Growing Computer Science and Information Technology Education in K-12: Industry Demand and Ecosystem Support

Demand for IT skills has grown dramatically in the last decade. Companies have realized that they need more people to fill roles in their IT departments, and modern life increasingly relies on being able to navigate digital environments and use digital tools. Many school districts have responded to these demands by attempting to increase their offerings of computer science and information technology coursework. In this paper, we describe one region’s effort to support K-12 schools in increasing digital skills for all students and the pipeline of IT professionals. We describe three approaches taken by three school districts to respond to these efforts in collaboration with local industry and other institutions. One school district partnered closely with local higher education institutions to offer early college classes, another focused on providing robust computer science courses of their own to high school students, and the third focused on developing broad digital skills especially at the grade school level (K-8). We argue that the collaboration maturation of efforts in the region allowed school districts to expand computer science offerings more easily and to use regional partnerships to increase the likelihood of being successful with their efforts