"Why NYC’s Public Schools—and Schoolteachers—are Vital to Closing the Tech Opportunity Gap"
A Center for an Urban Future Policy Symposium

Replay of the event
Event materials

Closing New York City’s tech opportunity gaps will require expanding pathways into tech-powered careers for far more New Yorkers of color, women, and low-income residents. Achieving this will only be possible by training thousands more future teachers—across all grades and subjects—to integrate core computing concepts into their classrooms. Yet today, only a small fraction of new teachers in NYC public schools are prepared to teach computational thinking. The Computing Integrated Teacher Education (CITE) initiative, a CUNY program, is tackling this challenge by equipping future educators with the skills to integrate computational thinking into their teaching. But as CITE’s pilot phase ends, the initiative faces a pivotal moment: if the city fills a gap in funding, it can scale to reach every CUNY teacher education student. If not, many future teachers—and their students—will miss out on these critical skills. 

This forum highlighted a major opportunity to close NYC’s tech opportunity gap by ensuring all children gain early exposure to computational thinking. It explored CITE’s vital role and the urgent need to invest in its expansion so that more teachers can introduce these foundational skills in the earliest grades and across the K-12 system.

Speakers included:

• Council Member Rita Joseph; Chair, Committee on Education
• Melanie Mac, Chief of Student Pathways, NYC Department of Education
• Amber Oliver, Managing Director, Robin Hood Learning + Technology Fund
• Michelle Ortiz, 5th Grade Teacher, Samara Community School; Alumna of Lehman College LUTE-STEM program; Former CITE Participant
• Ron Summers, Chief Impact Officer, Mouse; Former Executive Director of Computer Science Education for NYC Schools
• Sara Vogel, Director, Computing Integrated Teacher Education (CITE), CUNY

This symposium was made possible through generous support from Robin Hood. We are also grateful for general support from The Clark Foundation, The Altman Foundation, and ongoing support from a number of other philanthropic funders.