It’s been a defining year for Virginia as a national leader in computer science education. At a ceremony in June at Richmond’s Franklin Military Academy, Gov. Terry McAuliffe - with the help of a robot - signed the nation’s first law mandating computer science education as a core academic requirement for all Virginia students beginning in kindergarten and continuing right through graduation.

The new requirements, which will be integrated into the Virginia Standards of Learnings, will not mean the addition of any new SOL tests, something that CodeVA Executive Director Chris Dovi says was among a short list of priorities for his organization as it crafted the legislation and worked with lawmakers towards the new law’s passage. CodeVA also successfully advocated to add $1.1 million to the state’s biennium budget to target the training of teachers.

“Nobody wants more SOL tests,” said Dovi, who co-founded CodeVA with his wife, Rebecca, in 2013 as the state’s only advocacy and teacher training organization focusing on K-12 computer science education. Since its founding, the organization has trained more than 800 teachers and impacted more than 100,000 students.

What was a top priority with the legislation, Dovi says, was ensuring that computer science and computational thinking take their rightful and necessary place next to reading, writing and math as an essential literacy taught to all students.

“Virginia has done a great job placing more and more emphasis on STEM education,” he said, referring to science, technology, engineering and math courses, while noting that none of these topics has included any computer science coursework. “Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of STEM-field jobs are computer science jobs. Add to that the fact that Virginia has the highest concentration of computer science jobs in the nation, and adding computer science to what kids learn in school is a matter of greatest urgency.”

Next up with the legislation will be the Virginia Department of Education’s process of adopting new standards for computer science that span all grade levels. CodeVA, which already had been active through its partner, Code.org, in the national computer science curriculum framework adoption process, is also participating in the state process.

Recent changes in leadership at the Department of Education, and the departure of Virginia Education Secretary Anne Holton as her husband, Sen. Tim Kaine, was selected as the Democratic Party nominee for vice president, may have slowed the SOL adoption process a little bit, but the state remains on track to adopt standards over the next 12 to 18 months.

For students in classes, these new standards likely won’t seem like that big of a deal, says Dovi. “Our advice to the state for the past three years has been that the SOLs already are primed and ready for the integration of computer science as a core topic. In many cases, teachers will be teaching the same things, but perhaps in new ways or with new vocabulary.”

As an example, Dovi points to repeating patterns, which already is a required SOL objective. This lesson becomes essential computer science knowledge with the addition of some important vocabulary, as such patterns in computer science are called loops. A loop is a basic process in computing - a sequence of instructions repeated until an outcome is reached or other instructions are given - and it’s easily taught with the “Happy and You Know It” song.

“These sorts of lessons build on one another through elementary school,” Dovi says, and they lay the foundation for later, far more complex computer science lessons that for most if not all students will include exposure to programming languages.

“This is how we build the New Virginia Economy that Gov. McAuliffe talks about so often and eloquently, and it’s how we ensure that our kids are as prepared as they can be for the modern job market,” says Dovi.

Article by: CodeVA staff

Additional photos:

Governor holding legislation courtesy of the Governor’s office

Students in classroom courtesy CodeVA