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K-12 CS Education Funding: Taxes, H-1B Fees, Donations?
theodp writes "Back in 2010, Bill Gates Sr. made the case for I-1098, an initiative for a WA state income tax that Gates argued was needed to address K-12 funding inequity, which he claimed was forcing businesses "to import technically-trained employees, while our own people are shut out of highly paid careers." Opposed by the deep-pocketed, high-tech studded Defeat 1098, the initiative was defeated. Four years later, some of the same high-tech leaders who records show funded Defeat 1098 — including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ($425K), Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith ($10K), Code.org founder Hadi Partovi ($10K), Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ($100K), Microsoft Corporation ($75K) — have gotten behind groups like Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us and Code.org, which are singing a similar Chicken Little tune, telling lawmakers that U.S. students will continue to be shut out of highly paid computer science careers without additional K-12 funding, and the U.S. will lose its competitive edge unless tech is permitted to import even more technically-trained employees. In a departure from Gates' income-tax based solution, Microsoft and Code.org argue that the-problem-is-the-solution, proposing that tech visa fees be used to fund K-12 CS programs. To 'accept that computer science classes are only available to the privileged few,' writes Code.org, 'seems un-American'. So, as some of the nation's biggest K-12 school systems turn to Code.org for CS education programs, should they expect the funding to come from taxes, H-1B tech visa fees, or the-kindness-of-wealthy-strangers philanthropy?"
Can we get an editor in here and re-write this piece of shit summary? I would suggest taking out all the extraneous links, and actually get to the fucking point.
Theodp is the worst submitter. Ever.
... we want educated people at slave wages.
Signed,
Bill gates.
I agree completely. I think we should start by replacing expensive American senior executives with foreigners. You know, we don't want to lose our competitive edge.
I think K-12 funds could be used to greater benefit for teaching fundamental skills such as a core STEM curriculum. If students have a good foundation in mathematics and science and have had to use standard computer programs such as a word processor and spreadsheet program, they should be all ready to begin a computer science curriculum. From what I've heard, CS classes in high school are a joke and seem to turn students off to programming. I studied programming on my own and achieved a 5 on the computer science AP exam even though computer science was not taught at my school. Are there any of you who have a good experience with a programming class in high school, or did you just learn it on your own like I did?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
We should embrace the notion that not everyone will be a genius and that is ok.
Not either all immigrants are smart too.
But if we increase the skill pool we can choose and drain more brains to US.
Sure that will hurt some `small pond` geniuses but overall for the country it is better.
Underfund K12 general education but send money to try to teach your illiterate, mathematically incompetent students computer science. I'm sure Ballmer and Bezos have wet dreams of armies of intellectually complaint code monkeys.
Speaking as someone who actually *has* a computer science degree, the CS you can teach to someone who is not intellectually prepared is just code monkey stuff. Real CS is quite mentally challenging, and requires a strong grounding in mathematics. It requires some creative thinking too, which is something you can't expect a college student to manifest after a lifetime of intellectual impoverishment.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The US ALREADY has more funding per student than any other major country. That's funded mainly through property taxes, other taxes, etc. This news story points to a 440 page report with all of the details:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us...
We already spend the most money, and we get terrible results. Obviously, then, spending a LOT of money does not result in a better education. If it were a funding issue, the US would have the best education in the world. Funding is NOT the problem.
Some problems we have include:
Spending time and money teaching politics rather than skills. (K-12 students spend FAR more time studying global warming than technology). See also full WEEKS devoted to learning about Mexican culture, another week for Asian culture, two different weeks on black culture, etc.
Ridiculous rules that horribly bad teachers can't ever be fired because they have tenure (weren't fired sooner).
Parents are forced to pay for a specific school, rather than having school choice and therefore competition.
Why would you tie CS education to visas for those who will compete with those same students receiving that education? Think about that. When we have a barely adequate supply of home-grown talent, will the visa numbers be reduced? If so, funding for education will also be cut, returning us to the days of insufficient education.! If CS education is important to our society (and it is) then it should be funded on its own merits. This is a rich country that is constantly pretending to be poor. If there is a lack of funding, it's because taxes on the wealthy have been cut and cut again. For example, if capital gains were taxed as regular income, we would have no problem funding education in this country.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Your premise that funding for US education is higher than everyone else is simply false. Look at the Scandinavian countries and their level of per student funding.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
If he were serious about charity he would give cold, hard cash to the schools to get them set up with LTSP in the classrooms. That would be a divergence from his past, but it is what is needed to get useful computer technology into the hands of the students. The clients could be the dirt-cheap raspberry pi with nice HDMI screens, a pair of stout servers per lab cluster and the requisite number of switches. Not a big cost for his deep pockets. "giving" away licenses may help his bottom line, but it is not helping the kids learn.
Basically a whole bunch of mostly-liberals with severe income-equality disorder are spending a bunch of money to get their way. On the other hand if we took all of the money we are throwing down the drain on things like the EPA and the IRS and, instead, gave that money to the K-12 schools the teachers union would be ecstatic. Wait...unintended consequence there. Oh hell. I don't know what's going on. All I read was that if we import more foreign workers there will be more jobs for highly-educated 12th graders. What?
This has to happen from the early grades, and for this to happen the teachers have to know how to use computers. As is, many teachers can write in MS Word. I have seen college graduates from very good schools not even know how to create an engaging presentation.True, few people know how to do this, but still, it should be a requirement.
And no, putting polygons on the screen is not enough for CS.
So what we need to is a teacher population that is extremely highly compute literate, to the point where many can code, maybe to the point of a dynamically generated web page. This should be test prior to any teacher certification, just like pedagogy is. Second, using a computer as a tool must be incorporated into the curriculum at all grade levels. This will be easier as more students get computers. Right now there is funding for every student to have regular access to computer at least starting grade 5 or 6. The challenge will be incorporating valid lessons, such as writing a program will solve a two step equation.
The second challenge is pay. Right now teacher pay structure, which is some areas is as low as $17/hr for a college graduate with no felonies, not on any sexual assault list, and stable enough not to kill the children. This is enough to get graduates with few practical skills, but not the type of people we need if we are going to push technical competency.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I say we initiated a global initiative to cap net wealth per person to something like $12 million USD indexed to inflation - the privilege and power of a few who own trillions is totally skewing the promise of democracy, freedom, and globalisation as trade rules are written in secret to the benefit of those who already have enough to last several lifetimes. Use everything beyond the caps to implement climate change mitigation and improve education globally.
Saying this country can have X but that country must suffer with Y will always lead to disparity and the potential for conflict and suffering. It's time to take the next step and engage a truly global civilization.
He should have taught his son the importance of paying his taxes.
un-American? What does that mean? Define American values.
The GP is just repeating talking points he heard somewhere, probably by Limbaugh or on Fox News. I'm surprised they still go so bold on the racism these days. "Poor kids learning about non-white cultures, when their classes should only focus on white history liked they used to do!"
The US ALREADY has more funding per student than any other major country. That's funded mainly through property taxes, other taxes, etc. This news story points to a 440 page report with all of the details:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us...
So it works really well for kids whose parents can afford to to pick up 1/4 of the tab. Faint praise indeed.
Isn't tying funding for education in a given field directly to the number of laborers imported to make work in that field cheaper just a trifle perverse?
At best, I could see it being saved by virtue of sheer lag (unless going directly into the data mines out of high school, the K-12 students affected by year X's funding level are anywhere from 2 to 16+ years away from the workforce); but that same lag would also lead to fluctuating and potentially nonsensical funding levels under basically any circumstances other than 'high, stable, levels of H1-B demand that mysteriously don't translate into lower incentives to enter the field', a condition that seems potentially unrealistic.
If we are treating CS as a foundational subject, some combination of a new part of the math curriculum and a valuable skill for all, we are going to need a more stable funding level (regardless of how high or low you think it should be, oscillating is stupid: you'll just get a lot of staff churn, 'fat year' infrastructure expenditures that rot because you can't do upkeep during lean years, and similar wastes of money).
If we are treating CS as largely vocational, producing students whose educational quality depended on the demand levels of the job market starting over a decade before they enter the field seems like it could go poorly...
The sad state of education in the United States is a lie perpetrated to funnel public dollars into private hands. Not that there are bad teachers, or bad schools. There definietely are. I personally settled a due process case with a public school. That is beside the point as individual examples do not make a trend. You can read more about education politics here:
http://okemosparentsforschools.blogspot.com/2014/01/column-asking-wrong-questions.html?m=1
I have a different perspective as someone who teaches PC Repair (Cisco Academy), Network administrators (Cisco Academy), Linux Administrators (LPI Academy), C++, and robotics. I see industry (and government) reaching out for talent wherever they may be. At the same time, I see State government restricting students ability to take these courses because it does not fit into the mandated 4 years of English, Math, Science, etc. After the required courses are filled into the schedule, there is precious little time for electives.
It would be really great if students entered my classroom with PC repair or programming skills, but they don't. It would be great if the students actually knew what operating system was on their Android (Linux) or Apple (Unix) phone. The bottom line is that they don't because computer science is often not a requirement (not to be confused with word processing / spreadsheet / presentation competence).
If the tech giants want to make a difference, they need to convince local and State governments that "computer science literacy" is a requirement for people to work in most jobs. Students should graduate from high school able to perform basic troubleshooting (ping, for instance), light programming (if-then, loops, functions). These topics may even be basic enough to teach in middle school.
To make a difference, speak to your local school boards, contact your State education agency, call Arnie Duncan. If enough voices call for change, it will happen.
Outlaw teachers unions (traditional unions fought against corporate management for fair wages. Who do teacher's unions fight against? Kids? ) That alone would increase the effectiveness of teachers and allow cross-philosophy teaching such as math and computer science together.
I don't understand why these top business people keep trying to say that we need to push more CS type stuff into grades k-12. Why would we tailor such early education specifically to one career choice? What happens if we now have too many programmers, and that is all these young people have been trained for? Other countries do not do this. K-12 should be about fundamentals, and broad education. If you are exposed to a variety of topics, and simple things like the scientific method, math, and problem solving, you can do almost anything in STEM. The problem is our education system is about memorization and regurgitation. Switch to an interactive model where kids actually build stuff ( code, chemistry, woodworking, anything ) and tie lessons into that. Then they will be prepared for whatever comes down the road. Myself, there was zero computer education at my school, as it was in its infancy. Yet somehow I managed to teach myself to do it on the one or two apple IIs we had, and made quite a go of it. What I had learned all my life was first how to learn, and second, how to problem solve. Given those tools in your tool belt I believe anything is attainable. I can't help but feel like this is all a smokescreen to keep tech workers wages capped. I topped out quite a few years ago, and only move up slightly. Don't get me wrong, I am paid well in the grand scheme of things, but if the industry is so strapped for great programmers, like they say they are, why aren't wages through the roof? Every interview I have done ( recently switched jobs ) they have immediately offered me a job. All of them want to only pay either slightly less, or slightly more than I am making currently. The wage gap between a kid just out of college, and a top senior engineer is pitifully small now. That's not right.... They want H1Bs since they are trapped. I am all for allowing work visas, but how about we revamp the program and make it a 2 year work visa where they can switch companies at will. Let's see how many of these tech companies will be scrambling to acquire them then, as then they will have to pay them the same as everyone else, or lose them.....
what about more tech / trades schools and not 4 year high cost colleges. Where some can learn good skills in 1-2-3 years may even have an apprenticeship mixed into that with hands on classes at the tech / trades / Community College level.
There is to much put into to colleges and they trun out people with skill gaps vs what people can learn in the same time frame at an tech / trades / Community College setting.
Just think of the tax boost for the state
I agree! I want my kids to have the math (hopefully Calc), biology, chem, physics as well as writing and thinking. Because if they have a talent for that kind of stuff, I will encourage them to go into medical where there is actually a future and a much better chance of making a living that keeps up with inflation..
As opposed to the decreasing real wages in the CS professions.
Unless they really are passionate about the work that they MUST do it regardless of the pay, it's a shitty profession to be in.
Rich person likes things that could be paid for by taxes, but doesn't want to pay taxes. So he gets his buddies to help fund a group to defeat a ballot measure that his dad supports. Hypocritical? Yes. Narcissist with daddy issues? Yes. Surprising? No.
That is all.
The sad state of education in the United States is a lie perpetrated to funnel public dollars into private hands.
There are people trying to take advantage of the situation, but the fact is that, in the US and just about every country in the world, the education system is abysmal. Rote memorization over understanding. Teaching to the test over creativity. Obedience over freethinking.
People who don't know what it means to truly understand something often dispute this, and for obvious reasons; they're ignorant.
Look at China and India and their representation in STEM graduate programs.
It's one of those funny, old-fashioned words, living on like a museum piece! You know, like "Steam Packet" and "Record Album" and "Wedding Dress".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I don't understand how computer science in "K-12" even makes sense.
The earliest I did anything that could honestly be characterized as "computer science" (as opposed to trivial programming in Commodore BASIC) was at the age of 8, when my sister (age 10) and I built a Z80-based single-board CP/M machine (a YASBEC, if anyone remembers them; now that I think, I'm pretty sure it was actually a Z180).
And really, I learned almost nothing of computer architecture from that (my sister picked up a lot, and despite Dad's best efforts to give me a chance, was glad to take over the more intellectual aspects of the project, and I let her), though I did get pretty good at soldering. Now I'm not saying an 8 year old couldn't learn computer architecture, particularly if computer architecture were being taught with good pedagogy, rather than expecting it to be gleaned as incidental knowledge while completing a project. But I'm pretty sure the best thing you can do to prepare a kindergartner for a career as a computer scientist, computer engineer, and/or computer programmer is much more about getting them started well with math and reading, rather than anything CS-specific.
Honestly you need so much math/logic to get more than a few corners of computer science, I'm not sure there's any point doing CS-specific stuff before high school. And today, there's no real argument for do-nothing computer classes before CS classes just to get students familiar with computers so you're not spending time introducing students to computers when you're trying to get to useful CS instruction.
Hey Bill, How about you actually hire and train people yourselves, or work with High Schools/Colleges to actually have some sort of apprenticeship/internship programs? We have/had high unemployment and low labor force participation. You can't tell me that we can't retrain exsisting people now and not have to bring more people in.
Europeans spend weeks learning about every country in Europe, yet they don't seem to be doing all that badly. You seem to dislike learning about other people and their cultures and how this can influence and inspire you, and well that's your loss, but removing history and geography to put more time in science is NOT the solution. The much greater problems are teachers, methods and parents. Pay teachers a correct wage (which can easily be done by just reducing salaries for administrative leeches and shutting down the hilarious iPad programs), use good methods for teaching and evaluation (as opposed to Texas textbooks and horrible standard tests) and inform the parents that their job is to help their children learn (instead of just protesting loudly whenever they get a bad grade) and things would already work out much better.
Ironically enough, you're trying to get the US to stop looking at other cultures (or dramatically cut down their importance) when the biggest flaw in US education is wholly a cultural problem.
Multibillionaires crying that the TAXPAYERS are not providing enough free resource to make the 1% even richer. How about this? BUY H1-b by paying 100% of the lifetime costs of 3 American Students for each and every wage cutting imported $15,000 / year engineer. YOU pay the costs for driving America out of business with your wage cutting H1-B's. There, now, pure captialism. You want something, YOU pay for it, Gates!!!
Well, let's be polite.
Nothing's going to change until two things happen. Firstly, people value education for its own sake, not as a set of boxes to check on the route to "somewhere," having no other value. Secondly, until the programs taught at high school (CS, Engineering, anything not "core") have both the rigour and the status of pre-requisite courses (for university study or vocation) then the devolution to the "core" will continue as will the decreasing value placed on education. Would that taking a CS/Engineering/Other strand was actually valued and required for entry into matching university programs!
All that exists is the faffing around that is the AP and such as "Project Lead The Way" which butcher the job and are perhaps the biggest barrier rather than being a decent stepping stone. The AP should never have existed except as a stop-gap measure. The state curriculums and program strands (In CS, Engineering, and pretty much anything else) in and of themselves should have had the required rigour, and more, the recognition by universities as valid pre-requisites.
Not that Gates et al have anything like this in mind with their peanuts that they toss at "the problem."
The problem with education isn't money; we throw tons of money at schools in the US, and the outcomes don't correlate well with money thrown; Newark, NJ schools receive more funding than Millburn, NJ schools, and the former are horrendous while the latter are among the best in the state.
As far as CS goes, it's not about replacing lessons about the American Revolution with lessons on Mexican culture neither one, whatever its merit, has any relevance to science and math. Nor does it matter for CS if students know more about Booker T. than George.
Nor is it any lack of CS or other computer education in primary and secondary schools. Nearly every CS job nowadays requires a bachelor's degree at minimum, and those 4 years are plenty to learn the fundamentals of computer science, assuming the underlying foundation is strong. So what's necessary IMO, from a CS education point of view, is for the foundation to be strengthened. The major thing missing from the traditional algebra-geometry-trignometry-calculus sequence is formal propositional logic; it's kind of taught alongside geometry proofs, but it might make sense to teach it separately and before (or even instead of) that sort of geometry. That doesn't necessarily require any more money.
But the real problem is the foundations just aren't strong. A lot of students can't do algebra entering 9th grade, and they can't do arithmetic entering 6th. Until you solve this, you can't solve anything at a higher level. Fix elementary education, fix secondary education, and only then worry about adding CS programs.
Public schools, just like Microsoft, have no shortage of money. What they have is a plague of incompetent management.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Europeans spend weeks learning about every country in Europe, yet they don't seem to be doing all that badly.
Europe has the same shortage of tech workers as does the US, and even higher unemployment figures for the young to boot. So it would seem that in fact whatever they are doing is not really that great either, they just spend less at sucking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No only an excuse, but OPM --- Other People's Money --- the super-rich never use their own money, but instead will use future tax revenues as an excuse to increase foreign visa scab workers (which are used to further offshore jobs, of course), plus those taxes going to K-12 are a way station to privatized schools, which the Gates Foundation has been strongly promoting, which means those taxes will eventually be going to them! Nothing altruisitic in any of this.
Of course America has a capitalistic educational system, always has, always will until a real revolution occurs. With partial exceptions such as the administrations of FDR and JFK, the last American who truly attempted to institute a meritocratic system in America was Alexander Hamilton, and the first murdered his only son, then they murdered him! (He was also strongly opposed to slavery back then!) This isn't about those shills for the super-rich altering the educational system in America, it's about increasing the number of foreign visa scab workers, (which is step 1 in offshoring jobs, also) and utilizing those tax revenues, which will only temporarily --- if that --- flow to public K-12 (most will end up going to their charter schools) but will eventually flow to privatized schools, which Bill Gates' Gates Foundation has long been pushing!
> So it works really well for kids whose parents can afford to to pick up 1/4 of the tab.
Pretty much every measure says it doesn't work well, for anyone.
US scores are routinely lower than countries that spend half as much.
The US has alot of education funding and a lot of " worst" rankings. More of the same is more money spent on more garbage.
Let's pass a Tech Industry Education Tax and have the tech industry itself pay for it. Perhaps it should be 1% of each company's yearly income, not this more H1-Bs = more funding crap.
And if we're going to have fees associated with H1-B visas, the cost should be in the $500,000 range.
And while I go off on a rant here, immigration shouldn't be based on an applicant's wealth or utility. It should be based solely on a display of loyalty and patriotism.
Word verification: defects
Isn't tying funding for education in a given field directly to the number of laborers imported to make work in that field cheaper just a trifle perverse? If you believe that, and don't really understand what's going on (see my comment, please) then you really are clueless.
You're absolutely right. That last sentence suggests you haven't studied economics, though.
> if capital gains were taxed as regular income, we would have no problem funding education in this country.
Most countries don't tax capital gains, or barely tax them (like 2%) because most countries understand how destructive it is to penalize saving. That's what capital gains tax is - a penalty for retirement savings, buying a house, or most other wise financial decisions. (Anything that results in being better off than when you started.)
Capital gains taxes are purely an American political tool, class warfare that greatly harms those same voters who are played by the envy-driven politicians. Even higher capital gains taxes would be a very effective way to destroy the economy.
another week for Asian culture
No wonder our schools are terrible if they only spend a week on such a broad and important topic.
It is easy to ridicule this as a benefit to the privileged, but our current funding of education, primarily with property taxes, is the root of much of the inequality in America. Property taxes are high in areas with high incomes, and low in areas of low incomes. Low income people also tend to have more school age kids. So the result is that rich kids attend schools with good teachers, libraries, computer labs, music programs, etc., where they only associate with other rich kids. Moving to a system of funding based on a broader tax base would do a lot to create more equality of opportunity.
"Except Utah".
Utah has one of the lowest housing costs in the nation, and therefore lower property taxes; California has one of the highest property taxes in the nation, except for commercial property shich is never actually sold (you sell the holding company that owns the property instead of selling the property in order to use the technicality in Prop 13 to avoid tax increases on commercial property_.
Utah has some of the lowest per-student funding in the nation; California has some of the highest per student funding in the nation.
Utah has some of the largest class sizes in terms of student/teacher ratio in the nation; California has one of the smallest.
Utah ranks twice as high in SAT scores by students than California.
Guess what folks: it isn't the funding that's the problem.
It seems obvious to me that $race month is racist.
How about science month? What company today is hiring for "Lead $race Developer". None.
Spending a month out of each nine-month school teaching racial division when our students are so far behind their international competitors is simply foolish.
You think they should teach black history, Mexican history, hill billy history, gay history, and tstv history. I think they should teach history. They'll have enough time for stupid identity politics when they're grown.
That's a major reason our daughter won't be going to public school. She's not going to be taught to hate whitey, she'll be taught math, science, literature. I aim to keep her focused on useful skills as long as possible before she starts asking for details of her heritage so she can figure out which hive you expect her to be a drone in.
There are 36 weeks of 5 days each in a typical American school year. How do you think they should be spent?
Where I live in Texas, six weeks are devoted to seperating out assorted "minorities". (Hispanics and women are actually the majority, but students are incorrectly taught that each is a minority.) Another 8 weeks or so are devoted to assorted political indoctrination.
Just over half of the year remains for useful ormarketable skills like math, science, writing, etc.
How about we reset the educational system to 1947?
In 22 years, we'll have people with a high school education + a four year college degree, and the ability to land people on the moon again. We'd have a hell of a time doing that today, even with Armadillo and SpaceX's H1-B workers imported from countries with functioning public education systems.
A lot of what has screwed up education in the U.S. is all the well intentioned (yes, I am giving the benefit of the doubt here) attempts to change education for the better, which don't happen to work out as beautifully in practice as they were supposed to according to the reformers theory.
There are 36 weeks of 5 days each in a typical American school year. How do you think they should be spent?
Where I live in Texas, six weeks are devoted to seperating out assorted "minorities". (Hispanics and women are actually the majority, but students are incorrectly taught that each is a minority.) Another 8 weeks or so are devoted to assorted political indoctrination.
Just over half of the year remains for useful ormarketable skills like math, science, writing, etc.
I'll call bullshit. Source? And I mean a credible source. Texas spends more time and energy fighting for creationism than computer science.
As for you political indoctrination, if you spent less time on creationism in "science" class, you could actually learn some science. Or was your argument going to be that TEXAS is mainly left wing school boards?
or they will move their offices out of state. If they don't pay taxes, they get bad schools. If there really is a shortage of adequately educated people in the US, those CEOs are responsible, along with the state legislatures that are dumb enough to encourage their blackmail and race each other to the bottom (of tax revenues from large corporations). The problem is that CEOs feel no responsibility toward the communities in which their companies operate. Their only responsibility is to the shareholders and their own pockets.
There is a positive glut of people who are talented software developers, but don't have the exact bingo-card skills that companies need. If companies are desperate, why don't they simply invest in retraining people who already have the basic skills? All developers would need to learn are the basics about whatever fad technology is popular at the moment. Surely anyone who knew over-engineered Java crud could learn over-engineered .NET crud. And anyone who knows the basics of software development could easily learn some proprietary vertical-market package, because there aren't that many different ways of querying a database or writing a report.
The #1 problem in the software world right now is the degree of uber-specialization. There aren't, and will never be, by definition, all that many people who are experts with some proprietary vertical-market package or legacy language. Learning this stuff is not hard.
So why don't companies simply train people to fill the roles they need? Until they do, this is all just BS.
Look at the Scandinavian countries and their level of per student funding.
As of 2012, the US spends more per pupil than Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
A quick search came up with this link. I must admit it is cute how people play scientist on Slashdot.
sounds like a good idea to me but lots of luck getting that to happen. For starters schools will need more funding (i.e. teacher salaries that are livable,classroom supplies provided so teachers don't have to pay for paper, materials, etc. out of their own personal pocket). However, everyone will complain about high income and corp taxes (where else does govt get money?) and those leading the charge are these same businessmen listed in article. Then there will be redistribution of wealth, higher income neighborhoods paying more taxes into general state treasury and some of this money will be spent in lower income neighborhoods (poor people don't pay much taxes because they don't have much money, that's why they are poor). But then someone will scream socialism and thus any proposals fall flat.
I met this lady who was a public school teacher, she said after WWII and Japan rebuilding the country hired many teachers from California. They figured Calif had the best public school system (which in 1940s and 50s they did) so why not hire some of those same teachers to make a great school system. I should have asked her what did schools in 1947 do that they are not doing now, unfortunately she passed away so her knowledge is lost. What I do remember her saying when traveling to Japan, only available transport was a cargo ship. Not much air travel and all passenger liners were filled with troops heading for the Korean War that was waging at the time.
mfwright@batnet.com
How about we Americans give you superior Europeans a huge number of our low-performing students? In proportion to your country's population, of course. Wouldn't want to over-burden you. Then you can deal with them fighting with each other and your native population, the racism, the hostility towards people who don't look like they do, and then you can tell us how well you can teach them about every country in Europe while they disrupt the learning for every class they're in.
A lot of times I think Europeans really have no idea what goes on in the average or below average American classrooms. It's Lord of the Flies in there.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Except " Real CS" is laughably unchallenging mentally, and requires little more than a strong grounding in middle school mathematics. Definitional "Set theory", definitional "Graph Theory", and the very basics of Combinatorics is far from requiring deep mathematical knowledge. Algorithms at the level CLRS and the Theory of Computation at the level of Sipser can easily be grasped by any high school freshman in remedial classes.
If they do will have no time for football and partying.
He would help to do something about the lack of affordable and high speed Internet access near Microsoft. I'm paying almost $70/month for less than 1 Mbps 13.3 miles from Microsoft's main entrance. Most of my friends with children do not have Internet access. Either they can't get it, or since it isn't fast enough to stream video, they don't think its worth the cost. Comcast doesn't offer service in much of Seattle, and CenturyLink has trouble providing reliable service in many places. CenturyLink around here can be extremely reliable and very fast (my boss has 40 Mbps down and as far as he knows, it has never gone down), but for many people that have older wiring, which is very common in Seattle, you can't get reliable DSL or simply can't get it at all. If Gates was serious about preparing children technically, he'd start by lobbying local governments to allow Internet access to the families he lives near. This area really needs to legalize providing access.
This is the worst idea ive ever heard. IT MUST BE STOPPED. A flood of low paid, third world laborers would destroy the US middle class and end up stealing millions of jobs from hard working Americans. Of course the third world thieves paid only a fraction of what US students paid for their college education, so this is going to absolutely cripple US students and put them at a huge disadvantage. We do NOT want to compete with low paid Indians. its already hard enough finding a job for an American IT/CS professional and allowing in more Indians and such will only make things devastatingly worse. We need to stop allowing our government to give away our jobs, and our country to these people who will gladly steal our jobs. Another slant on this as well is that, not only is it bad for the USA, but its also bad for India and so on because it causes the brain drain that retards the development of countries like India. The Indian programmers are needed in India. With high unemployment in the US, we need to reserve our jobs for American citizens and stop letting in STEM immigrants.
What we need to do is abolish the H1-B program completely and fund our educational system with tariffs.
Bill Gates and his evil schemes must be stopped.
ALL these very same tech BILLIONAIRES have been caught colluding to suppress the pay and benefits of workers in these fields AND they are working like crazy to get congress to remove the H1B visa limits so thay can fill all open STEM jobs with cheap, complient, foreign workers?
We will know these rich executives are serious about STEM when they [1] call for congress to ban immigration of STEM workers, [2] support a ban on colleges and universities inside the U.S. teaching foreign students as long as there are American kids who want those seats in those classes, [3] stop colluding to push down the wages and benefits of their workers, [4] stop outsourcing hi-tech labor for everything from semiconductor design and fabrication, circuit board design and fabrication to design and production of steel molds for injection molding and [5] stop lobbying congress for more "green" policies that drive high tech manufacturing AND things like rare-Earth minerals mining and processing out of the U.S.
These super-rich corporate bastards do not care one bit about the U.S. or its workers; they'd happily move everything to China or Russia or India if only they could have their guaranteed Constitutional rights there so they could be sure to live comfortably and safely atop their piles of ill-gotten cash. I do not generally presume a business CREATOR has any ill-gotten cash no matter how rich he is IF he gets his money from a product or service he PERSONALLY created (and not by either "Mergers and aquisitions" or by being a hired-gun) ... but many of the people sitting in CEO chairs these days and on boards of directors are as responsible for the products and services of their companies as John sculley was for Apple.
A quick search came up with this link. I must admit it is cute how people play scientist on Slashdot.
You linked to the same thread. Check your link and try again, please.
Do you have a source for this? According to wikipedia, most developed countries (New Zealand is a notable exception) have higher capital gains taxes than the U.S. Denmark, for example, taxes capital gains at up to 42%. France's rates are 34.5% and Germany's are about 28%. Australia and Canada tax 50% of capital gains as ordinary income. Since their top tax brackets are more than 30% (45% in Australia, and a bit less in Canada depending on the province), their effective capital gains rates are higher than those in the U.S.
I didn't struggle with combinatorics, because I took the late Gian-Carlo Rota's infamously difficult 18.313 at MIT (one of the great math teachers of all time, by the way). I didn't struggle with graph theory, linear algebra or abstract algebra either. However, that level of ease would not be typical of a *high school student*. I *did* find computation theory and analysis of algorithms very challenging -- more challenging than differential equations. I'm not talking about basic data structures and algorithms, which is a very easy course, but rather the more analytic stuff.
As for CLRS, if you think it's all easy, you haven't cracked any of the intermediate to advanced topics in it. Sure, network traversal algorithms happen to be easy, but dynamic programming is not.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You'd also have to change the general opinion that trade schools == route to blue collar jobs and unemployably bad "IT" employees.
More mandatory English classes would be nice too.
Indeed, I did. When someone posts anecdotes or personal opinion, that's the citation. Even if the poster was accurate in his statements, why would someone think that it'll appear on the internet?
The Scandinavian countries DO spend a lot.
Denmark is the third highest. The US is the top spender (but nowhere near the best results).
http://www.oecd.org/edu/educat...
Sorry, you're the one with parroting talking points, probably from Comedy Central. Here's another source for you.
http://www.oecd.org/edu/educat...
I'm afraid that parroting Jon Stewart isn't going to fix that fact that our students are routinely whipped by former banana republics.
The curriculum is called CSCOPE. 80% of government schools in Texas use it. You can Google for whatever level of detail you choose, but here are some examples to get you started.
It's not designed to teach to grade level; a ninth-grade lesson asks students to circle capital letters in a sentence.
A social studies lesson teaches that capitalism is obsolete and communism is the best economic system, using a diagram that shows a man climbing a ladder towards communism.
A third-grade lesson defines American “equality” as “fair share.” Competing definitions that include “equality under the law” or “equal opportunity” are not discussed.
Muhammad is portrayed as a social justice crusader: “Caravan manager from Mecca, rich trading city and host to many religious shrines (Ka’bah); married to a rich widow; became disillusioned with the corruption in the city and the growing gap between the urban dwellers and the Bedouins (nomadic herders).” There is no mention of his marriage to a young girl or his beheading of indigenous population groups.
Political parties are taught from what most would call a subjective and left-leaning perspective, e.g. Democrats “benefit each individual” while Republicans “favor big business.”
Are you telling me that's designed to teach career skills, not political indoctrination? If so, I most certainly disagree.
Regardless, I started college at 16. My nieces and nephews start earning college credit at 15 or 16. They don't get there by going to government schools in this country they are home schooled. One of them isn't even all that bright academically, he's musically talented. Still, he's two years ahead in science and math compared to government schooled kids his age.
Silicon valley's companies, which sit on billions of cash, need better educated workers. Why don't they just pay for it? They could do that just by paying the taxes they should pay, instead of dodging them though tax optimization.
The curriculum is called CSCOPE. 80% of government schools in Texas use it. You can Google for whatever level of detail you choose, but here are some examples to get you started.
Actually two minutes of research shows that it is used for only 34% of students, not 80%, ant that it was not developed by the Board of Ed or the public school system.
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=25769804296
The committee that approved it had 3 (R) and 1 (D). I'm curious if it was a 3:1 vote. If you have a problem with that curriculum, which you seem to, I would lay the blame on the $157Million spent to a private group and consultants who provided that. Tell me, which party dominiates Texas? Is it a "left wing" blue state or a "right wing" red one? Well, whoever is in charge, I suggest you blame them.
Assuming you didn't just cherry pick the most egregious bits, if your state is/was so stupid so as to approve that curriculum the blame lies with your elected officials and the voters that put them there.
Indeed, I did. When someone posts anecdotes or personal opinion, that's the citation. Even if the poster was accurate in his statements, why would someone think that it'll appear on the internet?
If someone asks for a credible source, why would you link to the same post as the question was posted to. Is that supposed to improve communication or enhance knowledge? I must admit, it's sad how Khallow attempts to disrupt legitimate inquiry.
P.S. Thanks to whoever the other AC was that called him out on it.
As the rising tide of automation displaces increasingly higher skill levels from the work force, soon the only people who are still employable will be the upper levels of creative/problem-solving types. Everyone else will just be dead weight that our increasingly redistributive economy will have to drag along. So it surprises me that we don't see a proposal for some sort of exchange program to get around the H1-B caps. It'd work like this: If you're an ambitious non-American with upper-level creative/problem-solving skills (employable) and you'd like to come to America to make profitable use of those skills, all you have to do is post sufficient bounty to induce a low-skills, dead-weight American to swap citizenship with you. They sign on the dotted line, you write them a check, both of your countries print the necessary citizenship papers and, voilà, everybody wins.
If someone asks for a credible source, why would you link to the same post as the question was posted to.
Why would anyone expect that there's a more credible source out there for "my school district does this crazy thing"?
I must admit, it's sad how Khallow attempts to disrupt legitimate inquiry.
This "legitimate inquiry" was shameless grandstanding. My attitude on inquiry, legitimate or otherwise, is that I respond in kind. Tit for tat.
Is that supposed to improve communication or enhance knowledge?
I think it will. Mocking people for insincere inquiries (especially in a way that actually answers their question, meaning I was actually more helpful and sincere than they were!) will help encourage them to behave differently.
P.S. Thanks to whoever the other AC was that called him out on it.
"Called him out". While debate is naturally adversarial, this "us versus them" mentality is incompatible with legitimate inquiry. The original poster replied with something, but we still can't substantiate the poster's original claims because we still don't know if "raymorris" lives in Texas with a school district that spends 14 weeks on ethnicity issues or if he's a shill.
There is now an absolute ton of evidence that all K-12 does is babysit while the kid's minds mature, and that adult minds easily learn K-12 material in 2 years and then go on to college normally.
So kids need babysitters and computers up through tenth grade, at which point they will have learned reading, writing, some arithmetic and a huge amount of random stuff absorbed while they were keeping themselves interested. And at which point they are physically mature enough for their brains to deal with academic learning.
No doubt there are brains that can go faster, they will do so on their own, as the amount of course work available on the internet is very, very, very large and easily accessed.
Public schools are not good for children, and we need to abolish them to increase our national competitiveness.
Khallow, exactly what did you add to this discussion? As Weird Al said, you may as well be posting "Me too".
If you meet anybody from India ask him What's Your Caste? If he answers it, then you're doomed. Because he has already injected Cancer into your society. Caste is like Cancer. It cannot be Cured. It has to be Cut-off. Otherwise it'll socioeconomically destroy you. http://www.greatandhra.com/vie...
Casteism
The question to ask is what percentage of students actually take the SAT in both scenarios?
k-12 graduation rate? Dropout rates?
Such a specific metric automatically triggers the "what are they trying to lie about this way" button.
programming. If you can't math, you can't program much beyond "Ehlo World".