[tryitnow]

> although there currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States, only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011.

This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS?

I wonder if this could be addressed at the state level. Why couldn't California mandate a more Russian style approach - perhaps even with an entirely new exam and curriculum since the CS AP exam doesn't appear to cut it.

Computer Science is just as important as language skills now, we need to start acting like it.

[jldugger]

When I was in HS so many years ago, at a relatively affluent suburban high school, AP CS was not offered. We had 2 single semester classes, basic and advanced programming, taught in BASIC and C-style C++.

But they weren't AP certified classes, and frankly, I doubt they have the money to recruit and retain instructors. The guidance counselors pretty much told us not to take them back to back freshman year, because then you'd be out of classes to take. Most of the students seemed to know more about programming than the teacher, who was also responsible for teaching accounting.

Class period ends up being 10 minutes to do the day's programming assignment and 50 minutes fucking around pen-testing the IT setup trying to run Duke Nukem. One time the kid who's dad worked in district IT mentioned that "when you forget your name badge when you show up for work at Disneyland, they give you one that says 'Dale'. Browsing the global contact directory one day, I came across an account, first name Dale, last name missing. A few guesses later I discovered the password was di$ney, and Dale had quite a few drives mapped it probably shouldn't, like one with the staff directory including home addresses phone numbers and employee IDs.

So obviously the real reason Russia outdoes the US is that US targets are too easy to hack ^_^

[opportune]

I think the problem is that for most people qualified enough to teach AP CS, there are a lot more attractive jobs available to them outside of teaching (of course, if they love teaching, they might not take them). I've had former math teachers from HS who quit and did coding / data science programs so that they could effectively double their salaries.

[dragonwriter]

> This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS?

No, only 5% are certified to teach AP Computer Science; AP is a particular, privately governed, college-level advanced placement program.

At least back when I was in high school, it wasn't typically the first CS class one would take in High School.

[douche]

A lot of schools don't have the budget for gym class.

Also, the AP CS program, unless it has gotten markedly better since the mid 2000s, is just a basic Java course. I got a 5 on it, and I don't remember anything more complicated than how to implement a singly-linked list.

[chaosagent]

It's still like that. There used to be APCSB for algorithms and data structures but no one took it so they killed it.