    It would be nice if it was not obvious that the goal is to reduce labor cost by increasing supply of workers.

    • You could say that about everything .. alternative is what? You want less educated people doing what? Do you need the cost of factory workers to reduce?

  • This will wind up being Office software training, right?

    Which is less dumb than forcing CS down everybody's throats.

    It would actually be good to teach how to keep yourself safe online and not get scammed. So many people need that more than CS.

    Hopefully there will be options for people who aren't cut out for actual CS (which doesn't necessarily need a computer for months).

  • Given a belief that women are not good at CS, this rule will result in less women graduating high school and going to college. This will mean they will be more willing to accept the status of stay at home moms, generating babies on a regular basis...

    It's amazing how easily you can construct a conspiracy theory if you try ;)

  • A one year class/subject about [s][del][strike]B.A.S.I.C.[/strike][/del][/s] Python, including things like:

    Thinking algorithmically
    Thinking in structured blocks
    Primitive flowcharting
    Programming in phyton

    with statistics being a pre-requisite (of course) should be more than enough for everyone's requisites.
    then offer advanced CS courses in highschool as electives for those who want to go deeper.

    Where does the HighSchool get the time for the CS classes you ask? Well, cut crap like "how to use a browser, how t

  • Such as:

    1) Understanding how interest works.
    2) How to create a budget and keep your spending within it
    3) What a bankruptcy means.
    3) How to do your taxes
    4) Etc. Etc.

    Basically, how to act and live like an adult once you become one.

  • Louisiana has high schools? Most public school rankings by state show public education in Louisiana is virtually non-existent.
  • They need to know how to use office applications, and other things that they will encounter in a typical office environment, stuff that is not on their phones or tablet. Not everyone needs to "learn to code", and I don"t think everybody should. Because this will just produce a lot of people who will produce poor, security hole ridden code and companies these days are pretty lax on standards when it comes to hiring coders. Not everyone is cut out for the job, in this day and age where cyberattacks are a huge

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      The key to better code is not better coders. Thats like saying the key to better pots is a more skilled potter. The key to better code is to finally treat it like an engineering discipline instead of an handicraft. With Systems, standards and certifications the quality of the coder doesnt matter much just like with Systems, standards and ceritfications tradesmen with high school education can build bridges. We need to write software like we build bridges not like how we make handicrafts. Currently everyones
  • What students really need is to know how to handle life when it goes 'off script'. Such as facing the possibility of homelessness and the best ways to avoid it as one example (basic camping/outdoors survival skills would really help). Learning to 'read' people who may be trying to lead them into a very bad situation is another. Spotting potential scams and learning to detect when something's not right is another. I don't know how it is today, but everything taught when I was in school was with the assumptio

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      A good way of doing this would be to have compulsory community service for kids. Have them go out one Saturday a month and help out recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, illiterate adults to do basic things like opening a bank account, applying for govt services like food stamps, medicaid , section 8 etc. All of this just needs someone to read a website and make a few phone calls but people down on their luck are often too depressed or ashamed to do so. A young high school teen doing it to help someone else

  • CS instead of second language? (Score:3)

    by ET3D ( 1169851 ) on Sunday June 09, 2024 @01:59AM (#64534837)

    It's not bad to give students some understanding of programming, but taking "two units of CS instead of studying a Foreign Language"?

    • Back in the day, FORTRAN satisfied the foreign language requirement at my university. I thought that was pretty funny given how dead simple FORTRAN is compared to any natural language.

  • High school teacher here. Not sure if we use the same curriculum as Code.org, but I've been in some Ohio high school CS classes. My small school offers InfoTech, Web Development, Programming, and we're adding a Security class next school year.

    I was in the InfoTech class a lot this just ended school year, and the curriculum was pretty broad, and perhaps a bit too deep in some sections. They learned about the hardware in general (CPU, memory, hard drive - ssd and spinning, etc.). They got into, i think, 7 dif

    • You are the teacher.

      And you don't know the OSI layers.

      I shudder at the thought what kind of graduate you produce.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by obsess5 ( 719497 )
        Graduates who can do more than a rote recitation of OSI layers? I spent a good part of my career writing network servers and I suspect a good number of my colleagues had never heard of the OSI layers, let alone been able to list them (which I myself can't do off the top of my head) -- it's just not that important at the application level. In a high school class, there are a lot more general computing topics that should be covered and diving too deep into certain areas, as Osugi Sakae notes, adversely impa

        • I believe you. But that's also the problem. For example, it's kinda frightening how few programmers even heard about big O notation, let alone being able to use it. Which makes sense when you look at programs and realize that most of the processor hunger our programs today have stems from programmers being just utter shit and have no first clue how to do the bare minimum of optimization. And I don't mean spending hours on end to eke out another percent of performance, I mean doing the obvious that would cut

      • Um, I'm not THE teacher, I'm A teacher; an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher. I never said I was THE teacher. I said "I've been in some Ohio high school CS classes".

        I pushed into the classes several times a month to support my students. I also worked with the teacher to translate some docs and modify others. I worked with the students individually and in small groups to help them understand the content. The same as I do for science classes, and the same as I do for math classes.

        I'm sure

  • What will they learn? How to copy/paste the boilerplate code they're supposed to deliver as their assignment from Stackexchange or Stack Overflow. Which doesn't teach them jack but since the teacher is probably about as motivated as the student, it will suffice to get a passing grade, and nobody really bothers with anything beyond that.

    After that, our hopeful graduate will boast that he knows how to code and will be employed as a programmer, which means he will continue to cargo-cult his way through life co

  • I guess CS is now how to use Word or Excel. Well, maybe a little html.

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