New Michigan Law Orders an Unknown Number of High Schools to Begin Offering CS

theodp writes: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer last week signed into law House Bill 5649, which will require each public high school in the state to offer at least one computer science course to its students, preferably taught in-person. Interestingly, Fiscal Agency Analysis studies suggest that the Governor and Michigan lawmakers had no idea of the possible impact of the law they were pressed to pass by supporters of HB5649 because the number of Michigan schools currently not offering CS could not be accurately determined.

From the Senate Fiscal Agency Analysis: "It is not known exactly how many high schools do not currently offer a qualifying course, but the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI) notes that of the 1,265 high schools that reported students in the Michigan Student Data System Teacher Student Data Link Collection in the 2022-2023 school year, 864 high schools (68%) had students who took at least one computer science related course and 401 high schools (32%) did not report any students taking computer science related courses. According to CEPI, these counts should be considered a rough approximation, since they are produced using a methodology that considers school course classification codes and key words in course names."

The House Fiscal Agency Analysis also cautioned that school count estimates should be considered a 'rough approximation', adding that "Supporters of the bill say that increasing access to computer science courses for students in schools should be a priority of the state in order to ensure that students can compete for the types of jobs that have good pay and will be needed in the coming decades." That analysis goes on to report that testifying in favor of the bill were tech-giant backed nonprofit Code.org (Microsoft is a $30 million Code.org donor), Amazon and AWS (Amazon is a $30+ million Code.org donor), the tech-supported Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), and the lobbying organization TechNet, whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and OpenAI).

At the end of 2024, Code.org in its nationally-released 2024 State of Computer Science Education report disfavorably compared Michigan to other states in a shaming bar chart and infographic displaying Code.org-computed percentages of high schools offering a CS course, a flawed metric that not only fails to take into account different school sizes, but also relies on an acknowledged inaccurate number of Michigan schools offering CS ("We used AP exam data from the College Board for participation statistics," the report's authors explain, "but we know participation in all foundational computer science courses is broader than just AP.").

And that, kids, is another example of how a K-12 CS education bill becomes a law!