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How Many Members of Congress Does It Take To Pass a $400MM CS Bill?
theodp writes: Over at Code.org, they're celebrating because more than 100 members of Congress are now co-sponsoring the Computer Science Education Act (HR 2536), making the bill designed to"strengthen elementary and secondary computer science education" the most broadly cosponsored education bill in the House. By adding fewer than 50 words to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, HR 2536 would elevate Computer Science to a "core academic subject" (current core academic subjects are English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography), a status that opens the doors not only to a number of funding opportunities, but also to a number of government regulations. So, now that we know it takes 112 U.S. Representatives to make a CS education bill, the next question is, "How many taxpayer dollars will it take to pay for the consequences?" While Code.org says "the bill is cost-neutral and doesn't introduce new programs or mandates," the organization in April pegged the cost of putting CS in every school at $300-$400 million. In Congressional testimony last January, Code.org proposed that "comprehensive immigration reform efforts that tie H-1B visa fees to a new STEM education fund" could be used "to support the teaching and learning of more computer science in K-12 schools," echoing Microsoft's National Talent Strategy.
What are 400 Millimeter Dollars?
Sorry, I don't buy into all this "we need to get kids using computers and programming in grade school!" crap. Or this "we need everyone to be in STEM!" crap.
Why do we need this, exactly? To keep the pool of employees huge and the pay low? Where is the push for teaching kids automotive skills in grade school? Cooking? Surgery?
Let's just focus on the basics. Teach kids to be inquisitive, critical thinking, human beings with a strong grasp of reading and writing and math and history and geography skills and knowledge. Those with an interest in other things will pursue them and doing so will be much easier with a solid primary foundation in these universal fundamentals.
Saying that CS will be considered core doesn't change the simple fact that it won't make the universities care.
If you want to do CS (or EE) at uni then the requirement is top end math (Calculus) and Physics, with it being a bonus if you've also done Chemistry. Until that changes it doesn't matter what else happens, CS is going to continue to be a lame duck option for high school students.
"Honest, I only added a few symbols! Why doesn't the program work anymore?" Besides, computer science used to be part of either math or engineering, depending in which school you went to; we could just go back to that and suggest that it be a REAL SUBJECT instead of just tossing web images together and claiming you "wrote" something.
Why would they even bother with H1Bs if it is that expensive. Import them illegally and pay them as illegals. It's what is happening with the low education jobs and the government- outside of a few angry republicans do not really care. Some of them actually encourage it. Hell, look at the kids crossing entire third party countries to come into the US because it's known that no one will make them leave.
Translation: We'll do this and then we'll have to let more H-1B foreigners into the country to pay for it. The question isn't how many tax dollars this law will cost, it is how many American jobs it will cost and how further American technical jobs can be devalued by an in-flood of cheap foreign labor.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Won't these classes rather be on how to use word processors, spreadsheets, and other Microsoft applications, and name-the-parts-of-the-computer, and such? Maybe write some Visual BASIC on the last week of the semester.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
I get english, and reading/language arts (which is english), math, science, foreign languages I suppose is a wobbler for me, civics and government smells a bit like history, but sure, count it separate, economics is pretty important, as well as history and geography...but arts? Plain old arts?
I'm sorry, but if people want to make paper mache, or paint, or draw, or throw pots, you can do that on your own damn time. It's akin to having "computer gaming", or "stamp collecting" a core academic subject -> art is a *hobby*, not an academic subject.
Ultimately, no significant cash would reach the classrooms, but piles of new regulations and requirements would.
We do not need more STEM workers; we have a surplus as is proven by the fact that wages in the field are essentially flat (a shortage would drive wages up). US employers do not even want American STEM workers; they want the inexpensive, pliable, and held-hostage-by-immigration-papers variety. Half the STEM workers we already have are working outside of their fields and we have millions of unemployed. If we need to have ANY effort to boost ANY career area via education manipulation it should be a massive boost in the skilled trades like welding.
Education is simply NOT a federal responsibility, and every federal intervention has made things worse. If you read even the letters by ordinary Civil War soldiers to their families you see how far our education system has degraded - in comparison I'd rate most current high school grads as illiterate. The education most Americans got in "the basics" in the 1930's (often in one-room school houses, often run by a young woman with a two-year degree) produced a generation able to build the and use the industrial might for WWII - something the current generation probably could not do. Many of THAT generation were then able to go on to college and get actual degrees (as opposed to degrees in ethinc or women's studies) and then "put a man on the moon". Subsequent generations educated with lots of federal government meddling are unable to put a monkey into space today (even given all the information the earlier guys had to learn the first time and given far more time than the earlier guys had). The feds are too slow to react properly (they'll set standards that rapidly become obsolete and will still be pushing stuff when industry no longer uses it) and any money gets filtered through too many hands, funding too many "experts" and administrators before it gets from the taxpayer, to Washington, back to the taxpayer's state and ultimately trickles into his child's school. For every million tax dollars, I'd bet $10 makes it into a classroom, where we keep being told teachers need to buy their own chalk despite education funding being higher per-pupil than ever before.
A further problem is that things like programming are more like art than many other things - a bit of a "calling" where you need to like it and have a talent for it or you will suck at it no matter how well-trained. Most kids will never be programmers, never care about programming, etc. Teaching all kids CS stuff is a bit like forcing all kids to join the chess club or the marching band.
Don't forget about about the mandatory training in Ethics and Legal Issues, Digital Citizenship, Workplace Safety, Copyright education and why the ripping of CDs is evil. :)
Here is a link to the Michigan High School CTE Computer Programming standards.
http://www.ctenavigator.org/re...
I applaud this effort.
I recently toured 14 campuses in the US and it is clear to me that Engineering and Science is a low priority for most american youth based on the comments I heard from students and tour guides. Also, movies and tv shows keep portraying scientists, engineers and computer people as weird and devoid of social life.
If the US is to continue to be a country of innovation it needs to inform its youth that the highest demand jobs are those that involve MATH and Science and Engineering. It needs to give these subjects a higher priority in the curriculum. Because it is through these subjects that people will be able to BUILD the future.
Its nice that so many people are in to art history, or sociology, or communications. But what the economy needs is innovators that can bring technological solutions to make the world a better place. The salary discrepancies clearly show this.
Teaching programming will help students model and understand the world and to solve its technological problems.
70% of the youth in Asia chose Science and Engineering jobs. In the Americas the trend is the opposite only about 30% chose these fields. No wonder so many work at Walmart and are wondering if higher education is worth the investment.
This is common knowledge, right?
MM = 1,000 + 1,000 = 2,000. And it would have been common knowledge about 2,000 years ago, not so much today. :-)
The vaulted Speaker of the House has already stated it is a better metric to judge them on how many laws they have repealed. Oh... nevermind.
When I was in school the "computer" class was not much more than learning to type. We got to play with AppleWorks and some sort of graphics program, the best one could get with 8 bits of color.
I recall a conversation I had with a co-worker about how we need more and better computers in schools or our children will be somehow educationally stunted. I pointed out how the Apple ProDos and Microsoft DOS systems we used reflected the Windows 7, Mac OSX, and Linux systems we use today. Elementary school children don't need fancy computers. I wonder if they need computers at all. I'm sure that skills like typing will be important, I took that in high school. Students will need to understand that computers do what they are told, not what you want them to do, but that is true of many things. Mathematics, physics, and chemistry have similar rules. I could argue that law has similar rigor, words mean things. If the law does not mean what you want it to mean then change the law. Perhaps that is a rant for another time.
Point is that computers are an important part of modern life. Computer technology is still changing fast, whether it is faster or slower now than when I was in grade school is debatable. Rather than teach "computers" to children perhaps we need to find a way to work computers into every subject. Art class should have a portion where students work in PhotoShop, just like they have sections on clay, paint, or colored pencils. Shop class should have a portion on CNC milling. Mathematics has all kinds of options to work in computing. Chemistry and physics classes can work in computers to run simulations and compare to real world experimentation, or do some statistical analysis on data collected in experiments.
I believe that teaching "computer science" at too young of an age is a bad idea. It will do little to prepare children for life as an adult. I suspect most implementations of "computer science" at anything other than college or trade school levels will be twisted into something that is not "computer science". It will be much like what I had in school, an excuse to play with expensive toys and the only real skills derived from it will be learning how to type. It doesn't have to be that way but I believe that is how it will end up because real computer scientists rarely choose to teach, they make more money doing something else. Much of the issues with teachers not getting paid enough has to do with the government funded education system we have now.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
From talking to older family members it seems that the US had a two track educational system in the 1940s and 50s too. One track vocationally oriented and one college prep oriented. Everyone took math classes of some sort for most/all of high school, even the kids on the vocational track. On the vocational track it was practical job site oriented math (which included some algebra and trig techniques) plus some financial literacy and home economics.
I think in this respect the non-college prep kids were better served back then.
Count on school to turn highly interesting, mentally-stimulating subjects (like math) into boring rote memorization exercises.
I can see it now, quizzes on operator precedence for all the C language operators.
Will have to cut art and music to fit it in
They probably won't be learning CS. Most people, including many around here, mistake CS for anything computer related.
... so many others were just stuck on how these lines on a topo map represented terrain features.
Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but if they incorporate some practical computer lesson and projects into the curriculum it may not be so bad. Things that are more general and practical in nature. Perhaps creating a web page that involves a little java script, maybe connecting a temperature sensor to a raspberry pi and writing a script to read it, etc. Are these CS or EE, not really, more computer/electronics literacy in my opinion.
I'm thinking of a class project that we did in 9th grade science class. We had a transparent plastic box and lid, the box had cm markings on the side. In the box was placed a terrain model with hills and valleys. We added water to the box until reaching a cm line and while looking straight down through the lid traced the water lines. We repeated this at the various cm lines. In effect we created a topographical map. Were we doing geography in the university geography class sense, no, but it was a very useful lesson in the general sense of scientific literacy(*). I think we could do a better job with such lesson with respect to computer and electronics literacy.
Again, I admit to being perhaps overly optimistic. I'm sure the US Gov't could royally botch any such attempt to improve computer and electronics literacy through simple practical lessons and projects.
(*) It was also an incredibly valuable lesson when I later learned land navigation with map and compass, route planning,
the teachers won't teach to the students.
Why do we have a federal Department of Education? Is there a set of common guidelines that apply uniformly for all school districts across These United States? A set of rules, goals, and guidelines that apply to inner-city Harlem, NY as well as ultra-rural American Falls, ID? Eliminate this Department, give the money back to the States, and be done with it.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It takes 218 Representatives to pass a bill in the House and 60 Senators to close debate in the Senate. Therefore, the answer to the question (How Many Members of Congress Does It Take to Pass a $400 Million CS Bill?) is 278 members of Congress. You can actually manage with fewer than that if some don't vote, but that's the safest answer to the question. 278 is sufficient.
What if we just manufacutred criminals by making it illegal to tamper with a URL bar's contens, and then taught every kid to code!
"Genius! This thing prints money!"
-- Reform the fucking CFAA. Every kid has a million times more accessibility to coding and information than when I taught myself at age 8. If you're not coding it's either because you don't want to, or your parents are fucking daft.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That 300 to 400 Million must be just for the sanitary wipes to clean the keyboards of greasy finger prints and cheetos crumbs.
How appropriately ironic that this document is an Excel spreadsheet.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I've thought this as well -- although I think $50K per head corporate H-1B tax is too high for many cases. It just needs to be high enough to make absolutely sure that it swamps the "fudging" on pay rates that companies do for H-1Bs. I think something like 20-25% of salary is enough.
There's plenty of times I would have happily paid that tax because there just weren't any great candidates available except H-1Bs. I hate hiring H-1Bs because of the paperwork, but have done it when I need to and have never paid them less because they were H-1Bs (and, it cost more in reality because of the legal costs, my time, and HR's time).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
According to this site - http://blogs.seattletimes.com/... - the cost will be around $300 Million to $400 Million, per year
But what can 300-400 Million buy these days ? Let's see ...
According to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... - one F35C comes with the price tag of US$299.5M
It's up to you guys to decide where you wanna put your $$$ --- on educating the younger generation or feeding your $$$ to the industrial military complex
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Dammit. I got n+1.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Microsoft thinks computer science education is teaching students how to use Office.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It works out to more than a dollar per man, woman, and child in the USA.
Not much in comparison to the entire tax take. But what is it per K-12 student? Or per instructor?
code.org's approach seems to be getting instructors up to speed on the curriculum. That amount of money might be suficient. But then what do we have to buy in terms of hardware, software, books, etc. for each student? $400M probably isn't going to hack it. So once you have the teacher at the head of the classroom and the kids don't have fully onfigured laptops, we will need to come up with more to protect the initial sunk cost.
If Microsoft thinks this means a copy of MVS on every student's desktop, they are having a wet dream the likes of which I can't imagine.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think this is a horrible, bad idea because we don't really know what computer science is. It's such a young discipline that many of the important pioneers are still around.
Well, the very first generation, the people who figured out how dancing machinery could represent arbitrary mathematical operations, those people died a generation ago. But many of the foundations of modern computer science, those were pretty arbitrary, and those people are either still around or recently dead: John McCarthy of LISP (1927-2011), Donald Knuth of sequential algorithms (TAOCP, b. 1938), Douglas Engelbart of the human-centered GUI (NLS, 1925-2013), Claude Shannon of Information Theory (1916-2001), Paul Baran of packet networking (1926-2011), Edsger Dijkstra of structured programming (1930-2002), John Backus and Peter Naur of programming language specification (BNF, 1924-2007 and b. 1928), and so on.
Naturally, there are disagreements about what exactly computer science should be about. Dijkstra argued it should be fundamentally mathematical, and forbade students in his intro to CS class from touching a computer or trying to "run" the algorithms that they worked through. Abelson and Sussman said it should be about program structure and interpretation, and their intro to CS class uses a language intended for clarity of teaching rather than for efficient execution. Some people think it should be about algorithms, as seen in those Code.org drag-and-drop algorithm block exercises. Clearly, most people think it should be about writing programs in whatever programming language is commercially useful, so most intro to CS classes are about Java. Yuck.
Since there is this wide variety of opinions about what computer science should be about, and especially the wide gulf between what the best do (MIT, Berkeley: SICP, in Scheme or Python) versus the worst (College Board, Community Colleges: Java), I think it's very premature to ask politicians to start mandating CS across this nation. You just know, whatever they decide, it will be wrong and slow to change. Let the field shake out another generation or two, and our grandchildren will see if the subject has matured enough by then.
Have a nice time.
By the time they graduate, robots will write the programs.
Table-ized A.I.
U mad, bro?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't that the cost of a CS education at Stanford nowadays
It works out to $4,000 per school in the United States. I would say that is a pretty good bargain. I know we have spent about $1 million outfitting our small (about 40 people) company's IT infrastructure. The fact that the U.S. government can do it for on average about 10 times that number of users for 1/250th the cost is pretty impressive.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
.. all the new cs jobs ;-)
"A mind reader? That sounds like sci fi." "Honey, we live on a space ship"
Your projector has it's light out.