I usually listen to podcasts on my morning run. For the past couple of weeks I've been listening to 99% Invisible's series on The Power Broker, Robert Caro's incredible biography of Robert Moses. Arguably the best book on New York City not to mention urban planning and politics. Amazing book. I read it a few years ago, well, actually listened to it at the same time as Natan - our own personal father son book club. We've done it with a few tomes - The Power Broker, Don Quixote, and most recently Wagnerism.

I highly recommend both the book and the podcast series but I'm not going to talk about either really today. As part of the series, each episode includes an interview with a guest. One guest was Michael Schur, co-creator of Parks and Rec. During the podcast, he told a story about how, when working on Parks and Rec, they interviewed a city bureaucrat or civil servant. He wanted to rebuild a small local park. He had all sorts of plans to return the park to its original glory including magnificent columns. Schur noted that since we live in a democracy, he couldn't just start building but rather all sorts of constituents had to weigh in. One group wanted less grass, another objected to the ornateness of the columns and so it went on and on. By the time the park was actually finished, it was a pale imitation of the original plans. Sure, it was a new, rebuilt park, but the plans had been gutted, scaled back and otherwise twisted.

In spite of this, when asked, the civil servant said he was happy with the results. Sure, he wanted his plans but he also knew how government worked and in the end, he as happy that there was some progress.

I see the same thing happen time and time again. Traffic calming efforts that would improve safety, air quality, and quality of life in general for many New Yorkers shot down because a small group of people (usually rich white ones) insist that the city can't remove the free public parking in front of their buildings. I won't even get started on the housing crisis in the city. If following our cited civil servant's point of view, the people pushing the positive changes in the city should be happy with their baby step successes.

I've always had difficulty with this point of view.

I'm not saying it has to be "go big or go home" but I've always tried to do it right rather than do it enough to check the checkbox.

I remember when New York City was creating AFSE (The Academy for Software Engineering). I was involved for a while until the Department of Ed froze me out. The DOE insisted that the goal of the school was to create industry ready software engineers right out of high school based on what I had built at Stuy. I said "great, but to do that you need to have an academic screen to get in" knowing that you can't get to industry ready if the kids are coming in multiple years behind, particularly in math. I also said that they could go without a screen but they'd have to adjust their expectations (as well as messaging) since without the screen and with students coming in at all levels, the best they would be able to do is give some exposure to computer science and if they did it right, prepare them for college CS or a boot camp after high school.

I said they could go either way but I was pushing for the entrance screen. Not anything like the Stuy test, but something to make sure the kids entered with enough of a math background so that the school could accomplish its goals. I really believed with a modest math screen and the right resources, the school could be something special.

At the end of the day, I lost that one. The DOE froze me out. The created an unscreened school (again, I'm not saying this in and of itself was bad) but they maintained the messaging that the kids would get that top level software engineering preparation.

Of course the students didn't. The school was fine as a generic school but in terms of Software Engineering and CS Prep, looking back, I'd actually say that there were public NYC schools that already existed that were doing as well or arguably better and I'm not talking about test schools like Stuy here.

In discussing this was friends, I was commonly told "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." I get it but it's something that I've long struggled with.

At the end of the day, I think I was right about AFSE for the students that went there. If the school was honest about what it was, I think it could have served its kids better. Alternatively, if it added a nominal screen it could have fulfilled its stated objective.

On the other hand, I was also wrong. The schools existence along with the Public Relations push and industry hype, all under the Bloomberg administration probably helped pave the way for Bill de Blasio's CSforAll initiative in New York City.

So, was I right or was I wrong? I don't know. Without AFSE we might not have had CSforAll so I was most likely wrong but part of me still believes that they could have done the school right and at the same time still built the hype.

I've also been similarly on both CSforAll and CS teacher prep programs. My position has always been that we need knowledgeable CS teachers in CS classes and that knowledgeable means actually knowing a fair amount of CS. Of course this would mean a long term ramp up and funding to actually pay to prepare the teachers. The majority trend and view is quite different - start teaching CS now even if teachers don't really know what they're doing and we might work things out at some later point.

I'm not going to address the people who feel that short form PD is enough to make a strong high school CS teacher other than to say they're flat out wrong.

My view is wrong in that the ramp up would take years - probably decades. That means that potentially another generation of kids would be denied any CS education. On top of that, the amount of time needed would be far longer than typical government office terms and who knows if initiatives would survive from one administration to another.

On the other hand, doing it quick and dirty can also be wrong. I've seen both teachers and schools who believe that once they have someone in an APCS-P class - regardless of that teacher's ability to actually teach CS - as long as they have the seal of approval of having gone through some rudimentary code.org style training, it's good enough and the school is set for life.

This is also a problem.

An even worse problem is when a school is teaching CS badly and either turning off students or teaching them things that are just wrong resulting in kids getting turned off later on. I've seen this as well.

So, I'm still muddled on this. I find it very frustrating when I see CS education at the school, district, city, state, or national level moving in a direction that I think is, not wrong, but not optimal even though I try to console myself with the fact that the movement is positive in a lot of ways.

I also remind myself of something Pete Seeger frequently said, attributing it to Rene Dubos - "think globally, act locally." I take great pride in the results I've gotten when I have been able to do projects my way with my team - Hunter, Stuyvesant, and an assortment of others. That reminds me of something that a very smart friend once told me years ago when the K12 CS movement was just starting. He predicted that "there will be small pockets of excellence" - referring to places such as Stuy but the mainstream will be mediocre at best. I think the mainstream overall is doing a fair deal better than mediocre but I think his point of view was pretty prescient.

In any case, I do wear my naysayer hat as a badge of honor. I think the movement needs people like me to try to keep the mainstream honest.