[Kevinjmireles]

What I've discovered over the years is that organizations are designed to do what they did yesterday and that people and institutions follow the cheese. In order to get high schools to begin offering programming as a core offering, colleges need to recognize it as meeting a core educational requirement. Second, schools need to be provided funding to offset the cost of offering a new subject. And finally, the educational systems need to have the flexibility to hire people who haven't gone through the traditional certification process, i.e. masters or bachelors in education.

Until those change, it's unlikely we'll see significant changes.

[japhyr]

It's pretty difficult to add a new requirement, and it's pretty difficult to effectively embed an elective set of courses. I wonder if we could re-examine typical graduation requirements. For example, I think most districts require four years of English to graduate. Maybe only require two or three years of English, and allow more selection of electives? Maybe you aren't free to just take any elective; you can have English requirements reduced if you take a high-level elective such as programming.

[pflats]

These aren't just school policies, they're usually state laws. Education policy is a huge political topic, and one that the general public often feel qualified to provide input on, regardless of their actual expertise.

That said, why should a hacker be exempt from English requirements? How does programming show that they know English? Many schools are willing to count AP Computer Science for math credits, but that's a different story.

What makes programming a higher-level elective than art, Spanish, or geography? Bear in mind that they all have AP courses, so you're definitely stepping on someone's feet here.