The Difference Between Washington’s EdTech and CS Standards
DO YOU STRUGGLE TO EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EDTECH AND COMPUTER SCIENCE STANDARDS?
I had planned to give a presentation, “The Gap Between Washington’s EdTech and CS Standards,” at NCCE (Northwest Council for Computer Education) 2025 on 02/26/2025. While I could not give my presentation due to health issues, I am providing a synopsis and links below so that my preparation for the conference isn’t a total loss.
While the presentation was created for Washington, it applies nationwide as well. Washington’s EdTech standards are much more detailed than the 2024 ISTE Standards for Students. Among other features, Washington’s EdTech standards list connected standards to various other subjects – including computer science. Using CSTA’s K-12 Standard Progression Chart, I created a “crosswalk” document (XLSX version) that shows how well the EdTech standards cover CS standards.
The rest of the presentation is my interpretation of the crosswalk document and more. Additional conclusions:
- Abstraction is the computational thinking concept
- Missing from EdTech standards
- Most difficult for elementary/middle school teachers to teach/understand
- Understanding the power of layers of abstraction is critical to explaining
- Why all students need to learn basic computer science
- Why computer science is the bridge literacy between math and natural language
- Why all students need to learn basic computer science
The presentation concludes with examples of how layers of both data abstraction and algorithmic abstraction can be used to convert simple commands to do incredibly complex tasks at lightning fast speed.
Click here to view the PowerPoint of the presentation
