Florida's Coding as a Foreign Language Bill Dies

A recent effort by Florida legislators to make computer programming count as a foreign language died between the senate and the house.

According to the bill's history, it "died in messages" on March 11, after it passed the state senate by 35-5 vote. A spokesperson for the bill's sponsor, Sen. Jeremy Ring, said another effort would have to be made in the next term, and under another senator.

The legislation would have made Florida the first in the country to try such an initiative, though Texas has a similar rule, allowing students to take coding courses as languages only after they've attempted and scored poorly on other languages first.

There's been a groundswell of support for new computer science courses at K-12 schools in recent months, highlighted in February by Obama's $4 billion "Computer Science For All" initiative.