Coding in Schools

The Rarity of Coding Courses in California Schools

CodeRev Kids provides an essential service to California youth in the wake of the lack of coding courses available in schools. Consider a recent article for the Sacramento Bee titled “Coding courses a rarity in California high schools despite tech explosion.”

Phillip Reese of the Sacramento Bee writes, “California is home to Silicon Valley, a hub of technological innovation. The computer industry boasts hundreds of thousands of well-paying information technology jobs, with more on the way. IT departments are now a staple of corporate America. Yet the large majority of California’s public high schools don’t offer dedicated computer science or computer programming courses, according to a Sacramento Bee review of teacher assignment data from the California Department of Education. Information technology is one of the fastest-growing job sectors across California and the nation. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects there will be 500,000 new computer and IT jobs in the next 10 years. The state EDD predicts more than 100,000 of those new jobs will be in California. Taking into account vacancies created by turnover, California likely will see about 200,000 IT jobs open up in the next 10 years. Most full-time computer jobs pay more than $90,000 a year, according to EDD figures. And the ability to write computer code or query large databases is increasingly valuable at a litany of jobs not specifically tied to the IT sector. The employment website Indeed.com collects job postings from across the Internet. On Friday, it listed over 1,000 openings within 25 miles of Sacramento that mentioned programming or database analysis as desired core or secondary skills. There is a stark disconnect between those numbers and the amount of computer science education offered in California public high schools. More California high school students take ceramics courses than take dedicated computer programming courses, according to state data. Far more students take art, band, chorus, psychology or French courses than courses devoted to computer science. Students are almost 20 times as likely to take Advanced Placement English language or literature as they are to take AP computer science.”

When it comes to customized coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages and concepts.

Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Sign up for one of our camps today!