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Kids To Get the Best CS Teachers $15/Hr Can Buy
theodp (442580) writes "Billionaire-backed Code.org, enthusiastically tweets U.S. Dept. of Education Chief Arne Duncan, is 'providing tremendous leadership in bringing coding & computer science to our nation's schools.' Including bringing kids in Broward County Public Schools the best computer science teachers $15.00-an-hour can buy, according to a document on the school district's website. One wonders how the Broward teachers feel about Code.org apparently coughing up $38.33-an-hour for Chicago teachers who attend the required Code.org professional development, which ironically covers equity issues. Duncan's shout-out comes days after Code.org claimed in its Senate testimony that 'our students have voted with their actions [participating in an hour-long, Angry Birds-themed Blockly tutorial starring Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates]: that learning computer science is this generation's Sputnik moment, that it's part of the new American Dream, and that it should be available to every student, in every school, as part of the standard curriculum.'"
lol are they smoking this isn't 1974 with the release of Intel's 8080. Who are they kidding, this is just more people looking for .gov handouts dressed up in "professional development", and all the other jazz that comes with US government contracts.
Good grief.
For those who don't feel like clicking on the linked documents, they aren't talking about teacher salaries, what they earn teaching. The pay also isn't set by code.org.
When a Chicago teacher spends a couple of hours doing professional development (taking a class or seminar), Chicago pays their teachers $38/hour for the time they spend at the seminar or wwhatever professional development they choose to do. Boward pays their teachers $15/hour for professional development. Those rates are for time doing prof dev, NOT teaching students, and it doesn't have squat to do with code.org - the districts pay for prof dev is the same for any class the teacher wants to take. (Of course it needs to be approved as professional development, a skydiving class probably wouldn't be approved for payment.)
You get what you pay for.
Money talks and bullshit walks.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Ps, teachers in their first three years also get an additional $300 bonus if they complete professional development (including code.org) equivalent to six credit hours.
After all, $15 / hour is better pay than grad school, or an academic postdoc position. There are certainly some people who recently finished their CSci degrees who aren't interested in jobs in industry and would jump at the opportunity to make that wage.
Now, is it what we should pay teachers? No, teachers should earn more than that. But a starting teaching position for someone with only a BS would be reasonable at that wage.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
We are in times where someone who makes a billion developing a social app or game is considered to have done something important.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Broward county teachers who have a bachelor's degree average $41,000 salary for the nine-month school year.
Are you sure they are able to teach with only a BS? I don't know about your area but where I live new teachers can only teach with a master's degree in education. Oddly enough we are even rejecting people who have a PhD in the field they would like to teach, and telling them only a master's in education will do.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Here is what Education Hell looks like
"Show me a kid who knows how to add in hardware."
Adding in hardware IS easy. This is how I do it:
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/...
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
... why not look at what Code.org has to offer?
This is not a sampling, and it is free to all.
K-8 Intro To Computer Science Course (15-25 hours)
If you can teach coding, you can get a job making more than 15 an hour. You're only going to get awful teachers at that salary.
I do hope that people read this and see how desperately we need numerous reforms. Ask a kid today "How much money is too much money?" and the overwhelming majority will claim there is no such thing. Even when disproportionate earnings becomes detrimental to society, because "me" is all that matters according to what we teach in classrooms and media. Plenty of parents try to teach higher morality, but success is surely limited by pressure from government and media.
Socrates had it right in the Allegory of the Artisan, and I doubt many so called intellectuals know what that is.
THIS is how you really do addition in hardware.
Still there is not a lot of money. Especially for someone with a CS degree can walk from the teacher job and land a 55k a year job the following week.
Teacher pay needs to be adjusted. Science and math teachers should be paid as much as they would with other professions with those said degrees. Of course the tax payers including hte TEA Party would scream SOCIALISM at such an outrageous waste of tax payer money but it says a lot. Why do it when you have the student loan company and landlord hassling you for cash each month while you struggle to make it through.
Broward county is very expensive so yes when you pay $1600 a month for a 1 room apartment that $41,000 does not go far. Especially if you owe student loans in the tens of thousands like all recent grads do today.
http://saveie6.com/
Back when I was working security 4 years ago, I was netting nearly $26k a year and there's no requirement of college education and I would have been making $27k by now with the COLAs that were in the contract. And that's without overtime.
$30k for teaching is shit money, you wind up on paper working 8 hours a day, but to actually finish all the work that you're expected to finish, it's going to involve working for free. What's more, you are typically required to have 5 years of post secondary education on top of the regular classes you need to maintain the certification. So, from a pay perspective, you're better off working security as you make barely less than you would as a teacher, but you don't require the degrees. In the long run, you wind up making more money. BTW, those figures were for entry level work, if I had sought a promotion, I would have been making a lot more.
If teacher salaries were much different, that would be one thing, but that's not the case. How many employers pay ANYTHING for time employees spend taking classes? Chicago treats pays PD time at about the same rate those employees are paid for doing their job. Broward pays just as much for the teachers' normal job. They just figure PD, someone taking a class they choose to take which may benefit the employer, is paid as if it were half work-time and half personal. I figure that's about right. I'd be taking the same classes whether I had the job I have or a different job.
Yes, their pay schedule has three columns:
BA/BS
Masters (related to field)
Masters (unrelated)
$41,000 is in the middle of their scale for a BA/BS.
I too am curious where you live because a masters in education is generally preferred for a school principal. In most states in the US, teachers need either an education related bachelor's, an unrelated bachelor's plus a six-month teaching certification program, or (rarely) another certification with no degree.
Well any decent IT Security does not have to worry about script kiddies.
In fact, if you are right, their work will be more sought after.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Well at high school, computer science/coding/typing are all pretty synonymous.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I can tell you that I have lived in two different states - roughly 1,000 miles apart - that have had policies similar to this. Basically neither state will grant a teaching license to anyone who does not have a master's in education. It appears that they were both trying to ensure that they were bringing in better qualified teachers, but they didn't consider that some people might be drawn to secondary teaching after finishing a PhD in their original field. Being as when I was a high school student, both states (to the best of my knowledge) were taking teachers with only bachelor's degrees, they did up the requirements.
When I contacted one of the two states, they told me that basically the education department is too understaffed to evaluate applications that don't come in from people who either have an M. Ed, or are in a licensure program that is designed to lead towards one.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Is designing Angry-Birds derivative games a "Sputnik moment" for education? A simple litmus test for the educational validity: Would it sound as cool and be as well received if it were in another mode/medium, e.g. designing board games? The educational outcomes for getting children to design board games are arguably more desirable, cheaper, and more practical than getting children to do the same with code. (I've done it and read the background research on learning projects including designing board games, and I can't see how doing it virtually, i.e. with software algorithms, would be as educationally productive unless they created and developed the games first in the real world and then created and developed them into software versions later, thereby avoiding cognitive overload).
BTW, I'm all for children learning to write code but in pedagogically sound and productive ways, and at appropriate times in children's stages/levels of cognitive development.
> Still there is not a lot of money. Especially for someone with a CS degree can walk from the teacher job and land a 55k a year job the following week.
They could, but that would be a pay cut, probably.
$41k base for 9 months
$10k for summer school
$4k retirement matching
$4k additional insurance benefit
$59k comparative
The insurance part represents the fact that private employers pay for about 50% of insurance premiums, while school districts typically pay 80%-100%. The value of that depends - a teacher with a large family benefits more than one who is single.
It sounds like a perfectly reasonable requirement to me. Having a Ph.D. doesn't qualify you to be a plumber or auto mechanic, so what makes you think it qualifies you to be a teacher?
Things are somewhat different at the university level because you're assuming that the students are basically adults that have already learned how to educate themselves, and the instructor is there simply as a guide. Plus there are grad students and a tutors around specifically to help them when your guidance is so piss-poor that they can't follow it. There's no shortage of absolutely brilliant researchers doing an utterly incompetent job of teaching at the university level. And that's okay - they can offer their students other things: windows into what makes the field vibrant. The prestige of having taken a class with X, etc.
When you're talking about educating children though it's a completely different ball of wax. Children aren't just miniature adults, they're inherently different creatures, important aspects of their brain have still only begun to develop, and you can't expect them to educate themselves with minimal guidance as you would an adult.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If you do the math that works out to over $30k a year. Not shabby at all, especially for a teacher.
We are talking about Broward County, FL. A place with a population exceeding 1 million, and an above average cost of living; fair market rents exceeding $13000 a year, for a 1-Bedroom apartment.
At $30k a year.. you can just about cover taxes, shelter, food and water, for one adult and some basic necessities.
You've been asked twice already to say where this policy supposedly exists. What states are you talking about? I don't want to call BS on your post if some stupid state where liberals don't think about the consequences of their policies actually did something so dumb.
Since the commenter won't answer your question, here goes: Google points me to the National Council on Teacher Quality's 2013 State Teacher Quality Yearbook, which says that: "Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, New York and Oregon all require a master’s degree or coursework equivalent to a master’s degree" (p. 87).
I'm not sure that works anymore. 1999? Yes, broadcast.com was sold for a billion.
Now, Million Dollar Home Page was worth uhm, what was that number again?
Ooops. I misread the GP post, so my answer did not address the real question of whether they would reject a Ph.D. as being equivalent. Sorry about posting an irrelevant answer.
One thing I will say is that getting a Ph.D. prepares a person for research, but most Ph.D. programs don't include anything about how to teach the material to high school students, so it's reasonable that a state would want to know not only do you know the technical material, but also do you know how to teach it, maintain classroom discipline, work with students who have learning disabilities, etc.
It's nice to be drawn to secondary teaching after getting a Ph.D., but there is an important step in actually getting training in how to teach before that Ph.D. will be useful to most high schools.
Thanks for that. When I have a strong signal on my phone, I'll download it and see if any require a masters in education, as the gentleman/lady claimed.
As I mentioned in another post, at least one of the states has actually faced reductions in state funding for education, which has resulted in fewer people staffing the dept of education to evaluate teachers for licensing. That doesn't sound like a particularly liberal ideal to me, being as liberals are associated with throwing money at problems with wild abandon.
When I think of government throwing money at problems with wild abandon, the first image that comes to mind is the Bush Administration sending $12 billion to Iraq in pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills and handing them out to contractors and others that nobody can identify. http://www.theguardian.com/wor... I've heard GWB called a lot of things but not a liberal. Maybe wars don't count, but I can think of a lot of other dubious programs that conservatives have thrown money at with wild abandon, like chastity-based sex education, Homeland Security, the war on drugs, the prison system and charter schools.
I don't consider myself exactly a liberal, but I will defend them (or anybody else) when they're unfairly attacked. I'll also criticize them when they do something stupid.
The sign that somebody is thinking critically is that he criticizes his own side.
I don't call myself an intellectual, but I am a curious sort, so I googled "Socrates Allegory of the Artisan". Oddly, the only explicit result was a slashdot post by s.petry dated about Aug 2013 which I quote:
Start quote:
"Consider Socrates and the Allegory of the Artisan. The duty of the Republic is to ensure that a good artisan remains a good artisan. Pay him too much, and he will no longer produce works. He will not only stop producing, but spend his time and money meddling in other peoples affairs. The Republic has given him an opportunity to harm others as well as no longer be productive for society. If the Republic does not pay the Artisan enough, he will no longer produce. The artisan will be worried about the welfare of his children and home, and seek opportunities other than being an artisan to ensure survival.
The duty of the Republic is to ensure that people are rewarded for producing in society, but never so much that they become unproductive. This does not just go for the artisan, but also the farmer and cobbler and baker and every other job we have deemed critical to societies purpose and function."
END quote.
ol' 'Crates seems to be saying that those who actually produce something more or less tangible and reasonably necessary for the health and survival of their society (teachers, engineers, street sweepers) should be assured of an adequate living but should not be allowed to make enough that they start to get 'above themselves'
Apparently overcompensation (of many sorts including financial) and a proper sense of entitlement is to be reserved for those who produce Nothing tangible or necessary ( rock stars, PHB's , derivatives-traders, televangelists).
Weirdness: my CAPTCHA for this AC post is 'idlers'
Honestly, just get yourself hands-on, and dive in!
Download a netinst for Debian stable.
Install it.
Install gcc, g++, ddd, vi/emacs, make, git, and play.
Try things. Learn by hands-on, error messages, research, stackoverflow, and time. ...There are so many good Internet resources out there in terms of tutorials, source code of existing GPLd programs and projects, of all areas of Computer Science. So again, honestly, just get yourself hands-on, and dive in.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Isn't that the county of hanging chads? Sounds like payback to me.
How so? I'm comparing compensation at two different jobs.
Are you complaining that I compared 48 weeks of work in the private sector vs 46 weeks working as a teacher? True, the teacher gets a little more vacation time, but at least some people claim teachers work longer hours, so that should roughly balance out.
Are you complaining that I'm comparing zero tolimited retirement matching in most private sector jobs to the more generous retirement benefits teachers get? That's an important part of the compensation package. It's one reason I work for the school system, and I know several coworkers consider it important as well. My last job had no retirement benefit. The fact that the taxpayers are funding half of my retirement is equalivent to an extra $4,000 per year for me.
What I didn't include was percentage of health insurance costs that they have in common, but that's equal for both, so add that number to both if you like. Of course those numbers are rapidly changing under Obamacare, so you can't really get current numbers right now. You can, however, recognize that the labor cost is fairly inflexible inmany industries, so increased cost of employee health insurance will be partially offset by reduced raises or reduction of other benefits. For that reason, total compensation numbers from a few years ago will still be close to the current numbers.
And if you teach chemistry, they'll learn to build bombs.
Teach physics, and they'll learn sabotage.
Teach economics, and they'll learn exploitation.
Teach music, and they'll keep the neighbours awake practicing.
Teach phys-ed, and they'll mug people.
Teach sex ed, and they'll all get pregnant / society collapses / the gays?
Teach art, and there's a rise in forgeries.
Teach math, and cryptography will no longer be secure.
Teach persuasive writing/speaking, and then there will be a surge in suicide-cult leaders.
Sorry that is NOT programming.
The second lesson introduces basic programming concepts to navigate a maze.
You construct your program using graphical building blocks. But you can expose the equivalent JavaScript code.
... Bill Gates is busy getting out of the software business altogether:
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
.
I would like to laud the poster for including numbers in his post, and for supporting their veracity in an extremely convincing fashion. Perhaps K-12 computer science education will help bring these CS techniques to public discourse, perhaps not. At SlashDot, though, we should all strive to emulate this example.
The idea is to teach kids to code? In what language? And how long will that language be in vogue? Are we ever going to have a "universal" programming language? Or is the idea to teach the kids the fundamentals of computing, computers, programming, file structures, algorithms, etc? At present, we have a plethora - perhaps an excess - of programming languages, and new ones are popping up like weeds all the time. It seems to me that an ability to program - at least in some high level query-only language - is highly desirable, rather like the ability to use a calculator or smartphone. But if we try to teach everyone to program, are we not simply creating even more potential hackers than we already have, thus making everyone's everyday experiences on the internet even more insecure than they already are?
Well, almost. Broward County's pay schedule ranges from $26.50/hour for new hires to $48/hour for the highest teaching experience, plus good benefits and a pension, but you are right that it is way more than what the title/summary suggest.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I'm sorry, but there are people on slashdot who are desperate to figure out who I am. If I give away what state I currently live in, and the other state I have seen this policy in, that would make it that much easier for them to figure it out.
I don't know if you're serious about this or just joking, but FYI, it's pretty hard to hide on the internet: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
> > teachers who have a bachelor's degree AVERAGE ...
Thanks for adding the additional detail.
"Sputnik moment" I do not think it means what they think it means. I turned 5 years old just a few days before Sputnik was launched. My father, who was in the invasion fleet on the way to Japan when the only nuclear bombs used in war were dropped, was working at the Hanford plant in southeast Washinton making plutonium for more nuclear bombs. For a family outing we went out and watched a simulated nuclear explosion.... That is what my life was like when Sputnik showed up in the sky.
Sputnik meant that suddenly every point in the US was subject to nuclear destruction with no warning. The level of fear was so high you could walk on it. For the rest of his life my father kept a survival kit in the trunks of his cars because he knew that the only hope you had for surviving a nuclear war was to be far enough away from where the bombs come down Burrowing under ground was just a way to bury yourself.
A "Sputnik moment" is a moment when every little bit of security you thought you had disapears. I suspect the people of Boston had a minor "Sputnik moment" when the bombs went off. The fear and anger I saw after 911 as not 1% of what the US experienced when sputnik appeared in the sky. The fear and anger were backed by huge frustration because unlike 911 we could not invade the USSR because we did not want to try to survive a nuclear war. Instead of spending time and money destroying them we spent the time and money making sure that if they tried to destroy us, we WOULD destroy them.
Stonewolf
Not very long ago... 20 years or so, all employers paid technical empolyees to take classes. The classes were even often taught at the companies location. Local colleges would send full professors to teach classes that started just after the close of business so that they were convenient for the workers. It was normal to give employees time off during the day to take day classes. The employees were oftern paid for time and the employer allways paid for the tuition, books, and lab fees.
Technical employess used to be considered a valuable asset. Now they are not.
Stonewolf
I'm not going to defend damn_registrars because that post said a lot more (the masters had to be in education and a Ph.D. didn't count as "equivalent coursework), so what damn_registrars said might well be BS. But if you look at the text on p. 85 and figure 79 on p. 87, it looks to me as though the masters is required not for tenure, but to get a mandatory teaching license. Did I misunderstand that?
I'm sorry, but there are people on slashdot who are desperate to figure out who I am. If I give away what state I currently live in, and the other state I have seen this policy in, that would make it that much easier for them to figure it out. I will only say that the 1,000 mile distance is mostly in an east-west direction, with very little north-south movement.
If you are afraid to give evidence to back up your assertions, then why are you making those assertions in the first place?
If you were serious about contributing to this discussion, you could have said that there were two states that had this policy and linked to evidence of that policy, without ever saying that you lived there. But instead, you were more interested in making it a personal thing about "I experienced that and I am so important that if I told you what state I live in I would have to shoot you."
Get over yourself. You are not so important that someone is going to track you down and hurt you on the basis of a /. comment that reveals indirectly what state you live in.
If you are afraid to give evidence to back up your assertions, then why are you making those assertions in the first place?
Why am I uniquely required to back up my assertions to such detail? People make assertions on slashdot with great frequency that do not require them to share data that relates to their personal lives, and are not required to share why they made them.
If you were serious about contributing to this discussion, you could have said that there were two states that had this policy and linked to evidence of that policy, without ever saying that you lived there.
Well, I happened to say that I lived in two states with such policies. Perhaps you didn't know this before, but you don't get to take back or edit comments on slashdot. We can debate whether I presented it in the best way, but the past is what it is.
But instead, you were more interested in making it a personal thing about "I experienced that and I am so important that if I told you what state I live in I would have to shoot you."
I made no statement of that sort. I only said that I don't want to share personal information here. I keep slashdot separate from my private life and I intend to keep it that way.
Furthermore my comments did not in any way prevent people from using google or any other search engine to see what policies states use for granting license to teachers.
Get over yourself. You are not so important that someone is going to track you down and hurt you on the basis of a /. comment that reveals indirectly what state you live in.
I'm sorry that you found it so gravely difficult to read my comments. I specifically said that people have been following me on slashdot. That directly states that these are people who have been reading my comments prior to that one.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.