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October 1, 2019 02:00 am

US Dept of Education Has Big Payday For K-12 CS, Including Tech-Backed Code.org

theodp writes: On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced $123 million in new Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant awards to 41 school districts, nonprofits and state educational agencies. Over $78 million of that went to 29 grantees focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, and more than 85% of the funded STEM projects include a specific focus on computer science. The announcement was scant on details, but the awardees listed include tech-bankrolled Code.org, whose Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith, Amazon CEO of Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke, and Google VP of Education & University Programs Maggie Johnson. In his new book, Tools and Weapons, Smith interestingly reveals how Microsoft, Amazon, and Google each pledged to commit $50 million to K-12 computer science education to get First Daughter and Presidential Adviser Ivanka Trump to work to secure $1 billion of Federal support for K-12 STEM/CS education. From the book: "While you would be hard-pressed to say that every student must take computer science, you could say that every student deserves the opportunity. That means getting computer science into every high school, and into earlier grades as well. The only way to train teachers at this scale is for federal funding to help fill the gap. After years of lobbying, there was a breakthrough in federal interest in 2016. In January President Obama announced a bold proposal to invest $4 billion of federal money to bring computer science to the nation's schools. While the proposal produced enthusiasm, it didn't spur Congress to appropriate any new money. Ivanka Trump had more success the following year. Even before her father had moved into the White House, she was interested in federal investments in computer science in schools. She was confident she could persuade the president to support the idea, but she also believed that the key to public money was to secure substantial private funding from major technology companies. She said she would work to secure $1 billion of federal support over five years if the tech sector would pledge $300 million during the same time. As always, there was the question of whether someone would go first. The White House was looking for a company to get things rolling by pledging $50 million over five years. Given Microsoft's long-standing involvement, financial support, and prior advocacy with the Obama White House, we were a natural choice. We agreed to make the commitment, other companies followed, and in September 2017 Mary Snapp, the head of Microsoft Philanthropies, joined Ivanka in Detroit to make the announcement." The $300 million was apparently money well-pledged. Surrounded by children, educators, Ivanka Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, President Trump in late 2017 signed a presidential memorandum directed to DeVos calling for the expansion of K-12 computer science and STEM education in the U.S. with at least $200 million in annual grant funding.

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