Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's High School Opens in PA
Joopndufus writes to mention a CNN article about a Microsoft-planned high school, newly opened in the Philadelphia area. Funded entirely by that city's school system, Microsoft offered its management skills and personnel to design every aspect of the high-tech setting. From the article: "After three years of planning, the Microsoft Corp.-designed 'School of the Future' opened its doors Thursday, a gleaming white modern facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood. The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building -- students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive 'smart boards' -- but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques."
that open-source is banned in that school?
"Say, that's a nice school we helped build... wouldn't want any open-source in there, that would mean bad things, and we don't want bad things to happen, right?"
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
$63 million
Supporting 170 students
$370,588 per student right now.
That's a lot of resources thrown at very few students.
Seriously. MS is trying to work in the ideas that made one of the largest most successful companies in the history of business. Sounds like there may be some carryover since making a good company is all about maintaining smart, happy employees. What have you done for education lately, besides complained about it? I applaud their effort, in the face of government and other big orgs who see 'business as usual' a fine mantra as our education system goes straight down the crapper.
Read the article. The library does not have books. It's all "digital".
That right there would be enough for me to avoid it.
Microsoft is great at MARKETING their products. They do not write great software.
And there is nothing to indicate that they know ANYTHING about education.
I'm not trying to be a troll but with the way Vista has been handled, hasn't MS shown that their management techniques aren't exactly very good?
Exactly what I was thinking. When I read "[Microsoft] didn't pay the $63 million cost -- that was borne by the Philadelphia School District -- but shared its personnel and management skills" in TFA, my reaction was: it would have been better for them to just donate a big stack of cash and keep their 'skills' to themselves. Money is something Microsoft have more than enough of; 'management skills' - doubtful at best.
And even if they did have 'management skills' - they have no idea of how to teach those skills to children. All their experience is with hiring already-skilled adults.
Had I heard "Microsoft donates $1 billion to the Philadelpha public school system", I would have applauded Microsoft for their generosity (despite everything I have against them). But this project just sounds like a bad idea to me.
What you're saying isn't entirely meritless, but
The current school systems are already being pumped cash, but still show horrible results. Especially when compared to private schools.
No, public school children show horrible results compared to private school children. The children of typically wealthy parents that care enough about their child's education to go to the effort of putting them in a private school perform better in school. Public schools could obviously be run better in many cases, but you sure as heck can't do a one-to-one comparison. Although I'm all for a test case, privatizing an existing, poorly-performing public school and forbidding an increase in expulsions (if you're going to do it on a large scale, you can't just send the less-exceptional kds off to public school to pad your "look how great the students that are still here do" numbers) and seeing how well things go. I'd absolutely love to see that data, 'cause I want there to be an easy fix. I just doubt there is one.
Students are rarely taught a solid foundation that they can grasp
Sure they are. They're taught until their teachers are blue in the face. But other than the 10% that are going to grow up to be the important people, the students just generally don't give a damn. You can't teach an interest in learning.
But you're right that Microsoft's stuff won't help much.
Throwing technology at a non-technical problem won't fix it. I like some ideas including more self directed study and the new class times (though I'd worry about traffic if this was done across an entire city). And as much crap as MS will get for this, I don't think they have evil motives at heart.
However, the real problem with schools is the insistence upon including everyone and teaching to the lowest common denominator. The more we can get the high achievers into more advanced programs where they spend time around other high achievers, the better. The entrance requirements for this school shouldn't have been a lottery, but a skills test and teacher recommendations. The best colleges in the country don't use a lottery for admission, and neither should the best schools.
I'm sure there are a long list of other things that could be done. For example, we need ways to find and reward teachers that engage students and truly educate them. I have a hard time remembering the teachers that taught from a book, but the ones that brought in dry ice and had us build model rockets are at the top of my list. The first management technique that MS should have brought to the table was the proper identification of what the problems are and how they can find and implement the best solutions. Sadly, this was more about money and publicity than it was about fixing a problem.
The children of typically wealthy parents that care enough about their child's education to go to the effort of putting them in a private school perform better in school.
They key phrase there being "parents that care" regardless of what studies show the problem has nothing to do with public vs private schools or teachers not performing the problem is with parents.
All of my cousins (34 or so of them my grandfather couldn't keep his pants zipped) went to big time private schools in NYC, I went to one of the largest and most poorly run public schools in NYS my entire life and I did better than all of my cousins in HS and in college. Why? Because my parents cared about my education just as much as theirs did and my parents desire to see me get the best education possible under the circumstances drove me to succeed as well. In elementary school when other children were watching TV or playing Nintendo during the summers my father handed me an algebra book and had my struggle to teach myself the material with no outside help. In HS when other children were out socializing on weekends my parents drove me to Stonybrook to take college courses (that were free because of some great programs StonyBrook has for underpriviledged kids) and at the time I absolutely hated every single minute of it but thank god my parents cared enough to force me into it. I am not here to boast about what I accomplished despite my past situation I am simply showing you that a parent that shows a high level of commitment to their childrens education will have a child who succeeds regardless of the school they go to.
Which brings me back to the question of why children in private schools perform better than children in public schools, in general? Easy, because the majority of parents who send their children to private schools care about their childrens education. To spend anywhere from 8K to 30K a year on private schools you have to care about your childrens education, despite what a lot of people think many parents of children who go to private schools aren't filthy rich they simply care enough to spend a very large percentage of their salary on their childrens future. Parents are the key to better performance in ALL schools not money, not teachers, not private schools, not microsoft. When there are studies done on children with parents who show equal levels of commitment to their childrens education in private vs pubic schools then I'll start listening.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
Education in this country is broken, and this is a great attempt by a very successful software company to change the tide. It's sad that the bulk of the replies to this article are coming from MS haters who have nothing more to contribute than stale jokes about reboots, BSOD, etc. Why don't you catch up with reality? I haven't had a BSOD since I started using XP, and I only had BSODs under 2k when caused by lame ass drivers from third party hardware vendors. That is reality, whether you like it or not. Personally, I use FreeBSD on all of my personal machines and run Windows XP on the laptop provided by my employer, so keep that in mind when you come at me with the "he's drinking the MS kool-aid" rhetoric.
You LINUX sheep are so typical in your responses. Why can't you just love your distribution of choice and stop hating MS? There is nothing that MS can do that you can see in any other light than negative (at best) or illegal and malevolent (at worst). For all of your bitching about how horrible MS is, you likely haven't spent near as much time helping your local alma mater better their education processes. Typical armchair quarterbacks.
So, maybe this new antiseptic, all-digital approach isn't right, but who are any of us to sit here and say that it is worse than the status quo for education in this country? Do you have a better idea? I hear some say "just give the money to the school system, we don't need your management style", and I think that is about the most ignorant thing they could do. There is no shortage of money in the education system, though it is disproportionately focused on administration and not on the educators. Pumping more cash into the system will not help one iota, just as throwing money at any situation without a focused plan to use that money, and a way to make those in charge of those disbursements _ACCOUNTABLE_FOR_THE_USE_OF_THE_MONEY_, is a terrible way to manage any process, business, or endeavor in general.
I am excited to see some change in the education system in this country, and if it fails then at least they tried, hopefully learned a lot from the experience, and aren't too discouraged to not try again with an improved approach.
Mike O, KT2T
>You can't teach an interest in learning.
You don't have to! Watch a kid sometime. No unopened box is safe from them. Their talk is an endless stream of "Why does ___?" and "How does that work?". Ever tried learning a second language? Hard work, right? Kids learn a first language quickly and fluently without anyone coercing them into "language school". They watch every move that adults make and try it out for themselves.
You can stop them from learning, by keeping them so hungry or abused that higher brain functions shut down. You can communicate that some places are not for learning, by turning those places into Lord of the Flies. But fundamentally "interest in learning" is something hardwired into all mammals and especially humans.