What should all Washington's K-12 students learn about computing before graduating?

The answer could be anything from "nothing" to a major subset of the state's K-12 CS Learning Standards. Below we describe some of our ongoing efforts to help shape consensus around the state on this question, to inform future requirements tht the Washington state legislature might set.

2025-26 FutureReady CS, Technology, and Media Literacy subcommittee

The CS for All WA community was asked to facilitate a subcommittee on Computer Science, Technology, and Media Literacy, as part of the State Board of Education's broader FutureReady process to form state graduation requirements. We solicited volunteers from the community, as well as school leaders, state legislators, and OSPI representatives. Our work began in November 2025, facilitated by Amy Ko.

As this is a public process, we're posting the coordination spreadsheet the committee is working in, so that you can see who is representing the state. If you have perspectives on this topic, definitely share them! You can write Amy an email directly and she'll bring them into the committee's deliberations. Committee representatives will also likely be reaching out to communities to solicit input.

2024 school leader workshop

In the 2024 legislative session, a CS graduation competency requirement was proposed, but was unsuccessful, partly because it did not engage the perspectives of teachers and school leaders. 

In Summer 2024, CS for All Washington organized a process to elevate teacher and school voices prior to the 2025 legislative session, organizing a 6-hour in-person workshop on September 16th, 2024 in Yakima, WA with a representative group of 21 teachers, administrators, and teacher educators from all regions of the state. The workshop discussed a primer on CS, the current K-12 CS policy landscape, and four policy alternatives. The workshop was funded by the NSF-funded Exploring Computing Education Pathways alliance. After the workshop, we gathered feedback from 50+ stakeholders across the state, including other teachers, school leaders, higher education faculty, community organizations, and not-for profits, incorporating their feedback into the recommendation.

The result of this process was a 2-page memo, summarizing the majority and minority views and offering a policy recommendation for future legislation:

K-12 CS Graduation Requirement Recommendation