NYC To Open 1st High School Dedicated To Software

stephencrane writes "NYC is to open The Academy for Software Engineering, with a focus on software design and college preparation. It'll be a 'limited, unscreened' high school, which means admission won't be tied to grades or test scores; solely on interest (and presumably a lottery, once words gets out)." Would you want to go (or have gone) to such a school? Would you want your kids to attend?

Comments

How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[Kenja]

This sounds like a trade school. High School should be about learning how to think and process information. Once you've learned how to learn you can go on to learning a trade. Its bad enough so many schools are now about being able to pass tests.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[SJHillman]

My high school was dedicated to passing standardized tests. Learning was just an undesirable side effect that happened to anyone who happened to have a passing interest in the subject at hand.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[bonch]

This sounds like a trade school. High School should be about learning how to think and process information.

You don't explain why you believe these things to be mutually exclusive.

In most standard high schools, you are already able to sign up for classes on particular subjects--Computer Science, Music, Drama, etc. I see little difference between that and attending a school that focuses on particular subfields of a given industry. I would have enjoyed a computer-focused high school, as I spent most of my time on computers in high anyway, and I attended multiple computer classes. It's also an opportunity for shy computer nerds to feel like they can fit in, an environment that a normal high school doesn't always provide. Sadly, a terrible social experience in high school can impact an adult for decades.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[MightyYar]

That's ridiculous. Not every person can follow some ancient Greek ideal of higher thought.

There were plenty of doofuses that spent high school throwing a pencil at the kid in front of them. Trade school is good for them.

And back on topic, just because someone is good with computers does not make them automatically wired to go through the traditional liberal arts education routine. Some kids will thrive in a targeted environment like this.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[hedwards]

Maybe back in the '60s and '70s or places that aren't America. But in America they've been focusing on getting students to college for so long that those sorts of programs have largely been dropped for lack of time and interest. Not to mention funding.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[gstoddart]

This sounds like a trade school. High School should be about learning how to think and process information.

Well, let's face it ... not everybody is going to go to university. Nor should they be expected to.

A high-school that focuses on a specific trade is at least trying to ensure that they're teaching the kids something they can use. Because, it's entirely possible that nothing they'd learn in history class is going to help them get jobs.

Trade schools at least recognize that not all of us are (or want to be) academics. It's more beneficial to ensure that these people are still getting an education that is of use to them than it is to discourage them and lead them to drop out.

Why does there need to be a "one size fits all" approach to schooling? Better to help them get somewhere better than being a high-school drop-out with no trade than to assume they should all be taught stuff they're not interesting in/don't have the aptitude for.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[kiwimate]

This sounds like a trade school.

Unless you read the article.

4. It's not a vocational school. Unlike traditional vocational schools, this new school will have a rigorous academic component and will prepare students for college.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I know. Like my plumber. He went to trade school. He makes $240,000 a year. What a dummy!!! He should have been like me and spent years out of the work force studying ancient history, English literature, advanced math that is almost never used by anyone, for anything. Then he could teach information systems at a college like me and be making 20% of what he makes now.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[gstoddart]

There were plenty of doofuses that spent high school throwing a pencil at the kid in front of them. Trade school is good for them.

Now, that's highly unfair.

Not everyone who isn't going to go to university/college is a "doofus". I know loads of people who are very smart, but who had no interest in academia.

One of my friends has a son who is going to culinary school because he has no interest in going into tech like his dad. One of the smartest coders I know skipped university altogether, travelled the world, and taught himself to code. I also know at least one person who likely has a genius IQ, but who is a welder because he can't bear the thought of sitting at a desk and would rather work with his hands (and, likely has a little ADD to be honest).

I agree with everything else you say, and I concede there are doofuses ... but that doesn't mean trade school is their exclusive domain. As you say, a lot of kids will do far better in this kind of environment than the usual high school.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[roman_mir]

Of-course a real trade school would have real masters of trade teaching, and since masters of trade prefer to do trade, rather than to waste time teaching doofuses, there won't be any real masters in that 'trade school', which automatically means it won't be worth it.

The real way to do this is to allow apprenticeship to happen again, but this means that government would have to step out of the people's way. If somebody doesn't want to go to school, they must not be forced to. But then there must be no laws making it impossible for companies/people to hire apprentices, and this means hiring them without government interference in the employment and labour practices.

Literally this means that a company should be able to hire/fire apprentices and pay them whatever (0 to any amount) without government interference.

You can't have apprentices that are not actually learning from real masters of the trade, and you can't have masters of the trade teaching anybody if it's a liability and an expense on their part.

It's all about making it beneficial for both sides - the kids and the employers to come together to some form of an agreement - I teach you this and this and this over such a period of time, you get paid this small amount and as you learn something you can get paid more, maybe you have to sign that you will work for the company for no less than say 5 years, so you can't quit until that time is over, but maybe you will be fired anyway.

But this comes with territory - you want to learn actually to do something as a trade - you have to be willing and reliable and initiative, nobody is there to make your life easier all of a sudden, you have to work.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[Sir_Sri]

Right, but at the highschool level you don't want to overspecialize. One of the great strengths of education comes from what you can do if your job disappears. If all you know how to do is be a brake mechanic, and they suddenly reinvent breaks (say a switch from mechanical to electrical brakes) you're stuck back at job training. If you know absolutely nothing about electricity, because you started this career as a brake mechanic at age 13, you've got a lot of catching up to do.

The earlier you start that narrow specialization the more difficult it is to fix if something radically changes in the industry. I'm all for more software development in high school, but there is a point of 'too much'. Especially in something like software, where you might be called upon to do physics, math, business, or god knows what, you need to have some idea what those other areas are, so you at least have some concept of how they're all connected to the problem you're trying to solve. Imagine if you get a job in a game studio out of this programme (and then a university degree in something like SE or CS), and that company wants to make a WW2 fighter pilot game. Well you don't really know anything about the physics of flight, and all these people in the office who keep talking about the Big E and Zeros are just completely baffling. Oh and you have no idea where the Philippines are, and what that has to do with Japan.

There's only so much time you can meaningfully spend teaching someone anything. If you go to a 4 year highschool programme on programming, well, you're going to either be at a 2nd or 3rd year level of university, or you're going to have spent 4 years learning super basic stuff over and over, which doesn't do any favours. Especially if they go on into SE or CS and find they've done 60 or 70% of the course material already. Then you've just wasted a bunch of their time.

Admittedly, everyone's idea of what base exposure to information everyone should have is going to be different, but I tend to think a broad education until you're about 16 is a good idea. Focusing on getting people into the workforce as software developers at 18 or 19 poses serious problems to their ability to meaningfully participate in anything outside of some very narrow problem areas. You don't really want these guys to graduate, work for 10 or 15 years, find out that suddenly the industry has completely changed, and they don't have the skills to do anything else, nor do they even know what else they might want to do, because they've spent the last 15 years writing php and SQL.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[xero314]

If you were going to make me pick a trade in high school, it probably would have been Software Engineering. Instead, in college I went from business to marketing to accounting, and then went into a career in Software Engineering. I wasted so much by going to a liberal arts college, and it amazes me that anyone would want to limit their kids ability to get detailed learning in a subject that interests them. Had I been exposed to Software Engineering earlier I would have realised my real interest were in hardware and IC design. Don't make more general schools, increase the options of specialisations.

I wasted half my life in the American education system. The education received in the United States is far to slow for a large number of people. Many of us were ready to specialise by our teen years. I had to be accepted into college before I graduated high school because I was unable to receive the necessary education, and I was not in away alone. The kind of general stuff you are talking about should be done in elementary school. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to have a system with specialised high schools for those that are ready for it.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eeesh as a highschool senior attending what's considered to be one of the best highschools in the area, those two concepts aren't the same to me. It's very easy to pass the standardized tests without understanding the subject. I could also picture someone doing poorly on the standardized test for a subject while understanding the material very well. About half of my classes have great teachers who really want to help us learn, the other half not so much. When I try to ask my chemistry teacher why anything she has us learn happens, she informs me that it's because "that's the rule." Sure, that won't affect my grade on the midterm. I probably aced the midterm on it I took today, but I don't care about the midterm I'm already into multiple colleges and this class isn't required. I took this class because I wanted to learn chemistry, and she isn't very willing to help me do that. Not a huge deal, I have the internet and my dad has a PHD in chemistry, but it's a waste of 45 minutes of my time 5 days a week that could be spent actually learning.

My best class/teacher is multivariable calculus because the county has no standard curriculum for it. The teacher can spend more time in certain areas if he wants, and go quickly through others if he thinks we have it down. Frequently he'll realize that X concept would really aid our understanding of what we're doing, or just be interesting, and we'll go off on tangent for a few days learning about it. The teacher isn't disorganized, I've had him for math classes with stricter curriculums in the past, he just takes advantage of the situation and it's great. Of course, teachers like him will manage to teach well no matter the curriculum. Teachers like my chemistry teacher... well my chemistry teacher doesn't understand how cubic conversions work. I had to explain it. I'll leave it at that.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[TheRaven64]

It is really hard to write an exam that properly tests understanding. It is very easy to write one that tests memory. Consider the history of the first world war. It's really easy to write questions like 'when did the UK enter the war' or 'list three causes of the war' and it's easy to write a mark scheme for them but these only test memory. Better questions would be things like 'If you were a general at the Battle of the Somme, what tactics would you use?' or 'If you were a time traveller tasked with avoiding the Second World War, how would you do it? Justify your actions.' If you set a question like this, it's relatively easy for you to mark it consistently (although harder than for the simple rote memory questions), but it's almost impossible to define a marking scheme that can be applied by hundreds of teachers across the country and still give consistent scores.

Re:How about a High School dedicated to learning?

[TheRaven64]

And this is the real problem: the perception that someone who goes to a trade school is less valuable than someone with an academic qualification. It's perceived as better to have a degree from a third-rate university than a good vocational qualification.

Surprisingly probably not

[Anrego]

I think I would have jumped at the opportunity when I was in school.

However, looking back, I don’t think it would have been a great idea. I’ve said it many times, but if left to my own devices, I would have spent most of my free time glued to a computer. As it stood I had a few non-computer geek friends who would figuratively drag me out of my basement every once in a while and looking back, I had a lot of fun.

Maybe I would be a slightly better programmer .. but I think I would have missed out on a lot of important experiences, and more practically, development of social skills (which I’ve found are becoming more important as I’ve progressed through my career).

In other words, diversity in peers is a good thing. Not having to “deal with” people who are outside of your interests and being surrounded by like minded individuals may sound great, but that kind of narrow focus so early on just sounds like a bad idea.

Re:Surprisingly probably not

[Overly Critical Guy]

Valid points, but on the other hand, I think a lot of students who would feel alienated in a normal high school might feel like they could fit in here and have a superior social experience.

Re:Surprisingly probably not

[f0rdpr3fect42]

So I went to a similar school to this back when I was in high school, but the focus was general engineering vs. a specific focus like programming. I don't feel like I missed out on any social development or (as some might fear) academic variety as a result. The school, much like this one, had to meet state curriculum requirements, so the specialization was more like one class a year and then slightly more focused electives later on.

Socially, we still had a good mix of people. Sure, it wasn't as rich or diverse a group of personalities as I would've encountered my normal high school, but I'd petition that this actually helped me develop my personality far more than the standard experience would have. I think being around so many like minded people let me comfortably act like myself for the first time in my academic career. I was less afraid of ridicule for personality quirks that, in hindsight, really weren't that big a deal to begin with. I didn't exactly cut myself off from the rest of the world, either. I still interacted with folks from my middle school days outside of school time and stayed involved in my home high school's extracurricular music program to help maintain those ties.

Meanwhile, during all of this, I developed a simple set of skills that helped me adapt to college more quickly than many of my peers and, I feel, left me more prepared for what was expected of me. I have mild concerns that this school could be too focused too early, but I don't think that the diversity will be as big an issue as you believe.

Why focus so narrowly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand focusing so narrowly on software engineering which really isn't that difficult.

High school and college are times to learn the best that has been thought and said, to become a full person who's in contact with civilization; it's not a job training program. You're supposed to read the Western canon, get a foundation for higher math, learn what people are like and how the world works from reading history, play sports, and even socialize.

Computers are interesting but they just aren't that hard (and you know it, too).

First school where abstinence education will work.

[trout007]

Just sayin.

Re:One thing's for sure

[dintech]

But low on bullies and crack-head kids maybe?

No, and no.

[buddyglass]

School that lets kid take a wider range of math and science courses, and potentially more advanced "computer science"? Sure. School devoted to "software design"? No thanks. The focus is too narrow. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd want my kid surrounded by kids whose interest (or whose parents' interest) in "software design" (at age 13) is so strong that they'd attend a school devoted solely to it.

Bad idea

[dkleinsc]

3 big reasons:
1. The last thing a geeky student needs is a school full of nobody but geeks, leaving them completely unprepared to deal with all the non-geeks of the world. Those non-geeks are also known as bosses, possible lovers, friends, family, etc.

2. Education should make someone capable of doing more than just their jobs. A software developer benefits from reading Shakespeare, learning about the American Civil War, or studying Spanish or French or German or another language.

3. Massive gender imbalance.

Re:Bad idea

[dkleinsc]

Girl is good in math/science. Girl gets picked on/teased for being smart. Girl has no parent/role model to provide support for being smart. Girl succumbs to peer pressure to play 'dumb' in math/science. Girl looses interest in math/science.

Your theory has a big problem in not matching up to reality:
1. Girls do about as well as boys in mathematical and scientific subjects, and may even be doing somewhat better. For instance, look at SAT scores by gender, and notice the utter lack of differences.

2. Female students now outnumber male students in most subjects, including some scientific subjects like medicine. That strongly suggests that there's some issues specific to software development that tend to keep the women out.

An alternate theory proposed by my female classmates: They not-infrequently encountered what they perceived as gender-based hostility in the computer labs, mostly from other students. For instance, there were cases of women being pushed to do the simpler UI work rather than the challenging algorithm work on group projects, no matter what their actual preference or skills. And there were a lot of issues with women getting a lot more male attention than they wanted, and in some cases being treated more as a piece of eye candy than as a student on equal footing to the men.

There's also this issue.

Re:India?

[Skapare]

Demand, yes. Real jobs, no.

Note that "Joel" is involved with this.

[Animats]

The "Joel on Software" guy is involved with this, so he's plugging an activity of his own.

There's no programmer shortage. Businesses want "just in time" employees with exactly the skill set they need this week. Then they whine when they have to pay market rate for them. They're not willing to retrain their own people, or hire competent people with related skill sets and send them to training classes. Anyone who's competent in at least two programming languages can learn a third in a few months.

(Actually, the headache today is learning APIs. Everything seems to come with an API with hundreds to thousands of functions, some of which work, some of which sort of work, and some of which don't work at all. The documentation usually consists of examples rather than a reference manual. Worst case, it's a wiki.)

Worth a try

[srussia]

The more educational choices parents have for their kids the better.

What about creating good citizens?

[ravenscar]

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that people are starting to figure out (at attempt to remedy) the fact that the U.S. is falling far behind in Math and the Sciences. Still, I'm concerned about a crop of young people reaching voting age without at least a basic understanding of History, Government, and Literature. After all, these people will reach voting age around the time they wrap up their studies in secondary school. Shouldn't they at least have a basic understanding of the duties of citizenship before they venture into the world and take on those new responsibilities?

I also understand that not all students can pursue post-secondary education and that they should leave secondary school with at least a start on what it takes to get a decent paying job in today's competitive environment. Still, I wonder if hard knowledge (being able to write a simple program in C# for example) is better than a thirst for learning and the tools to pursue that thirst. I can tell you that I would rather hire someone who really wants to learn and knows how than someone who can do some simple programming. After all, both are going to need to learn a ton before they're really ready to contribute in an enterprise environment. My money is on the person that shows a knack for the learning part. I wish more companies would value that desire when it comes to people entering the workforce.

Re:One thing's for sure

[AngryDeuce]

Mod parent up! I was in a special program for gifted kids in high school, and while a lot of the parents were concerned that we were too "cut off" from the general population (we didn't follow the regular school schedule; we spent the bulk of the day in the same classroom and teachers came to us, and our curriculum was obviously accelerated, among other differences) but honestly, all it really did was cut us off from the distractions.

When I moved to a new school after my junior year (yay army brat) they did not have a program similar to this, and because I had already met a lot of the graduation requirements (but not enough to actually graduate early, nor a work study program) I ended up taking 2 core curriculum classes and 5 electives my senior year and it was almost torture being held back to the pace of the lowest common denominators in the class. I spent more time quietly reading a book by myself than actually participating a lot of the time; my grades were always good, my assignments were always done on time, but I just did not need a week to cover a concept that I had already assimilated in 2 days. Consequently, 3/5 of the time I could have been learning ahead, I instead read pop fiction. It was either that or stare at the wall and/or doodle.

Socially, I was even more cut off being in the "general population", because instead of being in a class of 30 kids that shared my interests and were learning at the same level I was, I was in a class with about 5 other people I could relate to, 20 people that were basically just running out the clock until they could go home, and 5 criminals that really shouldn't have even been there if attendance wasn't compulsory. It was pretty miserable...

Somebody needs to teach software

[tompaulco]

I don't know if we need a specific school to teach software, but we at least need a class to teach software. When I went to high school 25 years ago, they taught Basic on old TRS-80 Model 100s. Now that computers are so prolific, they very same school that I went to teaches no programming at all. They have a "computer" class, but it only teaches you the very basics of how to use a computer, and apparently that consists of how to play flash games and download illegal music and games and burn them to CD. The kids come out not even knowing what software they would use to write a report.

Re:Finally

[PCM2]

On a serious note, the City has numerous other specialized high school

This. Nobody in this thread seems to understand that this is sort of a tradition for New York City. In addition to the formal specialized high schools, which you need to pass a test to enroll in, there are a variety of other high schools around the Five Burroughs that specialize, both in science and in stuff like visual and performing arts. A high school that offers specialized coursework in programming and IT is hardly going to end the world of education.