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K-12 CS Education Funding: Taxes, H-1B Fees, Donations?

Posted by timothy on from the still-on-that-eh? dept.

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?"

11 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Read as... by blahplusplus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... we want educated people at slave wages.

    Signed,

    Bill gates.

    1. Re:Read as... by Calavar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dear best buddies in government, We want educated people at slave wages, but people keep trying to stop us. Please tie education funding to our precious H1Bs so that no one will dare to touch them. Signed, Bill Gates

      FTFY

    2. Re:Read as... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. If You Can't Beat Them... by TemperedAlchemist · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:If You Can't Beat Them... by ebno-10db · · Score: 4, Informative

      In Silicon Valley, more than half of CEOs were foreign born. It is likely that educated immigrants create more tech jobs than they take.

      You're seriously mis-citing that statistic. The actual statistic is that over half of SV companies include founders that were foreign born. That's a very big difference, since the vast majority of companies have multiple founders. As a matter of fact the proportion of foreign born company founders in SV is lower than the overall proportion of the foreign born in SV. You're citing a statistic like saying that 30% of company founders have blue eyes, therefore we need more blue eyed people. Meanwhile you overlook that 34% of the population in question has blue eyes. Given those statistics, it's hard to see how blue eyed people are better than those who aren't.

      Second, which foreign born people are you talking about? Sergey Brin? He came to the US when he was six. I seriously doubt he had an H-1B visa. Jerry Yang? Came to the US when he was ten. Back in the day, Andy Grove? Came to the US as a refugee. My grandparents? (admittedly not SV entrepreneurs) came to the US as immigrants, not "guest workers". And no, I don't give a damn that the H-1B is a "dual use" visa. The bottom line is that H-1B visa holders initially come to the US as guest workers, and serve a period of indentured servitude, at the behest of tech billionaires falsely claiming STEM shortages.

  3. Yeah, that'll work. by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  4. This is all just an excuse by clifwlkr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.....

  5. Re:US edu funding already world's highest. Problem by Nemyst · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Funding isn't the problem. by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."
  7. Re:Actually, they are doing that badly by ebno-10db · · Score: 3, Funny

    Europe has the same shortage of tech workers as does the US

    You mean they don't have a shortage either?

  8. $race month is racist . Should be obvious. by raymorris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.