“Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox. A decade ago, New York City officials promised that all schools would have access to “meaningful” computer science education by this school year. Computer Science for All , known as CS4All, also had particular equity goals of reaching girls and students of color. The share of students enrolled in computer science classes has quadrupled from roughly 5.5%, or 54,000, in 2016, to 20%, or more than 193,000, in 2024. And CS4All made gains in growing the number of underrepresented students. Still, just 1 in 5 schools citywide are meeting CS4All’s goals for girls, Latinos, and Black students, according to a data brief released Tuesday from the Center for an Urban Future , a New York City-based think tank. Though the initiative “still has unfinished business,” the timing is also ripe for CS4All 2.0, said Eli Dvorkin, the center’s editorial and policy director, who believes that the city’s education system needs to rethink its approach to computer science in the age of artificial intelligence. “Just because entry-level coding work is in serious decline, it doesn’t mean that demand for computational thinking is going away,” Dvorkin said. Instead, “every teacher should be able to prepare young people to think critically and solve problems and use judgement on whether and when to use AI tools and how they work and why.” He acknowledged the “understandable concerns” many parents have about how much screen time their children are spending in school. But he believes that “evidence-based” computer science education is an antidote to passive screen time. “I think there’s a very real chance that Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani’s legacy will be shaped in part by how our public school system adapts to the AI era,” Dvorkin said, “and that means a strategy to a retool computational-thinking education for the world we inhabit right now.” This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. There’s been some progress in the number of computer science classes offered in the city, but did the program meet the goals outlined 10 years ago? New York City has done something genuinely impressive. More than 90% of schools now offer computer science, up from a tiny handful a decade ago, but access is not the same thing as participation. Our data shows that just 20% of student students were actually enrolled in computer science classes. The data also shows that the city is still pretty far from the original promise of computer science for all: Just about 19% of schools are meeting CS4all equity and participation goals. So that’s why now is the time for the Mamdani administration to launch a CS4all 2.0 that should focus on closing the gaps that remain in participation, equity, and teacher preparation, and move toward integrating computational thinking across the curriculum. Now that we’re at the 10-year mark, is the program over? At the school-level and even centrally, there’s still an effort underway to continue to build on the work of CS4all, but in terms of a unifying centralized effort to advance this work, learning from the successes in the challenges of the first decade, and charting a path forward for the next one, we’re not there yet. And this is a risky moment for the country ‘s largest public school system to be without an organizing effort around computing education. The school system did put out some preliminary guidance around the use of AI in schools. It’s important work. But this is, I think, the even bigger challenge: What should the New York City public school system’s computing education strategy look like in the AI-era? The goal can’t simply be to teach some students to code in 11th through 12th grade. In fact, that kind of technical knowledge may be in rapid freefall right now with the rise of generative AI. But AI also raises the bar for embedding computational thinking across the whole curriculum so that every young person learns how to think critically and ask hard questions and solve problems with computers. That’s the only way to ensure that our young people are able to graduate from high school capable of fully understanding these powerful systems that are shaping our lives. Computer science education can’t just mean a coding elective for some. As you say, the city’s AI framework is one piece. But how we educate kids should be an urgent part of this conversation, too, especially as we see the world changing and the job force changing. It feels like a lot of the conversation is focused on being for or against technology. At a time when AI tools are flooding into students’ lives both at school and at home, the answer isn’t simply more devices or more apps. I think most parents and teachers would agree, it’s certainly not more screen time. But it is deeper computational fluency — the ability to understand, question, and shape technology rather than just consume it. That’s computing education done right. I think there’s a misperception that advocating for evidence-based, age-appropriate, and even joyful computing education is simply synonymous with more screen time. That couldn’t be further from the truth. But we need a teaching workforce in New York City that is equipped to integrate computational thinking — the building blocks of computing education— into every young person’s classroom experience. I think a lot of people — perhaps even teachers — would be surprised that you can teach computational thinking without screens. There’s a growing body of evidence that shows the dangers of exposing young children to too much screen time. But that doesn’t mean deferring computing education until later. That means we have to be much more creative about how we can integrate a computing education into classroom settings without screens. There is a program at CUNY’s colleges of education called CITE — computing integrated teacher education. And what CITE does is equip CUNY professors that are teaching our future K-12 teachers to integrate computational thinking and learning into their pedagogy. The power of this model is pretty profound because about a third of all new public school teachers in New York City every year are hired out of CUNY. We’re now at a point where the first participants in CITE programs have actually been entering the classroom as student teachers or they’re beginning their first full-time teaching assignments. With the screen time and AI backlash, do you think there will be an appetite to push for CS4all 2.0? I think the backlash against screen time actually strengthens the case for CS4all 2.0. Parents are right to worry about passive, addictive, and poorly governed technology use in our classrooms. But the answer is not to leave students less prepared to understand technology, it’s to teach them how technology really works, how to question it, think critically about it, and how to use it responsibly and creatively. So one key question is: Are New York City public school students going to be the people of the future who will shape how that technology is created and deployed? I think the argument is strong that our future economy will only become more bifurcated between roles that require sophisticated computational thinking skills — including the critical thinking and judgment skills that should be an essential part of a CS4all 2.0 — and low wage work that does not pay enough to enable New Yorkers to afford life in the most expensive city in America. Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org .
Original story
Continue reading at Chalkbeat New York
www.chalkbeat.org/newyork
Summary generated from the RSS feed of Chalkbeat New York. All article rights belong to the original publisher. Click through to read the full piece on www.chalkbeat.org/newyork.