The majority of high school students can hardly wrap their brains around the AP curriculum (probably for lack of time or effort, rather than ability). There are some that are honestly, actually interested in computer science and are thus capable of stuff like that... but they are low in number.
What might be able to work is a fully-fledged web design course, using modern standards instead of boring stuff from ten years ago. With HTML, CSS, and finally JS (probably React, then Node). Maybe even SQL. With knowledge like that, you have more than enough of a base upon which to stand. You could likely even get a job.
> Even Python is more fun than spreadsheets, right?
Spreadsheets are easy computation for a wide audience, with a little learning curve. What can Python do, out of the box? What could you convince a high school kid to program with it that isn't a derivative of "10 PRINT HELLO WORLD; 20 GOTO 10;" ?
I'd rather teach programming from 0 to making a really basic 2D game (be it in C++ or Python or whatever language and whatever library). The results are eye-catching and the coding process is engaging, and there's no need for it to rely too much on how trendy the framework is in the current year.
I know, teaching today's web standards means they'll be out of date within the next ten years. But I believe the improvement of the web is asymptotic and will slowly come to a halt in the coming years... that and I would never forgive myself for not refreshing a course when it's too old to be applied to the real world, as a pragmatist. Finally, I don't think Vue will beat React too quickly.
(I'm not an educator, but I've spoken with a few on some of these topics.)
[0] According to the teacher, the class was originally planned as offering a CS credit; but was changed to art when they realized that a CS credit is not a graduation requirement, while art credits were.
[1] This was not out of the norm for my school. The only class that was designed for the AP was calculus.
Objection 6: If it's hard to find teachers to teach it, maybe it's a little challenging for students (even though a good math expert might find it interesting).
Just because a math expert thinks something is interesting doesn't mean low performing students will find it interesting.
For a more HN friendly example - what bunch of high school students wouldn't want an IT class that taught compiler design, instead of stuffy old Excel? Even Python is more fun that spreadsheets, right?
Certainly there are large swaths of high school math that can be cut, and replaced with more relevant stuff. But some care needs to be taken that it's actually teachable.
The article does partly cover this though:
> Thoroughly road test questions before letting them loose on the nation’s schoolchildren. In fact, that applies to the entire course: make sure one has something that definitely can work before encouraging too many schools to teach it.