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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."
Anyone here ever read the book "Jennifer Government". Basically in the near future everything is corporate owned and your last name reflects the company you work for. So like John Nike works for Nike ...
... and reading a story like this makes you wonder just how close we are getting to a world that more closely resembles the one in that novel. All this needs is for the kids to be walking around with the last name Microsoft and there you go.
Anyway in the book they describe how the main female characters daughter attends school owned and run by Mattel
Aaron
"Curiouser and Curiouser...." -Alice
Say what you want about Microsoft and its management techniques (and plenty of jokes are already around) but I think this is a good thing. Whatever about Microsoft, they probably have better management techniques than most American school systems, and Bill Gates was right about schools essentially being obsolete.
There needs to be new ideas and new blood running things in the schools. Most administrators are former teachers, and just like good programmers don't always make good IT managers, so do good teachers have a spotty history at becoming good administrators. If this ushers in an era of trying new things to improve schools, then I'm all for it. Microsoft has the name recognition and technology chops to get its foot in the door, but other companies should give it a go. Imagine a GE-led school using Jack Welch's management techniques...
Because that isn't the answer. The current school systems are already being pumped cash, but still show horrible results. Especially when compared to private schools. What Microsoft is doing is not a bad idea. I just cringe at the idea of applying "Microsoft Management Procedures" as a panacea to all the school's problems. Most likely, all that technology will just mean that the students do just as badly, but in a high tech environment!
Of course, the problem really stems from poor elementry education. Students are rarely taught a solid foundation that they can grasp, and concepts like personal responsibility, individual talent, and academic achievement are wiped away as unimportant. Just so long as nobody feels they're special and nobody feels that they're not normal, then who cares if the academic bar is going lower and lower?
Unfortunately, I find it doubtful that things will change as long as Political Correctness rules our schools and parents see elementary as nothing more than free day care.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Meanwhile, students at Drew Elementary, deep in the low-income area of West Philly, don't even have keyboards and mice for the few old iMacs in the library because they can't afford them (I suspect NCLB is to blame for that). I am part of a student organization in Drexel University called Tech Serv and we are preparing to donate around 31 computers to the elementary school, some of them Pentium IIs but it's better than what they had, which was nothing. Most of the machines will be donated with edubuntu, because the school can't afford windows licenses; we're trying hard to find a few machines with windows stickers already on them for the engineering lab, which plans to use Mindstorms to teach kids basic robotics. And meanwhile that school gets $63 million in funding because Microsoft had a nifty idea.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
The $63 million cost could of been spent on more schools and teachers then just 1 high tech one. The mainly low-income teens are more like to have the laptops sold / stolen then people who are better off and that may even more likely at times of the year when it is dark at 4:19 p.m.
Also using smart boards and digital lockers seem like overkill for school and if there a hardware brake down the kids may have there stuff stuck in there lockers and the teacher may have a hard time teaching with out the smart boards.
Instead of a cafeteria, there's a food court with restaurant-style seating. How long is there lunch? Cafeteria style lets you have more people in there at the same time.
Also in the high school I was at the food cards did not work that well and the kids where getting doubled billed and the system was down from time to time making the cafeteria workers take the id number buy hand.
Students have scheduled appointments with teachers, typed into their online calendars, instead of being limited to structured times for classes. Their laptops carry software that assesses how quickly they're learning the lesson. If they get it, they'll dive deeper into the subject. If not, they get remedial help. I like the idea but how many teachers do you need to make that work and there are a lot of state mandated things that must be learned.
In addition, students at the school must apply to college to get a diploma. Sounds like a good idea but what do you with the people who can't pay for it?
This sounds like a good program but public education funds can be better spend on brining all schools up to a better level then just having one real good one.
Jesus Christ, there are a lot of sharpshooters in here. Everyone knows the US K-12 system, particularly in big cities, sucks goats through a straw. Philadelphia and MS are trying something new. Maybe it won't work, but at least they're trying to do something to fix the problem.
If I were a kid lucky enough to win that lottery, I'd be happy to have the opportunity to go to a one of a kind, modern school. I'd feel like someone actually gave a damn about my education. Why are so many urban schools so fucked up? Part of the problem is that the facilities are ancient, crumbling edifices left over from the 1800s. I'm not suggesting that every school in the country be razed and rebuilt, but it's no secret that the physical design of schools is a huge factor in the overall learning environment.
Bringing modern technology into schools isn't enough in itself, but I think it's worth trying. As for Microsoft's involvement, if you're badmouthing it, when is the last time you volunteered at a school?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
And applying to college does cost money, but virtually every college will waive the fee if you can't afford.
I don't think it is the lack of money...but, it is management of the schools. The teachers unions are a huge problem...the bureaucracy the entangles every aspect of public schools...and the corruption. (In NOLA pre-Katrina, a janitor made somewhere near $90K one year by filing bogus OT...he happened to be related to someone powerful on the school board).
I almost think we do need to somehow make US schools private run entities...or at least make the schools truely competitive, where people lose jobs and funding for lack of performance. Let the tax dollars follow the kids...lets schools compete for the students and the dollars that follow them. Hell, if school peformance is what drives what schools get the money...they will attract students...from all races I'd think...so, it might also end the dependance we have on busing kids all around.
Let the students decide where they want to go, let the dollars follow them, and possibly the school system can start to heal itself.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In my home town (Fort Collins, CO), the school district got a similarly crazy idea - build a brand-new, $36 million dollar high school. It was expensive, it was controversial, but in the end it had a far better idea: spend more now to spend less later. The new school, Fossil Ridge, was designed to be highly energy efficent - it is expected to save the district almost $60,000 per year in energy costs. Since the school is likely to be in service for 30+ years, that adds up to a substantial savings. The district also recieved substantial grants from the Feds for building an eco-friendly school.
Oh, and Fossil Ridge has SmartBoards too - but only in a few rooms. The lockers are manual, students aren't given laptops (although there are 180 laptops in "mobile labs" that teachers can bring to classrooms, and nearly 700 desktop PCs), and the rooms don't have plasma TVs. And, of course, students still use textbooks and good old pencil and paper.
In a district that has budget problems (as this PA district apparently does), building a "super-school" that costs 3x as much as a conventional school just doesn't make sense. In the real world, we have a term for that - incredible waste.