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Code.org: More Money For CS Instructors Who Teach More Girls
theodp writes "The same cast of billionaire characters — Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Eric Schmidt — is backing FWD.us, which is lobbying Congress for more visas to 'meet our workforce needs,' as well as Code.org, which aims to popularize Computer Science education in the U.S. to address a projected CS job shortfall. In laying out the two-pronged strategy for the Senate, Microsoft General Counsel and Code.org Board member Brad Smith argued that providing more kids with a STEM education — particularly CS — was 'an issue of critical importance to our country.' But with its K-8 learn-to-code program which calls for teachers to receive 25% less money if fewer than 40% of their CS students are girls, Smith's Code.org is sending the message that training too many boys isn't an acceptable solution to the nation's CS crisis. 'When 10 or more students complete the course,' explains Code.org, "you will receive a $750 DonorsChoose.org gift code. If 40% or more of your participating students are female, you'll receive an additional $250, for a total gift of $1,000 in DonorsChoose.org funding!" The $1+ million Code.org-DonorsChoose CS education partnership appears to draw inspiration from a $5 million Google-DoonorsChoose STEM education partnership which includes nebulous conditions that disqualify schools from AP STEM funding if projected participation by female students in AP STEM programs is deemed insufficient. So, are Zuckerberg, Gates, Ballmer, and Schmidt walking-the-gender-diversity-talk at their own companies? Not according to the NY Times, which just reported that women still account for only about 25% of all employees at Code.org supporters Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. By the way, while not mentioning these specific programs, CNET reports that Slashdot owner Dice supports the STEM efforts of Code.org and Donors Choose."
There is no "shortfall" of coders. There's just a glut of employers who want just-in-time employees cheap. Ones they can lay off at any time. Ones they don't have to send to training classes.
Women went into IT in the late 1990s, when it looked like a good career choice. Now it isn't, so they don't.
First of all, I too really want to see more females working in the tech industry. I think it's one of the more female friendly work environments around, especially since the experience can be so tailored to your interests.
That said, I don't see how those incentives are healthy or really help anything. I don't think everyone would enjoy or be good at coding; so incentives that make instructors coerce people into entering a programming class mean fewer spots for people who would enjoy and benefit from the class.
Instead we need to focus on efforts that get females to seek out classes like this (efforts like AppCampForGirls) , not get instructors to lure females into the class...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry, Billy. Can't have you in the class. It would jeapordize my bonus...
Penalize teachers for things they can't control. How do you as a teacher ensure that at least 40% of your students are girls? Throw out some boys that are interested in programming?
Yes, and let's not forget to fine mechanics schools that fail to recruit "enough" females and cosmetology schools that fail to recruit 'enough' males as well.
For that matter why not just make it law that whenever people gather, for any reason, at any place, at any time, there must be exact parity between the genders.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
This is sexism at its very worst. Funding one gender over another only serves to create animosity between them and suppress the gender that is not given preferential treatment. Why don't we put the funding towards researching how each gender takes up information and teach to those pedagogic methodologies? Education is one of the few areas where we have made minimal progress in the last 100 years. Students are NOT getting noticeably smarter. If we achieve the ability to learn more, faster, we all will win.
*** Don't be dull.***
You don't know a single competent programmer who just started programming just because they wanted to. They started programming because they had the opportunity to, and the support.
Bullshit, I self taught myself. I had no teacher and my parents were computer illiterate, and many of the greatest programmers I know followed the exact same pattern.
And keep in mind that there wasn't the internet then, I had to learn from the few books on the subject I could acquire or borrow in the public library. Today all you need is access to a computer and to an Internet connection.
probably unconscious, but nevertheless well-researched and documented
Sorry to pop your bubble, but the only documented bias that exist these days is against male students, and in every field of knowledge, not only in CS, and it is a bias reinforced by initiatives like this.
It's not the word. It's the way you say it in that Ferengi voice.
Just saying.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
50% of people are below average. No more, no less.
If you consider average people, and slightly above average people to be mediocre or worthless perhaps the problem is your own expectations of what constitutes baseline average?
My experience:
Employers want Rockstar talent for intern prices
Consumers want high quality products/services for Walmart/McDonalds prices
Employees want easy jobs that pay like the work is hard
It's called self-interest. It's a predictable human behavior. The innovative companies are the ones who manage to take an adversarial zero-sum game and find ways to align these conflicting objectives as much as possible(or are just so profitable & cutting edge they don't have to care yet).
The easiest ways for an employer to align these conflicting objectives is to find something other than money to incentivize employees to work more for less. This can be basic things such as flexible hours, relaxed dress code, the option to work from home one day a week(or more), or providing a "campus" like environment where they can receive personal mail & eat at their desk without any need to leave.
The managers who demand strict conformality, pay shit, and then are surprised that creativity suffers shouldn't be despised so much as looked at with amusement. Talented people have talented friends and if your employees are all so miserable that they would not recommend their employer to their peers it doesn't really surprise me you're having a hard time filling positions. Find some of the demands that do not offer a significant direct profit to you but pose a hardship on your employees which your managers are asking for because the consider them to be basic expectations. Relax them. Keep doing this until your employees are happy enough they would recommend working there to friends. "The pay isn't great but the benefits make it worth it."
The other option is to lower the barriers to entry until you can hire people that are disadvantaged yet capable enough to be grateful for peanut wages.
Great examples of this:
-smart people without degrees who are grateful for a job title(that normally requires a degree) even if they are only getting paid their education level.
-creating entry level positions and training average employees until they are great employees.
Good employees(at a fair price) are not hard to find or make, but most people want a free lunch without doing anything beyond posting an ad to monster.com
No sympathy here.
Why does it matter what chromosomes your coder bears?
Maybe the women are more likely to tolerate being underpaid. If training more coders is an effort to keep wages down, it might make sense to train a class of people who have historically worked for lower wages.
Except that your revisionist historical bullshit is wrong. Women who work the same jobs for the same time as men are paid more than men, this has been true since at least the 70's. Never married women make more money than never married men. What happens when folks get married? KIDS. So, The husband may work a bit harder while the wife takes maternity leave to have a baby. Women are more likely to spend time off work with their kids. Then some deluded feminists with an agenda come along and tally up the pay of all women and all men, ignoring the choices that women and men have made were different. Then they go on about some wage gap myth that never existed in the first place.
Furthermore, your argument makes no sense. If women naturally worked harder for less pay, then it would be foolish for any business to hire a majority men. Contrary to what you're implying: WOMEN ARE NOT DUMB. Get it through your fool head: You are wrong about the wages. STOP listening to the "women are always victims" bullshit. It's wrong. Read a history book or ANY unbiased sampling of wage data for fuck's sake: Running a home and raising a kid used to be a full time job before all our modern conveniences came into existence. Men and women are different. They have different bodies and behaviors thanks to millions of years of evolution as a sexually dimorphic race. They make different life choices at different rates. We give them equal opportunity and they express their differences in the choices they make.