HR 5929, the Computer Science Education Act, was introduced in Congress today by Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO). CRA, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Computer Science Teachers Association, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, the Anita Borg Institute, Microsoft, Google, Intel and SAS are all organizations that support this bill to address the concerns regarding computer science education at the K-12 level.

This legislation will fund grants to look at the condition of computer science education in each state and come up with a plan specific to each state that will address the specific reforms needed. There would also be a commission to look at computer science education nationally and design teacher preparation programs for colleges and universities.

K – 12 computer science education faces many problems that need to be addressed. The number of courses is declining, standards either do not exist or are far less rigorous in some states than others, there is very little professional development and certification is problematic for computer science teachers. All of this is happening while computing is projected to be one of the fastest growing career paths in the next decade.

More information is available here and a fact sheet on the bill can be found here.