Yesterday, someone posted this link to the various CS teacher groups on Facebook. A Masters program in teaching CS. As I usually do, I took a look. I've spoken before about the variation of quality in teacher certification programs across all subjects. Some are great but many (many) are bad. I blame this largely on NCLB but that's for another day. For CS I've lamented that while I'd like to think that my program is strong and I know there are programs like Siena's that are great but there are others both in NY State and out that are quite frankly, certificate mills. It appears to me that the NJCTL program is one of those so I thought this was a good opportunity to dissect the program as described by their web page.

First - two notes. On each of the posts on Facebook someone responded calling the institutions accreditation into question - I don't know about this one way or another so I won't speak to that.

Second - I'm only responding to the website based information. I haven't spoken to anyone in the program and therefore could be offbase on some things. Still, I'll be sharing my initial impressions and opinions and barring any new information, well, you know.

Okay. Let's go.

The program is online asynchronous. My program is online with a mix of sync and async. I think in person is better for some classes but as long as we're the only adv cert program running in the state, we have to be online to accommodate teachers who live or teach far away. I do think that being entirely async is a problem for a teaching program. The program seems to have online discussion groups But I don't think alone that's enough.

Still, the format wasn't really what attracted my attention when I perused the program site.

The first class is "Secondary PSI Teaching Methods for Compuer Science." Okay, sounds good but since it's cross listed for all the other curricula areas they offer and the syllabus doesn't seem to mention any CS this is not a great start.

Next there's a course in "learning and teaching programming in Python." The title is reminiscent to math ed classes like "Geometry for math teachers" - when this is offered by an academic department rather than as an education course it's historically code for "watered down math since real math might be too hard." In this case, I wouldn't come down too hard since it's an intro programming experience so it's probably fine.

Finally, phase 1 ends the "Learning and Teaching General Computing Concepts." Fine but it seems pretty shallow for a 3 credit graduate level course and while it's coded as a CS class (CSCI), if the program was meatier, the relevant concepts would probably appear in other more worthwhile courses.

Phase 2 has three courses. One is field experience and since the syllabus being general for all subject areas I couldn't really determine if the class is legit or not. The other two Phase 2 classes were basically "APCS-P for teachers" parts 1 and 2, three credits each.

Okay, here we have a problem. First off, APCS-P isn't a college level class to begin with again we're having a CSCI class about how to teach CS with early high school CS content. Not good. It really rings of weekend PD stretched out for 3 credits. If a teacher actually knows their CS, they shouldn't have to actually take a class in APCS-P.

Phase 3? More field experience with the same concerns and 2 semesters of "APCS-A for teachers." This might be worse. APCS-A content is early level undergraduate CS that's usually taught in 1 semester. Here it's taught as it is in HS over a full year.

By contrast, my program provides self study for very rudimentary programming and our first course is APCS-A with all the other ones being more advanced and all content. We then also have our methods and curriculum classes on top of that. We don't spend a year on APCS-P or APCS-A but you can bet my grads teaching HS will be able to teach either along with a wide range of other classes.

The final class is basically prep for the praxis exam so are they saying that a good practice for a teacher prep program is a test prep class for a standardized exam?

I couldn't find out more but these were my personal impressions. I looked at all the syllabi and all had faculty listed on the top but I sure hope those aren't the actual faculty because all but I think 1 don't appear to have any CS background (based on looking them up on LinkedIn).

Before going on, I want to state that I'm just sharing my impressions for information - this program doesn't compete with my program since it's not NY State approved and besides, I just retired so it's not technically my program anymore anyway.

Continuing, I thought this was worth writing up because there are plenty of other programs like this and including some in NY State (and some that I think, shockingly, the state approved as certification programs). These are programs to look out for. It's also CS Ed going the way of all Ed.

When I got my math certification, I needed a certain number of math credits and back then there wasn't, or at least, I wasn't aware of the "math ed" alternatives. When I got my license in NY City, I had to face a "board of examiners" - a principal, a math chair, and some math teachers who could grill me both on math and how to teach it. A couple of years the city stopped certifying teachers and just followed the state's lead. After that NCLB was enacted and all of a sudden instead of having to actually know your content you could complete a "math ed," "sci ed," or other "ed" program. This opened the door for severely watered down content. In fact, before I got my Masters (in straight CS from the Courant Institute at NYU), I had colleagues list out programs where I could get my masters and my 30 above (for increased salary). Everyone knew which programs you'd learn stuff but had to work in and which ones were basically pay for the credits, sit back, and relax (and yes, I did in fact take a couple of those courses as well to round out my 30 above).

It seems that we're going down the same road with CS Ed.

If you're a teacher seeking to add CS certification or even take classes to improve your CS knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge, buyer beware. There are some great classes out there and great programs but there's also a lot of low level PD masquerading as deep content.

Sorry if this pisses some people off but you know me, I'm New York's resident CS curmudgeon. If I don't rant about these things, who will?