In President Obama’s final State of the Union Address, he issued a bold call to action to give every child the opportunity to learn computer science. He did so because computing is becoming increasingly relevant to America’s economy, cybersecurity, and national security. 

He also thinks it’s a lot of fun!

Since then, 2016 has been a year of action in support of computer science, with new announcements made today. This year alone, 14 new states have expanded CS education, more than 500 organizations have responded to the President’s call to action, and a new AP-CS course launched this fall that is already being offered in more than 2,000 classrooms. In addition, 15 federal agencies are coordinating efforts to expand CS education, with new investments and guidance. 

Learn more about all of today's announcements. 

As a year of action 2016 builds on a decade of national, state, and grassroots activity to revitalize K-12 computer science education. A clear example of that steady growth and momentum has been Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek).

First launched in 2009 with a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives, and timed in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer and Medal of Freedom recipient Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, CSEdWeek has since grown into a global event celebrated worldwide where millions of students, educators, parents, and industry volunteers participate in events and activities to inform and educate students about computer science and career opportunities in technology. 

In 2013, President Obama kicked off CSEdWeek with a video message urging students to try their hands at computer science saying, “don’t just play on your phone, program it.”

During CSEdWeek 2014, President Obama became the first President to write computer code as a part of a student coding activity at the White House, and last year the White House hosted the CS Tech Jam to bring developers, educators, and students together to develop new innovations for CS education. 

This week, Obama administration officials, alongside hundreds of local and national organizations, are joining community-led CSEdWeek events across the nation, ranging from the Inland CSforAll Summit, which brings together school districts and community partners across central California, to the BotBall Junior tournament in Oklahoma City where 1,000 students will show off their software skills as they compete with autonomous robots, to the “Cuppa Code” meet-up for new CS teachers and tech professionals in Arlington, Virginia, hosted by CodeVA and Starbucks to the General Services Administration’s “Grace Hopper” Hackathon for open government.

Find an event in your community, and join the movement to bring computer science to all of our children!

The President’s case was simple. More than nine in ten parents want CS taught at their child’s school and yet, by some estimates, only a quarter of K-12 schools offer a CS course with programming included. However, the need for such skills across industries continues to grow rapidly, with 51 percent of all science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs projected to be in a CS-related field by 2018.

In addition, students who take computer science are not only learning a marketable skill, they are become computational thinkers and problem-solvers. As Adrian Avalos, from National City, California, shared:

My course and my CS teacher, Mr. Lopez, really taught me about collaborative learning and learning by teaching. Mr. Lopez would always say, "To teach is to learn" as we worked in pairs to create programs that would perform tasks so we could master the material and concepts we were learning about.

In AP Computer Science Principles, I learned the importance of "abstraction", meaning to break a challenge into manageable pieces, and have applied this concept into various aspects of my studies and my life outside of the classroom. Mr. Lopez would also challenge my peers and I to go deeper into the code, to visualize and predict what the computer would do when we would press "Run Program" to train us to think computationally. He would always say with a big, friendly smile "Computers are very picky" and ask us the right questions about our code so we could troubleshoot and get it to work properly.

Since the President’s call to action, strong momentum for CS education has been growing at all levels of government and in the private sector.

Tune in at 1PM to learn more and follow along at #CSforAll, and learn about all of the progress and announcements here. And if you have a commitment you want to make to support CS education, learn more here. 

The Summit caps off a week of Administration action to support STEM and CS education, from the celebration of more than 200 Presidential STEM teachers awardees for STEM teaching and announcement of Active Learning Day last Thursday, the Vice-President’s visit to LaunchCode in support of #TechHire last Friday, a day-long event in support of Next-Generation High Schools that are leading on new economy subjects like CS this Monday, a back-to-school bus tour stop focusing on STEM education by Secretary of Education John King, and a new set of STEM teacher resources released by the Department of Education on Tuesday.