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USA Today
Parents across the U.S. are eager for their children to learn coding and other computer-science skills, but their message hasn't yet hit the in-box of school administrators. That's the finding of a new Gallup study commissioned by Google that spotlights a potentially perilous economic disconnect as tech companies struggle to enlarge their engineering talent pools. In the works for 18 months, the survey, called "Searching for Computer Science: Access and Barriers in U.S. K-12 Education," polled 15,000 people ranging from students to superintendents.
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The Des Moines Register
A state panel's recommendation this summer that Iowa high school students be required to complete computer science coursework to graduate represents a significant step forward for Iowa students. Much more than changing the number or structure of credits a student needs to graduate, the proposal, if enacted, would ensure that Iowa schools are preparing students to fill the in-demand jobs of today. Iowa is behind the curve on computer education. About half the states already have a computer science prerequisite for graduation.
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Wired
Times have never been better for computer science workers. Jobs in computing are growing at twice the national rate of other types of jobs. By 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be 1 million more computer science-related jobs than graduating students qualified to fill them. If any company has a vested interest in cultivating a strong talent pool of computer scientists, it's Google. So the search giant set out to learn why students in the U.S. aren't being prepared to bridge the talent deficit.
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THE Journal
San Francisco Unified School District has received an additional $6 million in funding from the Salesforce Foundation to expand the district's computer science curriculum and technology resources. This is the third year of the partnership between San Francisco USD and the Salesforce Foundation, which has now provided the district with nearly $14 million in grants.
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Education Week
Principals and superintendents underestimate how much support there is among parents for teaching K-12 computer science, according to a recent Gallup survey, commissioned by tech-giant Google. The survey looked at a nationally representative sample of about 1,700 middle and high school students, 1,700 parents, and 1,000 teachers contacted via telephone last year for the report. Gallup also collected responses online from about 9,700 K-12 principals and 1,900 district superintendents (though these two groups were not nationally representative).
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Fox News
With technology skills becoming as important as readin', ritin' and 'rithmetic in today's digital world, many parents want to ensure that their children develop the right skills for the future. But many don't know where to begin and how to make learning tech skills fun for their kids. A new online course, "Server design 1," is using one of the most popular video games ever — Minecraft, which has more than 100 million registered users and has been a hit among younger players — to teach code to children between 8 and 14. The course teaches kids how to create a Minecraft world that they develop and design themselves using Java code.
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Fortune
Attracting more female high school students to computer science classes might be as easy as tossing out the Star Wars posters. As recent Twitter campaigns like #ILookLikeAnEngineer have shown, stereotypes are powerful — perhaps especially in high school, where students are quick to pigeonhole each other (and themselves) into cliques like jocks, cheerleaders, brainiacs, computer geeks and so on. High school also happens to be where people start to think seriously about what they want to do when they grow up.
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Gigaom
America's youth isn't getting a decent education when it comes to the basics of technology, and now we're seeing some data on why that's the case. A survey conducted by Google and Gallup shows that many Americans believe computer science should be taught between kindergarten and the 12th grade. Yet most schools don't offer the courses due to budget constraints, a lack of teachers and the need to focus more on subjects included in standardized tests.
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NPR
Silicon Valley is great at disrupting business norms — except when it comes to its own racial and gender diversity problem. In an open letter, the Rev. Jesse Jackson sounded the alarm yet again. He urged tech giants and startups to speed up the hiring of more African-Americans and Latinos — "to change the face of technology so that its leadership, workforce and business partnerships mirror the world in which we live." One nonprofit group, Black Girls CODE, isn't waiting around for more diversity reports. The group is taking action with regular weekend coding seminars for girls of color. And this summer, it's held boot camps where young girls learn the basics of tech design and development.
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