Implementing a Computer Science Endorsement Program for Secondary School Teachers

Computer Science and technology have been driving scientific innovations, expanding the Information Technology sector and increasing productivity in all economic sectors for the last few decades, thus contributing significantly to the economic output of the U.S. Each sector of this country, ranging from national security to everyday life, is enormously impacted by computing technology. Clearly, future economic growth and prosperity of this country heavily rely on the strength and skills of the IT and computing workforce that will be able to expand and maintain the nationwide IT infrastructure. Unfortunately, the decline in students interested in Computer Science over the last several decades may threaten the United States' capability to expand and maintain the nationwide IT infrastructure. One solution that may slow and possibly even reverse this decline is to increase the awareness of Computer Science in the secondary school system and to increase the knowledge of Computer Science, the ability to teach Computer Science, and the Computer Science professionalism of teachers in that system. In this paper, the authors describe one technique for realizing this solution implementing a Computer Science endorsement program for secondary school teachers.