The City With the Most Ambitious Computer Science Program in the Country

Watch out, Silicon Valley. Our generation’s next tech hub might be in a much windier city.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has partnered with Code.org (a computer science education nonprofit) to help bring computer science classes to every public school in the city, from kindergarten to high school.
CNN Money reports that the most ambitious part of the mayor’s plan (which was announced last December) will require high school students to take computer science courses in order to graduate. Fifty percent of high schools will also be offering AP computer science courses within five years.
“In three years time, you can’t graduate from high school in the city of Chicago if you didn’t take code writing and computer science,” Mayor Emanuel said at a tech conference. “We’re making it mandatory.”
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Computer science is one of the fastest growing fields with job projection numbers poised to reach 4.2 million by 2020. It’s also one of the most lucrative, with starting salaries between $60,000-70,000. However, this booming and high-paying field is one that’s alarmingly lacking in racial diversity. At Google, for example, only 1 percent of the tech staff is black and 2 percent are Hispanic.
The mayor’s new initiative could help close this gap. As CNN Money notes, the majority of Chicago’s 400,000 public school students are black (39.7 percent) and Hispanic (45.2 percent). By providing Chicago’s young men and women with these skills, it could help level the playing field.
Chicago’s computer education efforts reflects a larger national trend. Coding courses are popping up in elementary and middle schools across the country, and now even kindergarteners are learning how to program. Chicago will also incorporate computer science lessons into the curriculum of 25 elementary schools this year.
“Just having kids jump into computer science at the high school level, they don’t have a good context for it,” Cameron Wilson of Code.org tells CNN Money. “Having them exposed early and building on concepts year after year is really important.”
Code.org has partnered with 30 more school districts to promote K-12 computer education, but Chicago’s is the most far-reaching. As Mayor Emanuel says in the video below, “This plan will also compete with countries where children take coding classes as early as first grade and create an environment where we can support the next Bill Gates and Marissa Mayer.”
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These Students Look Beyond Books and Classrooms for the Future of Education

While lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to debate teacher evaluation and preparedness, several potential educators are hitting the road — instead of books — as part of a month-long road trip to find inspiration.
The TEACH Roadtrip, which is sponsored by Participant Media and Roadtrip Nation, follows three twenty-something students as they travel from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., stopping along the way to interview teachers, activists, lawmakers and entrepreneurs who are shaping the education field.
Over the next 10 years, America will need to replace the 1.6 million teachers expected to enter retirement, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But in order to do that, future educators need to see past the exhaustive debates that plague the education space. And that’s exactly why Rafael Silva, Nadia Bercovich, and Grace Worm are looking for affirmation as they contemplate heading into education.
Inspired by Davis Guggenheim’s documentary, TEACH (which airs on Pivot TV this fall), the group will travel 4,000 miles to spotlight influential leaders like Robert Florio, a veteran and special education teacher with Troops to Teachers; Kelly Meyer, creator of American Heart Association’s Teaching Gardens; and Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago.
Along the way, Bercovich, Silva and Grace hope to glean insight to inspire themselves, as well as the next generation of teachers.
“Every person has a responsibility to teach,” Worm says, “by being part of a world that kids can look to and learn from and, with our help, make it better.”
Worm graduated from the University of Texas at Austin this past summer and is hoping the journey will bridge her transition into a teaching role. Bercovich, who was born in Argentina, has spent the past year backpacking South America and teaching a combination of English, yoga and art therapy. She hopes to meet education innovators to inspire her goal to teach creatively.
University of California at Los Angeles junior Silva has been working toward a career in medicine. But he’s more interested in teaching and is looking to the road trip to convince him.

“I care about education because I have received such a great one, and it has made me who I am today,” Silva says. “I want to make sure other people have the opportunity to go through the same experience I did.”

Their journey may end on September 6 in the nation’s capital, but their potential to shape education is just starting.
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Meet the Cabbie Who Goes the Extra Mile When Others Drive Right On By

Just think of the frustration you feel when taxi after taxi drives right past you, despite your outstretched hand. Now imagine how much worse it feels when cabs are zipping by because you’re in a wheelchair.
Traveling with a disability can be difficult enough — but cab drivers like Tarig Kamill make hailing a taxi less difficult.
That’s because, as the Chicago Tribune reports, Kamill gave 1,821 rides to passengers in wheelchairs last year alone. His service has earned him 60 nominations from his customers for the Windy City’s annual Taxicab Driver Excellence Award.
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The 52-year-old Chicago cab driver, who rents his wheelchair accessible van from a dispatch company, said he’s seen drivers who ignore potential passengers because they don’t want the hassle of loading a wheelchair into the cab.
“I see these drivers, and I think they are lazy,” the cabbie (who’s been driving a taxi for 11 years) told the publication. “They can make more money picking up passengers along the street, so they don’t want to bother. They don’t see that they have a responsibility to help other people.”
William Hayes, a passenger who nominated Kamill, praised the cab driver for helping these individuals from door to door. “[He will] try to help you in any way he can,” Hayes said. “He guides his clients on and off the vehicle with the utmost consideration for the client’s well-being and safety. He will assist you up to your front door and inside the building.”
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently presented Kamill with the award along with a free taxi medallion worth $350,000 at Olive-Harvey College.
Kamill, a former Sudanese computer engineer, said he wants to use the money to buy his own taxi. “I won’t see the savings this year because I have to purchase my own taxi,” he told the Tribune. “But once it’s paid for, it’s going to make a big, big difference for my family. I cannot even begin to explain the difference.”
“It makes me proud to read all these things,” he added about his nominations. “I want to do more. I want to provide more rides and help more people. That’s what this award has done for me.”
 

Will Chicago Be the Next City to Outlaw Plastic Bags?

Is Chicago the next San Francisco? Alderman Joe “Proco” Moreno, sponsor of a proposal that would prohibit retailers from handing out plastic bags, thinks so.
He says that the city council has the 26 required votes to rid the Windy City of this common pollutant. “I’m very confident we have the votes,” Moreno told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’ve been kicking this around for years. I’m not a very patient guy, but I’ve been patient on this. It’s time to move.”
Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel derailed a previous version of the bill, which would have forbidden retailers with more than 5,000 square feet of floor space from supplying customers with plastic bags. The new bill, co-sponsored by Ald. Chairman George Cardenas, is even stricter — it includes the small vendors who were originally excluded from the ordinance. “We were letting smaller stores off the hook,” Moreno said. “But some aldermen were concerned. They said, ‘All I have is small stores in my ward. If you don’t cover them, my ward is still gonna look like crap with bags all over the place.’”
MORE: Now Banned in Hawaii: Plastic Bags
To support these smaller businesses during the transition of turning Chicago into a plastic-bag free zone, Cardenas says that the council is considering up to a three-year exemption period to allow them to get acclimated. As for the Mayor’s office, while Emanuel himself has yet to respond, his office has released a statement saying, “We have not yet reviewed this proposed ordinance, but share Ald. Moreno’s commitment to ensuring a cleaner Chicago. We look forward to seeing a final ordinance after the alderman works with his colleagues, community leaders and the business community.”
Meanwhile, the Illinois Retail Merchants Association claimed that the plastic bag ban would effectively levy a “tax on retailers,” since paper bags cost three times as much. The group’s vice president, Tanya Triche, says that in order for the ban to work, the city council would have to allow a 10-cent tax on paper bags, as well, which would persuade shoppers to bring their own bags. Without it, they would risk losing jobs in the industry. But for Cardenas, a 10-cent charge isn’t an option. “That’s a tax. I don’t want to tax anything right now,” he said.
MORE: These Women Are Doing Something Amazing With Simple Plastic Bags
Moreno estimates that 3.7 million plastic bags are used citywide daily — 3 to 5 percent of which become litter. These bags not only are present on streets and in trees and parks, but also get stuck in drains, causing flooding, clog landfills, jam recycling plants, and harm animals. Los Angeles and San Francisco have both banned plastic bags, and the state of California is currently pushing for a statewide ban. In December, Hawaii became the first U.S. state to ban the bag, but judging by how much the idea is growing in popularity — and considering that nearly 100 billion plastic bags are used in the U.S. every year — we’re guessing it won’t be the last.
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