Tech Leaders Call on California to Boost Computer Science

High-profile technology executives and investors are asking for a meeting with California Governor Jerry Brown to discuss augmenting computer science education in the state’s public schools.

In a letter they circulated to the press, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Stanford President John Hennessy, Khan Academy founder Salman Khan and many others called on Brown to add coding classes and adjust requirements.

They contrasted the availability of California computer science classes — taught in fewer than five percent of the state’s public K-12 schools — with California computer science jobs — which reportedly outnumber CS students by a factor of 16 to 1.

More coding education? Who could hate more coding education (besides, probably, Valleywag)? The non-controversial ask won signatures from a long list of Silicon Valley names.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Governor Brown,

Thank you for working tirelessly to create opportunities for California’s students. We would like to partner with you to help California become a leader in K-12 computer science education.

California is home to the computing revolution that transforms our lives and provides high-paying jobs. But 90 percent of our K-12 schools do not teach computer science. The Conference Board estimates 70,000 open computing jobs in California — roughly 16 jobs for every computer science graduate in the state! Besides the jobs, a basic understanding of this foundational field is relevant in every 21st century career. Lack of access in urban and rural schools also creates inequity for students of color; in the entire state of California, only 74 African Americans and 392 Hispanic Americans took the AP Computer Science exam in 2013. Our shared goal should be that every K-12 student has access to high-quality computer science.

There is unprecedented interest and action this legislative session aimed at expanding computer science in California’s K-12 system. In particular, proposed legislation to allow computer science to count as a high school mathematics credit would increase enrollment in computer science without impacting mathematics1 or burdening schools that don’t teach computer science. But these bills are only first steps. We want your support for a broader statewide effort to increase student access. Real progress will require meaningful investment.

Computer science is wildly popular across all demographics and party lines. In only 4 months, 34 million students have tried the Hour of Code, a campaign that launched on the Google homepage and in every Apple store, accompanied by speeches from President Barack Obama, US House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Governor Jeb Bush, and US Senator Cory Booker. Almost 1.5 million people have signed Code.org’s petition asking to expand computer science education. In addition, the LAUSD Board recently instructed the Superintendent to report, within 90 days, how to expand computer science in the district.

Computer science education draws overwhelming support — not only from the tech industry and its leaders, but among regular Americans who want their children to be prepared for the software century.

We would be grateful if you and your staff would consider meeting with a subset of us to discuss how we can work together and make California a computer science trailblazer. We truly appreciate all of your work on behalf of California’s students.

Sincerely,

The undersigned

Business leaders:
Marc Benioff, CEO, salesforce.com
Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel
John Doerr, Partner, KPCB
Jack Dorsey, Co-founder, Twitter. CEO, Square
Kevin and Julia Hartz, Co-founders, CEO and President, Eventbrite
Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix
Reid Hoffman, Chairman, LinkedIn
Drew Houston, CEO, Dropbox
Maggie Johnson, Head of Education Research, Google
Vinod Khosla, Co-founder, Sun Microsystems. Founder, Khosla Ventures
Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision
Mark Pincus, Chairman, Zynga
Dan Schulman, Chairman, Symantec
Brad Smith, General Counsel, Microsoft
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp
Jim Swartz, Founder, Accel Partners
Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn
Education and nonprofits:
Kimberly Bryant, Founder and Executive Director, Black Girls Code
Richard Carranza, Superintendent, San Francisco Unified School District
Tara Chklovski, Founder, CEO, Iridescent Learning
Bill Draper, Founder, Draper Richards Foundation
John Hennessy, President, Stanford
Salman Khan, Founder and Executive Director, Khan Academy
Jane Margolis, Senior Researcher, UCLA. Author, Stuck in the Shallow End
Ali and Hadi Partovi, co-founders, Code.org
Paulette Smith, Principal of Joaquin Miller Elementary School, Oakland Unified School District
Louise Waters, Superintendent & CEO, Leadership Public Schools
Gary Yee, Superintendent, Oakland Unified School District

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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