In May, the state Legislature passed a law that will eventually require all public schools to offer computer science courses. And next week, the state board of education will review new computer science learning standards for grades K-12 developed by a group of Louisiana teachers, professors, parents and students.
By teaching students about “digital literacy,” Louisiana has a prime opportunity to give them a leg up in college and the workforce, said Ashley Townsend, deputy chief of policy for the Louisiana Department of Education .
“There’s this big industry” for computer science, she said. “How can we make sure we’ve got employees here who are ready to be hired, so that we can get some tech companies into the state?”
Technology is a growing industry, with thousands of open computing jobs in Louisiana that pay an average salary of $82,545, according to the state’s computer-science education plan. Yet only about 1 in 3 Louisiana high schools offered courses on the fundamentals of computer science during the 2022-23 school year, the report said.
Under the new law, Act 211, which took effect Aug. 1 , public schools with students in grades 6-8 must start teaching the basics of computer science in the 2026-27 school year. Students who begin high school that year will need to take at least one computer science course before they can graduate. Elementary schools must start teaching computer science by the 2027-28 school year.
Teacher-training programs must start adding lessons on computer science in 2026, the law says. Though not currently required, nearly 2,000 K-12 teachers throughout the state have already completed some form of computer science training, according to Townsend.
“We’ve really seen a lot of interest,” she said.
The new standards should help schools develop computer science courses by listing all the concepts students must learn, Townsend added.
“There’s not really been any standardization or consistency about what you could expect in a computer science course.” before now, she said.
The standards add new concepts with each grade level so that students receive a cohesive computer science education, said Suresh Chiruguru, a computer science teacher who helped draft the standards.
The standards cover five core concepts: computing systems, which helps students learn how to troubleshoot; networks and the Internet, which teaches students how networks connect computers to other systems and how to evaluate a network’s reliability; data and analysis, which teaches kids how to evaluate and present data; algorithms and programming, which shows students how to code; and impacts of computing, which examines the ways computers impact how people live and work.
“These are the things students are supposed to know by the time they graduate high school,” Chiruguru said.
The standards are grouped into grades K-5, grades 6-8 and grades 9-12, rather than specifying what students must learn each year. The purpose, Townsend said, is to give teachers some wiggle room and let students learn at their own pace.
“You can have some flexibility in bumping some of those kindergarten skills to first grade, or if they’re really picking it up in kindergarten, let them go ahead and pick up some of those first grade skills, too,” she said.
Chiruguru said that teaching students computer science can also improve their digital literacy and ensure they’re less susceptible to cyber attacks and bullying.
If approved by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the curriculum is expected to be finalized in February. In the meantime, the state plans to help districts prepare to start implementing the standards.
In part to ease the burden on elementary school teachers, the standards place heavy emphasis on incorporating computer science into existing lessons, rather than creating new ones.
Computer science skills can translate to other subjects as well.
Once an elementary teacher in Ascension Parish, Townsend said that when she began teaching computer coding to her fifth-grade students, she was shocked not only by how quickly they caught and enjoyed it, but also by how much their school work improved as well.
After that, she taught computer science to elementary schoolers in all grades — some as young as kindergarten. This past year, several of her former students traveled to Boston to compete in a national robotics competition.
“You just think, ‘What else are kids capable of that we don’t even know about yet?’” she said.
©2024 The Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
