Computer science is a popular and ever-growing field. Two-thirds of all new jobs in STEM are in computing. According to a recent Kiplinger study, the top two majors for a lucrative career are computer engineering and computer science. Ninety percent of parents want their kids to study computer science in K-12 public schools.

State legislatures have responded in kind. All fifty states now have policies related to computer science education.

But how effective are those policies? How are they impacting who teaches computer science and who takes the classes?

That’s what Paul Bruno is exploring.

Bruno, assistant professor of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the College of Education, is leading a team on a three-year study examining the impacts of state policy on computer science and teacher preparation. Associate professor Colleen Lewis of the Grainger College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science joins Bruno as co-PI on the project, along with Tuan Nguyen of Kansas State University. The study is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Policymakers Need Evidence

“There’s all this interest and movement around computer science education but not a lot of evidence on what actually works to make sure you’re providing high-quality educational opportunities to kids in computer science,” Bruno says.

Critical components of such high-quality educational opportunities include having enough well-prepared teachers in place and providing the types of experiences and learning that piques students’ interest in computer science (CS).

“Without real evidence about what works in those areas, policymakers are left without a lot to draw on and are left to decide for themselves what they need to do to make things happen,” Bruno says.

Drawing on Federal and State Datasets

Bruno and his team are in the data collection and management phase now, forging data-sharing agreements with state boards of education and other organizations that will give them access to student and teacher data. The team is also collecting historical policy data.

“We’re bringing together lots of different data from lots of different places,” he says, “building on some work from the Code.org advocacy coalition that keeps track of state policy adoptions.” His team is also drawing on federal datasets regarding enrollment in higher education and figures on specific majors and on teacher certification.

“We’re also partnering with individual states to get access to their more detailed, state-level data,” Bruno adds.

Teacher Preparation a Concern

Teacher preparation is a topic of significant interest in the study—because, as Bruno explains, “these courses are being taught by teachers who have not previously taught computer science. They’re vocational career and technical education teachers, or maybe they’re business or math teachers, or they’re volunteering to teach or ‘volun-told’ to teach CS courses.”

While there is a lot to commend about that approach, Bruno says, there’s also a lot to worry about—primarily in whether you have teachers who possess the expertise to effectively teach computer science.

“And at the same time, you’re taking those teachers out of other courses that might be important as well,” he says. “So, we’re looking at state policies around teacher preparation, teacher certification, and teacher development to see if those policies are having the hoped-for impact in terms of being able to staff these courses with highly-prepared teachers. In particular, have these policies focused on preparing teachers resulted in more teachers being certified to teach CS?”

A lot of states, Bruno says, have adopted aggressive policies to expand computer science education. Some have even made it a requirement to graduate.

“Again, this might be commendable,” he says. “But their efforts to recruit and retain computer science teachers have not been as aggressive.”

Little Incentive to Become Certified

Exacerbating any shortage of CS teachers is the lack of incentive for them to become certified in the subject.

“My suspicion is that we’re going to see that those policies are not having a huge impact on teacher certification in part because teachers don’t have a strong incentive to be certified in computer science,” Bruno says. “Being certified might cost them money, and in most cases, it won’t get them extra pay—and in many cases it’s not required to teach the courses anyway. We might need to think a little more about how do you strategically compensate or otherwise support teachers to get the kinds of teachers you potentially have real shortages of.”

Attracting Marginalized Groups to Computer Science

Teacher preparation and numbers aren’t the only issues Bruno and his team are concerned with. The types of students receiving the CS education is also being closely studied.

In other words, it’s great that states are proactively pushing CS education and that more and more high schools are offering it. But if they’re offering it to the same types of students, then educators are missing the mark.

“Computer science education has been disproportionately driven by white male students and by Asian students—the same groups of people who are overrepresented in the workforce,” Bruno says. “We’ll be looking at not just the raw numbers of students taking computer science, but at groups who have been marginalized from these opportunities in the past. Are they also benefiting from these policies? Are they also having access to high-quality teachers in these courses? Are they also becoming interested in computer-related fields in college?”

Bruno notes that they will be studying the numbers of females, Blacks, Indigenous, and Hispanic students in CS classes. They’ll also be looking at students with disabilities, low-income students, and English learners.

“These groups historically have not participated in computer science education opportunities to the same degree as other students,” he says. “And they haven’t gotten as much attention in previous research on computer science education.”

A concern regarding marginalized students is that even in schools where computer science classes are offered, they’ll be on the outside looking in.

“They often don’t feel they are welcome in those courses or that the courses are for them,” Bruno explains. “They’re told that certain types of courses are for them. So, they don’t enroll. That’s why it’s important to look at the different kinds of policies that state have adopted here.”

Data Can Drive Sound Decisions

The study will help state-level policymakers and district administrators consider the impacts they want to have and how to go about getting those impacts, “whether that’s getting more kids to participate in computer science education, getting the right teachers in place, or making sure the opportunities are equitable for kids who right now tend not to participate in computer science,” Bruno says.

“We also hope our study can help them understand what policies are not going to be helpful for them in that regard. A piece of our study is thinking about how do the effects of these policies vary over time? So, helping policymakers think about what’s realistic in terms of if you pass a policy now, when might you reasonably start to see its effects?”

Bringing Attention to Critical Issues

Computer science education has been around as an academic discipline since the 1950s and ‘60s. It accelerated in the ‘90s with the advent of the Internet. Another surge in the popularity of CS education began 10 to 15 years ago, Bruno says—and that surge has fueled the rapid growth of state policy adoptions surrounding CS education.

“In the last 10 years or so, you start to see this big increase in student participation in computer science in the states we’ve looked at so far,” he says. “It’s a hockey-stick graph, where for a long time you don’t see a lot of change, and then you see big increases in students enrolling in computer science.”

It’s those changes—and the need for further change—that prompted Bruno’s study.