Derek Acosta is a junior at Cristo Rey New York High School, an innovative school in Harlem where students work to finance their education. He has good grades and wants to study computer science in college. He knows this because he has tried it in high school. Derek participates in a course taught at Cristo Rey by ScriptEd volunteers. During the year long course, his second programming course at Cristo Rey, he learned the basics of web design and introductory programming. “I liked the class but I now know how hard programming is… I have a real respect for programmers.” Unfortunately, Derek’s story is rare. Nationwide there are 3.3 million seniors in high school but in 2012 only 26,000 took the AP Computer Science Test. Wouldn’t it be great if students could try programming while in high school? Why aren’t more high schools teaching computer science? The problem lies in three fallacies…
Read more [1]