Amazon, Code.org, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo and more are partnering with non-profit organizations to lobby for Congress to provide $250 million in funding for K-12 computer science education.

In total, the Computer Science Education Coalition has 43 members that are rallying behind the effort.

"The coalition argues that computer science education is crucial for America to remain both educationally and economically competitive in an increasingly tech-centric world. Right now, there are more than 600,000 open positions in computing in the United States,” said GeekWire.com.

"However, American universities graduate only about 43,000 computer scientists, meaning that the rest of those open positions are filled by foreign nationals, the coalition said.”

The coalition seeks to continue the momentum of efforts by President Obama to promote strong K-12 computer science programs.

Obama recently pledged to set aside $4 billion to provide funding to schools looking to build or strengthen a computer science program.

The coalition also aims to ensure that the Every Student Succeeds Act- which gives states more flexibility to fund computer science programs- is enforced through federal oversight.

“The bi-partisan passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act by Congress at the end of last year gave state and local school districts more flexibility to fund computer science through a new block grant, but didn’t provide a dedicated funding stream for this critical subject. With this step forward, a federally focused and funded strategy is necessary to amplify and accelerate the exemplary work already being undertaken in states across the country,” the coalition said on its website.

Read the full story here.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

3/9/2016