Gov­ernors hear Hutchin­son pitch – State’s com­puter plan goes national

Gov. Asa Hutchin­son touted Arkan­sas’ suc­cess in fur­ther­ing com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion as he unveiled an ini­ti­at­ive to take the pro­gram nation­wide at a lunch­eon of the National Gov­ernors Asso­ci­ation on Fri­day in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Hutchin­son’s national ini­ti­at­ive — NGA Chair­man’s Ini­ti­at­ive, K-12 Com­puter Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion — will mir­ror the Arkan­sas Com­puter Sci­ence Ini­ti­at­ive he kicked off in 2015.

“Arkan­sas has become known nation­ally for our com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion pro­gram and, through this ini­ti­at­ive, I want to show­case the efforts in other states and show why this mat­ters and how we can expand com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion,” Hutchin­son said.

“Arkan­sas has become known nation­ally for our com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion pro­gram and, through this ini­ti­at­ive, I want to show­case the efforts in other states and show why this mat­ters and how we can expand com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion,” Hutchin­son said.

The ini­ti­at­ive encour­ages gov­ernors around the nation to imple­ment the ten­ets of Arkan­sas’ pro­gram in their home states in order to build a wider tech work­force and keep com­puter jobs from going over­seas.

“It is an ini­ti­at­ive that is urgent and it is very neces­sary,” Hutchin­son said.

Carl Frank, a com­puter sci­ence teacher at the Arkan­sas

School for Math­em­at­ics, Sci­ences and the Arts, said he was excited to hear Hutchin­son’s announce­ment. Frank has served on two of the gov­ernor’s task forces on com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion and cyber­se­cur­ity and on numer­ous stand­ards and frame­work com­mit­tees for the Arkan­sas Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and what is now the Divi­sion of Career and Tech­nical Edu­ca­tion.

“The suc­cess of the Arkan­sas Com­puter Sci­ence Ini­ti­at­ive and the multistate col­lab­or­a­tion efforts and part­ner­ships that have been formed here may serve as a model to other states,” Frank said. “Every state has unique chal­lenges and per­haps solu­tions to those chal­lenges. A national com­puter sci­ence ini­ti­at­ive will help facil­it­ate strategies that work among the states, and provide mech­an­isms for shar­ing new ideas and approaches that may emerge.”

“The suc­cess of the Arkan­sas Com­puter Sci­ence Ini­ti­at­ive and the multistate col­lab­or­a­tion efforts and part­ner­ships that have been formed here may serve as a model to other states,” Frank said. “Every state has unique chal­lenges and per­haps solu­tions to those chal­lenges. A national com­puter sci­ence ini­ti­at­ive will help facil­it­ate strategies that work among the states, and provide mech­an­isms for shar­ing new ideas and approaches that may emerge.”

Hutchin­son told the group gathered in the National Press Club ball­room that jobs that require com­puter sci­ence skills will con­tinue to grow and there are cur­rently more than 410,000 open com­put­ing jobs.

“Today, com­ing out of the pan­demic, through the pan­demic, the need has never been greater to emphas­ize com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion,” he said. “Take advant­age of this unique moment in his­tory when stu­dents see it, under­stand it and value it.”

Global com­pet­i­tion for com­puter sci­ence jobs is intensi­fy­ing with the major­ity of H1B skilled-worker visas com­ing from com­pan­ies that can­not fill their open­ings, Hutchin­son said.

Fur­ther­more, the U.S. Bur­eau of Labor Stat­ist­ics projects that the num­ber of com­puter sci­ence jobs will grow by 11% by 2029, Hutchin­son said. Com­puter sci­ence majors earn up to 40% more than the aver­age col­lege gradu­ate.

Arkan­sas became the first state to require every pub­lic and charter high school to offer a com­puter sci­ence course when Hutchin­son’s ini­ti­at­ive was imple­men­ted six years ago.

The Arkan­sas Com­puter Sci­ence Ini­ti­at­ive was ini­tially launched as a peer-learn­ing pro­gram that took teach­ers from five of the state’s pub­lic high schools into a peer-learn­ing pro­gram to bring com­puter learn­ing to the state’s stu­dents.

The Arkan­sas Com­puter Sci­ence Ini­ti­at­ive was ini­tially launched as a peer-learn­ing pro­gram that took teach­ers from five of the state’s pub­lic high schools into a peer-learn­ing pro­gram to bring com­puter learn­ing to the state’s stu­dents.

The Arkan­sas School for Math­em­at­ics, Sci­ences and the Arts in Hot Springs led the project by provid­ing train­ing, sup­port and ment­or­ing for teach­ers across the state, who in turn provide com­puter sci­ence courses to stu­dents in their dis­tricts.

In 2014, before the ini­ti­at­ive began, fewer than 500 high school stu­dents in Arkan­sas took a class in com­puter cod­ing, and 25% of that num­ber hailed from the Arkan­sas School for Math­em­at­ics, Sci­ences and the Arts.

Today, more than 10,000 of the state’s high school stu­dents have taken a com­puter sci­ence class, and the num­ber of com­puter-sci­ence cer­ti­fied teach­ers has grown from fewer than 20 to more than 600, Hutchin­son said.

Today, more than 10,000 of the state’s high school stu­dents have taken a com­puter sci­ence class, and the num­ber of com­puter-sci­ence cer­ti­fied teach­ers has grown from fewer than 20 to more than 600, Hutchin­son said.

Hutchin­son has been to more than 80 school assem­blies in the state pro­mot­ing com­puter sci­ence.

“The mes­sage that I had for them is, ‘If you learn to code and you have access to high-speed broad­band inter­net, you could run the the world from your front porch in rural Arkan­sas,” the gov­ernor said.

There are six major goals of the NGA ini­ti­at­ive, Hutchin­son said:

■ Increase the num­ber of the nation’s high school stu­dents who take at least one com­puter sci­ence course.

■ Engage more gov­ernors in the part­ner­ship.

■ Grow policy sup­port for com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion.

■ Increase the fund­ing by the states to sup­port com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion.

■ Expand the num­ber of states that require pub­lic and charter schools to have at least one com­puter sci­ence class for high school stu­dents.

■ Increase racial and gender diversity in cod­ing classes.

“We’re going to do this by mes­saging, just like today,” Hutchin­son said. “We’re going to do it by call­ing national atten­tion to it. We’re also going to have regional con­fer­ences at which we are going to be able to show­case what other gov­ernors are doing, draw atten­tion to it and try to engage other states.”

“We’re going to do this by mes­saging, just like today,” Hutchin­son said. “We’re going to do it by call­ing national atten­tion to it. We’re also going to have regional con­fer­ences at which we are going to be able to show­case what other gov­ernors are doing, draw atten­tion to it and try to engage other states.”

Hutchin­son praised the bipar­tisan sup­port for the ini­ti­at­ive from numer­ous gov­ernors around the nation.

Frank said Arkan­sas has already helped to shape com­puter sci­ence in other states through col­lab­or­a­tion and through the par­ti­cip­a­tion by Arkan­sas mem­bers of the Com­puter Sci­ence Teach­ers Asso­ci­ation in devel­op­ing a multistate com­puter sci­ence licen­sure test.

“Arkan­sas has been a leader in com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion and has done a tre­mend­ous job in trans­form­ing com­puter sci­ence edu­ca­tion in the state,” Frank said.

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