Systems for Success: Designing a Districtwide Vision for K–12 CS & CTE Pathways

Good afternoon everyone, or good morning depending on where you're joining from. I am very excited to have a really engaging, interesting, and insightful discussion today with two wonderful education leaders that we work with directly here at CodeHS. Today we're not talking about code directly, but more so how to actually build, scale, and set your vision for a K-12 computer science pathway that prepares students for the careers of tomorrow. We'll touch on some CTE as well in our discussion today.

Joining us today, I'm Eric Austin, the director of account management here at CodeHS. We work with districts across the country and across the world to help them build and scale their computer science programs. We have two leaders who work with us in their settings today who I'm really excited for you all to hear from. We have Dr. Amna Ahmad from Moreno Valley Unified School District in California and Nick Baswell from the Nova Scotia Department of Education. So we are truly coast to coast on both sides of our big continent today, which I'm really excited about. I'm going to have each of them introduce themselves and share a little bit more about their district, their backgrounds, and then we'll get our conversation started.

My name is Amna Ahmad, professional development specialist serving Moreno Valley Unified School District. It is northeast of Los Angeles. We have around 34,000 students in our district. It is a mostly Hispanic and low-income district, so we have some struggles. Before joining as a PD specialist, I was a math teacher for nine years. Before that, I taught elementary and middle school also. I have experience from TK through 12th grade. In a PD specialist position, this is my 11th year supporting STEAM programs in our district. We will talk a little bit more about our STEAM vision later, but basically my job is to support STEAM, mainly focusing on computer science and robotics.

I'm Nick Baswell, a technology consultant with the Nova Scotia Department of Education. We are a province with around 130,000 students in eight regions that work somewhat autonomously under our guidance, and we go from K to 12 education. From my own background, I started as an elementary school teacher in grades four and five, and for the last seven years have been working with the department as a technology consultant with my main focus being computer science curriculum and maker education.

I've worked directly with Nick to support their program and can speak to some of the growth that I've seen as well. Here are some things you can expect to hear about in our discussion today. We're going to have a pretty open discussion, but you should expect to hear about building a shared district vision. Maybe you right now run a school or a specific grade band within a district and you're thinking, how can I build up or down within my district? That's something these leaders have grappled with. If I'm doing that, how do I have the long-term sustainability so that whatever we've built this year succeeds for five to ten years to come?

Ultimately, whether it's computer science or any subject, something our parents and communities are asking is how that prepares our students for the jobs not just of today, but for tomorrow. Workforce readiness is a topic that we'll discuss. Very much related to that is AI. How are we using AI in the classroom right now? We are always looking for more perspectives on that as we continue to learn and deploy it. Throughout the webinar, if you have a particular question, please use the Q&A button.

The question we'll start with is for both of you to answer based on what comes to mind first. Thinking about your experience in your district or province, think about where you started and today. What did your computer science program look like at the time you started and what does it look like today?

When I think about where I started, it was back in 2006. At that time, we had very basic technology outcomes as a whole. There weren't really specific computer science frameworks or outcomes unless you were in a high school class which solely focused on that. It wasn't something that happened day-to-day or even weekly or monthly within regular classrooms. In 2015, we had a renewed technology curriculum come out. At that time, there was a push for computer coding from K to 8 to get it more introduced. We had some robots roll out to classrooms and Chromebooks go out. It was a much larger push to get hands-on activities along with some professional development for teachers. In 2024, we released our newest version of that where we really tried to make it more encompassing of the technology that we saw. Tech is the fastest growing industry and it moves by leaps and bounds. To have a curriculum that can cover it all, you really need to be very adaptive. When we looked at creating our new curriculum in 2024, we tried to make it future-facing by having some broader areas that would incorporate new technologies as they came along. We didn't want it to be outdated in two or three years.

In our district, our main focus is STEAM. We started with elementary schools first and we actually have two STEAM pathways: elementary, middle, and high school. These are designated schools which are STEAM schools, and we focus on introducing computer science, robotics, and engineering in those classrooms. These students participate in science and engineering fairs and other computer science competitions. When I started almost 10 years ago, there was no clear vision of what we wanted to do. At that point, we offered basic training for elementary school teachers through Code.org. We started introducing computer science in our elementary schools and then we had some elective courses in middle and high school. It was just one high school or middle school focusing on it, while multiple elementary schools were offering block coding as an after-school club or on a flex day doing a STEAM rotation.

When COVID happened, the elementary computer science program hit a roadblock. We don't see that much coding in our elementary schools anymore, but our middle school and high school programs became stronger. Now almost all our six middle schools have computer science programs in some way. All our high schools have computer science as an elective. We are offering AP Computer Science, JavaScript app development, and Unity game development in middle school. Our students have multiple entry points. We have a very strong cybersecurity program in middle school and high school under CTE. Students follow that path and get CTE certification. Our computer science program is not under CTE, but we offer AP and all other courses.

I am interested in how much of the growth of your program has been driven from the bottom up or from the top down. I would say we have both. We have that grassroots approach where teachers who are very passionate find resources and bring them up the chain. Then there are things we do at the provincial level, like CodeHS, where we make that available for all our computer programming teachers. It is through that combination that we are able to get the most to our students. We host a conference in the summertime for about 200 teachers focused on technology and education curriculum. The last couple of years have been focused on AI. That is where we find the passionate teachers who want to hit the ground running. One difficulty we found with blanket approaches, like providing robots to every grade, is that you don't always have the buy-in from individual teachers. You might have devices sitting on shelves not being used, which is not the best use of money. We did a partnership with Unruly Splats and started with 25 schools, growing to around 220 schools over five years by finding the teachers who said they wanted to be a part of it. We had a huge buy-in versus putting it out to everybody and seeing wasted devices.

In our district, it is more of a bottom-up approach. Most computer science teachers took that initiative on their own. Even at the elementary school level, teachers attended trainings or got certifications and started integrating it into their classrooms. In middle and high school, it is the same. A couple of our universities offer free certification for computer science. In elementary and 6th grade, you can teach computer science without certification, but from 6th through 12th grade, you need a certification in computer science or need to be a math teacher. Most teachers took the initiative to earn the certification. We sometimes partner with neighboring universities so professors can work with our teachers to design courses. There is a discussion happening in our district right now about how the district can support this initiative so it isn't just teachers doing it on their own; otherwise, when a teacher leaves, the program leaves.

How do you decide when something growing from the grassroots is something you want to scale? We look for the impact it has on learning. Unfortunately, technology often falls into a "Friday fun time" category, and we want to get away from that. We want to make it meaningful. If we see fantastic curriculum connections that are cross-curricular, like linking with language arts or math, then you get more buy-in. We look to see if it exists in a bubble or if it is adaptable across multiple disciplines. A language arts teacher might say they aren't touching tech, but if you show them how to achieve language arts outcomes with technology, they will try it. Being adaptive is how we look at making things grow successfully.

For a couple of years, we partnered with the University of California Riverside and offered our teachers a STEAM certificate. We modified their certificate to meet the needs of our district and offered that to teachers for credit. Our in-house professional development specialists were teaching those courses, so it was aligned with our vision. We created opportunities for our teachers to learn about our vision for STEAM, which included computer science, robotics, engineering, and arts. We have more than 100 certified teachers who integrate these concepts into their classrooms.

Are you seeing this interdisciplinary connection happening mostly at the primary grades, or are you thinking about it at the secondary level too? For us, it's definitely K to 8 that has the most cross-curricular ability because those teachers teach more than one thing. When you get into high school and become more specialized, it is a tougher nut to crack. We try to show connections where it makes sense. Sometimes a piece of technology forces the conversation. AI has opened the door for people in humanities and math to discuss technology. We have to talk about how to use this effectively. Technology has kicked down the door. In K to 8, there is more potential for crossover because they team teach and have other teachers to bounce ideas off of.

We see a similar trend in K-8. Sometimes in a science classroom, students participating in a science fair might develop an app, bringing their knowledge from computer science into a chemistry class project, but mostly it is in the younger grades.

When thinking about a new pathway, how do you make those decisions? It is a combination of factors. It is looking at industry. If you have students from a low-income background, computer science offers jobs that pay well without needing to leave the local community. We have a career pathways pilot and a digital innovation technology certificate. When students complete it and a module from a local university, they get university credit before finishing high school. It puts them on the map for career development and allows them to stay in the province while making a nice living.

In our district, the computer science pathway was intentional because we wanted students to have that exposure. My daughter went to the school where I taught math. She applied to university and picked computer science as her major. My brother-in-law asked if she had ever done coding, and she panicked and changed her major to mechanical engineering because her exposure was very limited. She got scared. This gave me the thought that if we are not exposing students to computer science early, they are never going to take that risk. If we keep thinking that low-income families or students who don't speak English can't do it, they will never get the opportunity. Our pathway started with teachers meeting after school. I started supporting them and pushed for a computer science advisory. They gave us a STEAM advisory instead, which was even better. Now when teachers want to design a course or pathway, they take it to the STEAM advisory instead of going through math or science. It makes it easier for teachers to get new courses approved faster. It took us seven or eight years to get there.

How do state or district policies influence your program? Our state has funding for VAPA, which mentions STEM and STEAM. There is a new requirement for computer science, and universities are offering free certifications, but the state is not making computer science a requirement as an elective or graduation requirement yet. Our district is so focused on math and ELA because of low scores that computer science or STEAM is not even a discussion at this point.

We see the same thing where math and language arts dominate the conversation. That's why cross-curricular integration is how you get it in, because that's where the money and focus are. If scores are down, that's where the PD funding goes. You have to be creative. We don't currently have a computer science requirement for graduation. There is discussion around a mandatory online course to get students used to working in a different capacity, but we don't have strong internet in all areas to make that happen yet. Going cross-curricular into the powerhouses of math and language arts helps get the word out.

In your roles, you are advocates for computer science. Do you have other success stories for making sure computer science is prioritized? It's interesting to see who excels at computer science; sometimes it's not the students you would expect. It offers an opportunity for students who might not have traditional leadership skills to find a niche and support others. I've also found that when doing something as engaging as STEAM or computer science, classroom behaviors drop off significantly. If you talk to a teacher about behaviors going down, it will pique their interest.

How does budget factor into this? Budgets are incredibly difficult because they fluctuate. You have to find a program that you can justify the money for or find a cost-effective strategy. Code.org is a fabulous free place to start. Sometimes you have to advocate for a priority because the value is so high. Getting decision-makers into schools to see the impact helps. It's one thing if they hear it from me; it's another if they hear it from teachers and students.

We have a STEAM budget for designated sites. I work under the professional development department, and they always give some budget for STEAM. This will be our third year buying CodeHS licenses. My director knows I will be asking for that money. There is always a struggle because money gets allocated elsewhere, and you have to fight for it. We see the district spend money on robotics kits that sit in cabinets and become obsolete. Those are the challenges. If you convince them enough, they will give you money, but after-school programs still struggle for support.

How do you prove the return on investment to the larger community? A few weeks ago, we had our STEAM expo. This is a district-wide event open to the community that I started nine years ago. We invite community partners, universities, businesses, and emergency services to do a STEAM activity. The first year we had 400 people; this year we had 1,800. We encourage teachers to showcase what they are doing. It is a community family event that keeps parents and teachers engaged.

We host an innovation fair similar to a maker fair. Students from around the province bring projects to one host school. We invite local and federal politicians to see what schools are doing and where the funding is going. Seeing what students have created goes a long way in supporting the budget.

Why do we even need to learn computer science in the age of AI? It's the same reason you learn how to read and write. You can ask AI to generate anything, but if you can't read and understand it, you don't know what you have. You might get code from AI, but you won't be able to adapt it to get what you are actually looking for. Understanding how it works is key to using it effectively and avoiding "AI junk." We want work from students that reflects them, not just a quick prompt.

We communicate that students need to understand "garbage in, garbage out." If they don't understand the programming, AI won't help them. They need to know what's happening behind the scenes to know if a program will work. Also, AI will always have personal biases. When we teach programming, we ensure students understand they are programming for everyone and need to catch those biases. If you use AI to create an app but have to pay for every search, money is leaving your pocket. If you code and host it yourself, that money stays with you.

What do the policies look like for student use of AI? Most regions have it on for staff. We are a Google province, so we use Gemini. Some regions have it on for students, and we've done training with staff around rubrics. If a student writes an essay, they need to include the AI component, the prompts used, and how much they leaned on it. We don't want to limit it completely, but we want it to be meaningful.

In our district, AI is open for teachers but not yet for students. We are working on guidelines to open it to high school students on a trial basis. We think teachers should be introducing it to students before they get direct access. We are working on digital citizenship with an AI focus so students know what is safe to use. We are weaving those components into student tech modules throughout the year.

What other opportunities do you offer for credentials or certifications? We have AP Computer Science and career pathways. We encourage students to participate in local competitions and the Congressional App Challenge. Our students also visit Google headquarters and Stanford to see the real world. We hear back from students who graduate college and are now working for tech companies.

What advice would you offer someone new in your role? Go for it. Don't let people say it's too tough. It's well worth it. Look at what other regions have done. CSTA and ISTE have great information. Put your ideas down, get other eyes on them, and just go for it.

Become part of a technology or computer science network. Attend STEAM events and talk to teachers. Go to symposiums and look for workshops. My first two years were spent looking for free events on my own time to see what other districts were doing. Bring those ideas back and encourage teachers. I have seen teachers who didn't know coding start doing it, learn with their students, and eventually master it.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Just go for it. Often the community will iterate on what you've created and make it something you didn't even dream of. We have additional webinars coming up focusing on AP Cybersecurity and preparing students for AP exams. On April 11th, we have our virtual teacher conference. You can also become a CodeHS certified educator or earn micro-credentials. We are not just a platform; we are a team of consultants here to help you build and grow your program. Thank you, Nick and Amna, for joining us today.