In recent years, Florida has upgraded its digital learning policies. Legislation passed in 2014 required districts to come up with digital classroom plans. The idea was that if they were going to get extra state funding to buy computers or boost their bandwidth, they would need to tie their spending to real changes in the classroom.
Now, some key lawmakers and officials say its’ time for the state’s digital learning policies to move into a new phase.
“It’s not money alone,” said state Sen. John Legg, R-Lutz, who chairs the senate Education Committee. “We’re looking at how we integrate technology into the DNA of schools.”
Students arriving at elementary schools have lived their entire lives in a world where smartphones and tablets are ubiquitous, and where computer science is a new form of literacy. That means teachers need to be trained differently, Legg said, and students need more access to courses in subjects like computer science.
John Padget, the vice chairman of the state Board of Education, sounded similar notes last week during the board’s meeting in Gainesville. He cited a recent Gallup poll, commissioned by Google, which found parents seem to value computer science more than their local schools.
Among the findings:
Two-thirds of parents think computer science should be required learning in schools. Parents in lower-income households are even more likely to have this view. Many students expect to learn computer science and to use it in their future career in some way.
Despite this high level of interest, many school and district administrators do not perceive a high level of demand for computer science education among students and parents in their communities. … Less than half of principals and superintendents surveyed say their school board thinks offering computer science education is important.
Computer science has fallen into a gap between what the public values and what schools tend to prioritize. There’s also another gap: A shortage of highly skilled graduates prepared to fill a growing number of jobs in computer science-related fields.
“My focus is, what are we doing in education to help close that gap?” Padget said.
He had state Department of Education staff pull some numbers. Overall, school districts are offering more computer science-related courses to high school students, the report shows.
Between the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years, 12 districts added web development programs, for example. In those years, the number of computer science courses taken by Florida students jumped by more than 5,000. The year after lawmakers passed legislation intended to promote career education, Florida students earned 45,844 industry certificates in computer science and technology-related fields.
“If you think about the pipeline that’s needed to solve this problem, we’re starting in a good way, and we’re making progress,” Padget said. However, he said he was concerned that fewer than 1,000 Florida high school juniors and seniors passed Advanced Placement computer science courses — and that the courses seemed to be less widely available in rural areas.
In the past, Legg has proposed allowing students to meet their foreign-language requirements with computer science courses. The effort has fallen through in the past, but he said it could induce more districts to offer computer science, and help students find room in their schedules.
Legg said the changes need to go beyond individual courses, though. Technology is already starting to change the way school administrators handle mundane tasks like managing car lines and handing out permission slips, but it could soon change other facets of schools’ operations.
Right now, he said, teachers are trained to use devices in their classrooms, but are not prepared for more fundamental changes in the way schools operate and students acquire knowledge. For that reason, he said, teacher training may be “10 years behind” where it needs to be. He recently called for an update in a back-to-school opinion column.
Most students already live technology-filled lives, he said, and “we’ve got to keep up with our students.”
Despite all the research, professional organizations, and even PTA groups universally saying how necessary recess is to a quality education, Senator Legg says it should be up to the local district. Why would anyone consider any educational idea of his worthy? At the very least, when he suggests something, we should demand that he produce the hard science evidence to back it up, and then report on the science and not him.
It is not an attack. When you have someone come out and call the earth flat, you do not take advice on space travel from them. If recess was an issue that was debated, then he would simply be taking a side and we could disagree, but this is not the case. The experts universally and without any dissent say that this is important, so his refusal to act on that evidence should be a-prior fact that he is making decisions based on something other than evidence.
There are few opportunities in life to expose poor policy makers, but this is one cause where it is clear. We must work hard to ensure that Senator Legg never has the opportunity to hurt another child, ever again, from a position of elected authority. I urge you to dis into this story more and to ask the Senator the exact peer reviewed journals he is using to base his opinions on, because my guess is that while you won’t find anything remotely close to academic research, you will likely find some happy vendors and potentially big discounts to the charter schools he and his wife run (but that is just a guess).