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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.'"
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.)
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/
Hey, that's cynical and wrong. It's people looking to lower wages of software developers as well as justify immediate requests for more H1Bs, all while taking away the focus on improving our nation's weak skills in the basics of reading, math, and science.
(Note that cynicism is orthogonal of correctness.)
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.
... 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)
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?
It's more like you're an Electrical engineering graduate, and a potential employer need some diagrams to be made of potential electrical circuits, BUT they (rejecting your qualifications), insist that only someone with an art/sketching degree is qualified to to put together electric circuit diagrams for their projects.
Because you have deep knowledge of science or engineering or mathematics or the subject matter, and teaching is a basic skill: just like speaking in public is a basic skill, and an expert in the subject is the most able to provide in depth guidance and genuine learning about the subject.
The education major who has rudimentary knowledge of math themselves --- trying to teach high school Calculus, perhaps, will not be able to answer student questions or encourage/facilitate/promote any learning that goes outside the teacher's very narrow box, of the teacher's own study of the subject matter.
If someone is going to teach Biology, I would take the guy who has a P.H.D. in biology, and the proper enthusiasm and skills, over the guy who doesn't have a clue about the subject, but just took courses to learn how to teach.
You don't need a 4 year degree in Public Speaking, to be allowed to speak at a conference.
You don't need a 4 year degree in Education, to know how to teach, and you will probably do a better job, since you actually know extremely well, the field that the subject matter you will be teaching is in.
I prefer QUALIFIED experts in the field they will teach about, FILTERED to include only people who are subjectively good at teaching.