Touchstone #1: I use standards to guide every learning opportunity.

Education Standards at a Glance

Education standards are a complex topic, but at their core, they are a set of learning goals for knowledge and skills students should have and when they should have it by (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2019). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) focus on math and English language arts while other standards cover science and engineering (Next Generation Science Standards, 2013).

Standards help in several ways. For one, it allows for teachers and districts to get their learning all on the same page as students progress through their education journey. It also allows for teachers to hold their students to a higher expectation by having a goal and a target to achieve (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013, p. 7).

Computer Science has it's own set of standards with different levels of state adoption ( Code.org, 2019). One of the more popular set of standards comes from the Computer Science Teacher's Association (CSTA) providing guidelines for computational thinking for grades starting at Kindergarten and going through 12th grade (CSTA, 2019). Their standards are broken down into concepts (i.e. computing systems, data & analysis, networks & the internet, etc) and practices (i.e. collaborating and communicating around computing, developing and using abstractions, fostering an inclusive culture, etc).

Aligning Standards with Courses

One of the more difficult aspects of implementing grade appropriate lessons based on these standards will depend on the course at hand. A good example of this is the AP Computer Science A (AP CSA) class which focuses on teaching Java coding to high school students, grades 10 through 12. One look through the AP CSA's "Course at a Glance" (College Board, 2019, p. 22-25) will show the level of computational thinking required of the course. However, finding and comparing standards to match this content from CSTA aligns with Middle School appropriate standards. Let's take the following standard designated appropriate grades 6-8, which we'll use throughout these pages on touchstones:

• 2-AP-12 Design and iteratively develop programs that combine control structures, including nested loops and compound conditionals.

The first four units of AP CSA build up the knowledge that would meet this standard. So what gives? First, it's important to recognize that the concepts laid out for Middle School students CAN be taught, but often using tools like Scratch or Code.Org Game Lab, which allow for friendlier block-level coding. This removes the syntactical demands that would make a language like Java difficult for that grade level. However, there are certainly teachers using Python to teach middle school students without block-coding. For anyone interested in this niche subject, I recommend the podcast "Teaching Python with Kelly & Sean", two teachers who documenting their classroom experiences with 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.

While Java is grade appropriate for high-school, the concepts don't particularly align well with CSTA standards, and that is ok. However, another AP-level course that provide much greater alignment to CSTA standards is the AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) course (College Board, 2019). This course, by design, approaches the field of CS in an 'inch-deep, mile-wide" mentality that aligns well with higher-level skills laid out by CSTA standards.

One more resource I would like to point out is NICERC's approach to application-based curricula with modular design (NICERC, 2019). While this is not specifically standards, it is worth mentioning their modern approach that deviates from the old-school "coding" CS education is regularly rooted in. NICERC's philosophy is that there are numerous realms of computing practices outside of coding and different projects will demand different disciplines be learned. Student interest can jump in and out of different aspects as needed to accomplish a goal or project and often times incorporate cross-curricular opportunities as well. Based on how CSTA lists out 'practices' it can align well with this structure, so long as a teacher recognizes it may miss some of the standards along the way.