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Better Learning Through Expensive Software? One Principal Thinks Not
theodp writes "Instead of improving the instructional practices of teachers," laments Chicago public school Principal Michael Beyer, "we are throwing vast sums of money and time at software and digital solutions that are largely untested, unproven and highly questionable." Ed-Tech vendors' so-called "weapons of mass instruction," argues Beyer, may show "gains" on the high-stakes tests because they mimic the targeted test format, but the learning gains don't necessarily transfer to the real world, or last much longer than the end of the school year. But technology in the classroom is not going away, as one commenter notes. So, what to do? Well, since U.S. CTO Megan Smith is looking for bigger technological fish to fry than weaning the White House off floppy disks, why not give her a crack at Ed-Tech, including a healthy budget and some Lab Schools where she could have educators and technologists brainstorm-and-prototype to separate the Ed-Tech wheat from the chaff without undue vendor influence and short-term test score pressure?
Ed-Tech vendors' so-called "weapons of mass instruction," argues Beyer, may show "gains" on the high-stakes tests because they mimic the targeted test format, but the learning gains don't necessarily transfer to the real world, or last much longer than the end of the school year.
This has long been a problem with "standardized tests", schools teach only to the test because their jobs and budgets depend on high numbers. Thinking and teaching outside the test? Not allowed, hell, we already don't teach proper handwriting anymore.
We should absolutely be teaching technology in schools, starting with real actual math and reading comprehension, moving on to both software and hardware and other types of technology - I'm not a teacher, who knows... But like the house with an operating system, I think many of these new computer teaching tools are simply companies looking for ways to squeeze money out of people for things they don't really need, and if the government is paying for it, you know they paid a whole lot for it. Are we just fattening some venture capitalist's pocket with this stuff?
I'm on the fence about the textbooks themselves being on tablets, maybe that makes sense. But if we are going to hand off teaching to computers, why pay for anything more than a human babysitter - or is that what we are doing already?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Charlotte Iserbyt was the former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education during the Raegan years. When she took the job she read through much of the material left behind by her predecessor and discovered a deliberate plan to dumb down education. She photocopied everything and published it in a book (ISBN 0966707117). Using computers to replace teachers was something she sounded alarm bells about, saying that it is part of the plan.
theodp writes: Education is wasting too much money on tech, that shows no or worse results. Solution, more money for tech in education and more unproven expensive tech in classrooms.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Learning computer programs to solve math problems (for instance) can be empowering for the kids, unless they end up dependent on those proprietary programs. I think the best solution for that threat, along with some of the other issues raised in the OP is a tool set which gets kids developing software, even at really simple levels, early in their educational careers. That may sound crazy, but the world is changing, and many of the educational ideas we take for granted today sounded crazy in their times as well.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
After being a teacher in Joliet , Illinois system and seeing what passes for teaching and parental involvement in the Chicago land area I can quite firmly state that it isn't the money taxpayers spend, the technology that is invested in the area, nor the opportunities that students have that is the real issue.
The real issue is that there needs to be a clean out of lazy teachers and administration that refuses to interact with parents- a gallon of bleach dumped into the leach pool.
These children need people to intervene and make sure to involve the parents in all aspects of their education. Instead, we have more people involved on getting paid and protecting their pension.
It's quite sad.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Two things about software-based instruction: it can improve over time and it can be widely distributed. Human-based instruction is limited in both those areas. Someday the software-based instruction will be really good. Human teachers can get better for a while, but they eventually retire -- losing all their instructional capability.
"we are throwing vast sums of money and time at software and digital solutions that are largely untested, unproven and highly questionable"
Wait a second, you were just advocating "Improving the instructional practices of teachers" but how does the description not fit both things equally?
What instructional practices are truly "proven"? How can they be when the effectiveness varies based on students, culture and teacher (some teachers just cannot click with some stundents).
At least the unproved digital tools are more repeatable if eventually proven to work, because they eliminate a few variables from the equation. And they can be deployed to more students far more quickly than a training program to train teachers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Vaporware, government-style.
Because we already have a secretary of education and that should be HIS damned job.
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H. Beam Piper wrote about this in 1952, in his book Null ABC. The author detailed how literacy in schools continued to decline, as more and more educational gadgets became available, until society was divided between "literates" and "illiterates." The illiterates controlled the vast majority of business, but literacy was still required to practice law, and serve in the judicial branch of government.
Check out a physical version of the book here, an audio link here, a free eBook version here and a free audio book (that is probably the same as the paid one I linked to you above) here.
I really enjoyed the audio version I listened to. It was extremely entertaining, and a scathing social commentary on the future of public education as H. Beam Piper (correctly) envisioned it.
I was reading a 6th grade curriculum for a private school. In order to show off, the book had a section on the 12 Chinese century proof of Pythagoras's theorem based on equivalent areas. .
What nonsense to teach this to a 6th grader. First, a 6th grader has no concepts of primitive geometry, even having a difficult time understanding like dimensions and postulates.
The time wasted on this topic should have been devoted to learning fundamentals of mathematics which are the foundations for understanding geometry instead of gee-whiz, look at this proof. I see that because I am a mathematician. I doubt that the text book authors understand the principles of axiomatic formulations of geometry, instead, just route memorized that Pythagoras's stuff is coming up!
But technology in the classroom is not going away, as one commenter notes.
Yeah, well, that commenter is a VP at an edtech company, so *of course* she would promote that line.
This is just from today:
Better Learning Through Expensive Software? One Principal Thinks Not
Professor: Young People Are "Lost Generation" Who Can No Longer Fix Gadgets
Writer: How My Mom Got Hacked
US CTO Tries To Wean the White House Off Floppy Disks
Perhaps some of those are interesting topics and it's just me who is picky. But really, topics such as these are why I came to /. :
Experiments Create Particles Out of a Vacuum Using Neutrinos
The Missing Piece of the Smart Home Revolution: The Operating System
A political appointee with a large budget to determine which products should be purchased and there will be no "undue vendor influence." Let me know how that works when you return from Shangri-La.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
You are certainly on the right track here, but the question of prestige is either chicken and egg or the tail wagging the dog depending on who you ask. My wife is often asked why she got a degree in education when she is apparently so intelligent. (Thanks!) She didn't. She got a BS in microbiology and molecular genetics before rejecting(!) grad school and med school. She then earned an MS in Biology (not Bio education or MST, etc.. A research oriented degree.) She lives in a rare state where she is paid a nearly fair wage.
The biggest problem to her retention is the intense disrespect she faces from nearly every stranger she meets. (And, fwiw, she isn't much worried personally about standardized test scores -- her students are almost always the highest in the district. The perfect student scorers are almost always hers.)
When people insult teachers very broadly, as they almost always do now, its hard to stay, much less to commit to what is perceived as a "sinking ship" full of stupid folk.
Fixing the professional guideposts is not enough alone -- fix the dialogue. We finally, after the Vietnam war in the US, decided to respect the majority of the troops and hold the institution responsible for the big fuck ups, and while some soldiers *are* stupid both the society at large and the military have seen the benefit, recruitment and otherwise.
I know about education; I'm in the field too.
The real problem in modern education in the USA is that the Republicans entered into the issue. I'm not saying their ideas are all horrible; but that the political fight was so much smaller so the teachers and schools were not in the middle of a political culture war. You see, what really started the mess was that public polling showed voters ranked education higher in priority than in the past and that turned it into a two party political football. The rest is a bunch of policies and ideas which have zero basis in reality and everything to do about sounding good, getting votes, and political BRANDING. SO BOTH PARTIES WORK TO DESTROY IT like everything else they touch these days. That has harmed the system greatly which only reflects the broken political system, just another thing that precedes the collapse of a once great democracy.
Furthermore, education is not a business. You can't turn education into an easy statistic like sales and students are NOT customers!! They are not supposed to be happy customers with a "your #1" sticker handed out to everybody and every parent is immune from criticism. The culture is all fucked up; used to be the student was to blame, now the special snowflakes are perfect and the teacher is always the problem.
Yes, technology needs to be PROVEN before it's allowed to be used. SCIENCE should decide everything. That means parents (voters) will be pleased. automated tests have yet to be intelligent. I can interview a student and assess them quicker and more accurately than any static test plus they can't ever fool me. But in the land of lawsuits somebody will be upset they didn't get their "your #1" sticker... while the multiple choice exam allows many times more to sneak bye or undeservedly fail.
SCIENCE:
We can't even adjust school hours to fit best with sleeping patterns of the children when that stuff has been known forever.
Science says that middle school kids shouldn't even be educated conventionally. They need emotional development training and stuff so out of the norm many people would revolt. Most education problems are psychologically based and their parents and environment are HUGE factors. If you apply developmental psychology instead of acting like it doesn't exist, you would turn poor performing students, future criminals, and fragile suicide kids into good students and functional adults. Naturally, parents would be upset because they'd have responsibilities, something which they avoid like everything today.
Parents want free daycare. Some need it too. Snow days not only cause parents to call in irate, but it also means some children DO NOT EAT.
There is so much wrong which has so much more impact-- but we only can discuss a FEW issues and wave some shiny new toy in the public's eye... like they were children.
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My high school math teacher should have been at a college or university. Jack Munson had chalk dust flying as he filled the boards with formulas and equations, QED. Students HAD to keep up with him or be lost forever. My brother has a doctorate degree in math from UC Berkeley and I lived in his shadow. "Why aren't you like Pete?" I found a different career and did OK. Tough work conditions but the $money was good. Really good, back when a dollar was worth five dollars. I went to the High Sierras for two weeks at a cost of $200.00.
SRA 2.0 - boredom 'on a computer'.
My elementary school used the old form up through at least the late 1980s, but there was no pretense of it teaching us anything. It was blatant, boring busywork: if we finished the in-class assignment for a subject well before time was up, then we were to go do SRAs while the teacher worked with the other kids.
School boards spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars on 'Smart Boards'. Why? Someone told me it was so they can make learning more fun, make a game of it. WTF? I can't stop thinking that these things are freakin waste of money. Money that could be spent more usefully like in paying teachers better in the U.S. (they're overpaid in Canada). Or on better facilities. Or school lunches for underprivileged kids. etc. etc. etc.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The very highest priced software is able to offer their sales people the largest commissions and the largest marketing budgets. Thus they can do all kinds of scumbag things such as hire top educators for "consulting" contracts and whatnot. These same educators are then the ones who decide which software is "best" for their school system. Also with a sizeable commission the rewards for selling a fair sized school system on some pile of crap software system are massive. Almost set-for-life massive.
Thus opensource or extremely economical systems simply can't compete. There are no scumbag salesmen using bribery and other underhanded techniques to market these solutions and as we all experienced while in schools there is no real science or evidence used when they claim to be using evidence based teaching. Any time they use studies or evidence to choose one system over another it will be evidence supplied by a large vendor.
For instance, nearly every time I hear of a new solution being implemented in my children's schools somehow one of the top decision makers has a stake in the company. Either they (or a spouse) worked for the company, work for the company, or will end up working for the company. And somehow the government "ethics" watchdogs will approve this because the person filled out the correct forms.
If I were the head person for a large school system I would immediately eliminate all contact with salespeople from all vendors. Then I would have internal committees evaluate the various offerings (including open source and low cost vendors) equally. I would also publish all the findings so that other education systems could exploit the results. But most importantly I would tell the people who were evaluating the various systems that if they have any contact with a vendor that we would immediately eliminate that vendor from consideration. And if the contact somehow were to the benefit of the examiner that their job would be in jeopardy.
Christ, if that's the pap one has to come up with these days to "win the internet", we're in a lot of trouble. So get the fuck off my Internet, I won it permanently, a long time ago. Before Chuck Norris' legion even knew what a roundhouse kick was.
TFA is a dot on the trend line of parental and educational laziness, IMHO. Parents slough off responsibility for their kids' educations to schools of questionable quality. The schools in turn palm of their work to computers. It's sad, and the only effective remedy is parental re-involvement.
I knew the schools sucked when my son was reading 3 grade levels above his peers at age 6. Now he's a sophomore in High School, and further along (knowlege-wise) toward his BSEE than most e-school juniors because I take the time to not just nurture and encourage but actually teach him at whatever level he is ready for. He's 15, and has built his own Siemens S7 PLC lab project. His science classmates won't get Ohm's Law till next year. Pity them.
We can blab all day about how to fix teh skoolz, but when it comes to your own kids, give them your best. As a parent, you owe it to them. The schools aren't going to do it for you.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
...we can do what other successful countries have done, which is to:
d. Focus on reforming the teaching profession, from the ground up, so that teachers are the best educated, most well respected, most prominent members of the community.
Where exactly is this magical land where teachers are "the best educated, most well respected, most prominent members of the community"? I've been to a lot of countries talked with a lot of teachers & professors but none fit the glass slipper you evoke.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Corruption is the cause of being able to "teach to the test". Properly done teachers would have no warning about the nature of a test at all. By giving several, short tests a year, the tests could each be specialized such as a narrow focus on geography one month and a focus on plane geometry the next month, the history of a major nation on yet another test and so on and so on . The scores would tell a lot about the general knowledge of a student and the parents could be able to judge the quality of their kids' schools. Reading and retention skills or reading and interpretation skills can be addressed. When a school tests poorly then the next step is to find out why. Usually kids that test poorly come from low income homes. Sadly there is very little a conventional school can do to overcome the the effects of poverty on children. Solutions could be to take kids out of the homes or to provide higher incomes to the poor. Neither of those solutions is likely to occur in the US due to our rather perverse social customs.
People move. If you leave things up to local places they will be even more out to touch with each other than they already are.
Your attitude is what created the "zero tolerance" system that is doing more to wreck the school system than any other single factor.
Push them into the school-to-prison pipeline because they aren't dressed like a proper little WASP kid. Yeah, you are the problem all right. YOU.
Did you ever consider the possibility of teaching them to do things right instead of punishing them for doing things wrong? There is a difference, even if you can't see it.
Schools aren't funded on any of that crap.
Modern 'education' has become all about making the kids pass a standardized test and adhering to whatever crap the politicians are on about. They don't care about educating children, just getting their funding for next year.
And it's a big business to come up with all of these doo-dads and other crap which has no proven benefit.
Because the people in control of the educational system are morons who answer to morons.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I saw one of the ads saying that they were looking for college educated professionals who would like to transition into teaching. I was gathering information on it and found out that there was no formal technology curriculum in our local school system. I was told that I was "highly qualified" to teach math but that there was no opportunities to teach technology or computer classes.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
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But US universities have a much better reputation, in large part because the entire US educational system was originally designed to teach methodology - how to learn, rather than what to learn. The concept was basically teach a man to fish, rather than give him a fish.
This works REALLY well with highly intelligent people, as they need those tools and are usually excited to use them. Not so good with the average and sub-average students that don't care enough to use the tools they are taught.
Which brings us to the real problem.
Standardized tests (and I do well on them), basically test your knowledge of facts, not methodology.. The exact opposite goal of our educational system.
This leaves us with several possible take away points.
1) Should we teach our not-so gifted students using the same 'methodology' technique, or switch to a fact based education system for them (while maintaining our older philosophy for the gifted children)?
2) Wherever we teach method, rather than fact, then shouldn't we test their knowledge of methodology rather than fact? Forget about asking questions about facts and instead ask the students how they would investigate things?
3) Perhaps a better mix is appropriate for all students, in which case shouldn't we design our tests to at least partially test for methodology rather than memorized details.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
What the principal says can translate to practically the whole public school curriculum:
"learning gains don't necessarily transfer to the real world, or last much longer than the end of the school year"
Very little in public education in the US has actually been proven, vetted, or has any evidence of efficacy. In fact, the PS system as a whole has been condemned many times for poor performance, bad practices, lack of accountability, and is essentially a money pit designed to enrich union teachers.
Kids get "educated" despite the public schools, not because of them.
Change is unnecessary in a cashless society.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The generations that won WWII, broke the sound barrier, developed nuclear power, nuclear-powered submarines, and nuclear bombs, put a man on the moon, design jumbo jets, etc were ALL educated without computers. The generations that are unable to return us to the moon, unable to advance aviation, etc but ARE able to build companies like Google and Facebook (which produce NOTHING and exist on ad revenue and selling information about people) WERE educated with computers.
Kids need to be taught reading, writing, math, history, geography, basic physics, basic chemistry, and if time permits some art and music. With those things as a base, young adults then equipped with computers can THEN learn anything else they need. Unfortunatey, the educational establishment latched onto computers as the next big thing in excuse-making for failures in education. They continue to turn-out, year after year, kids who are poorly educated while simultaneously using computers as baby sitters and blaming those computers and the associated software for some of the bad performance. I have family members who are teachers who claim to be "teaching computers" to their students - BUT what they are ACTUALLY doing is teaching kids to use Microsoft and Apply products and browse the web; none of them actually understand how computers work (not the hardware nor the software) and none of them are competent enough to install an OS or write a line of code.
Decades? you mean there is anything from this century that still sort of valid, the sad thing here is that the only modern "theories" that have stood the time is more or less based on plato's and his comtemporaries.
This is a big part of the problem here we sort of know that the system that developed over time in ancient greece along with the mideaval aprenticeship system works better then almost anything we can come up with. Theres more statistical work to be done but as social scientist hate math it's not moving forward that fast and throwing money at pure research might not work that well if you dont allow the practioners to test it out for real.
Im suspecting it's the same problem that have existed on every other rapid growing market since the dawn of economy.
A trend gives rise to some new product group which drives an influx of charlatans with a marketing product and barely enough of a product to avoid fraud prosecution, along with a group of blue eyed "fresh out of college" startup types who haven't any real clue about the problem they are trying to solve, flooding an market of mostly unsophisticated buyers who need to buy but don't know what they need nor what problems they will be facing.
Since computers are everywhere they school system need to teach the students how they work and how to use them, but that does not necessarily translate into a need for expensive edtech snakeoil. But it's easier and politically safer to throw money some techno utopian vision then making sure that the teaching staff actually understand how computers work.
Of cause it does not help the situation that educational curriculum is littered with political landmines, forcing the school districts to play it safe.
"But on the computers, the best thing about them is that they let children go much more self-paced. Except, I usually find they block the 3rd graders from doing 4th grade work, even if their ability and time allows. As someone who never fit in the school time schedule, I would have loved something that let me progress as fast or slow as I wanted."
Decades ago, in public school, probably in third grade or so, I had a substitute teacher literally snatch a Boxcar Children series book out of my hands (which I had picked up from a shelf in the class room) saying I might be assigned to read it in the next grade so he did not want me reading it then. It wasn't ever assigned, and I never did get to finish it -- something about being in a mysterious castle... I can wonder if this was the one -- but it can't be as it was published many years later:
http://books.google.com/books/...
To be fair though, my actual third grade teacher said it was OK for me to read ahead in the science text book, and I read most of it over a weekend or so. She then suggested to my parents they get some science-related booklets, which they did. So, I owe a lot of my early science education to Ms. Kivlen(sp?) as well as Lady Plowden and her collaborators:
http://www.abebooks.com/book-s...
Also, while most math classwork bored me in school with repetitive rote work, one year there was a "programmed instruction" box of math problems where you did a card of problems, and depending on how you did, you would either get a similar card or skip ahead. I rapidly skipped along through that entire box and it was fun and enjoyable. So, such things are also possible just with paper systems. Sadly, that experience with such "programmed instruction" for math was not repeated in other years in school. Still, there were other teachers who I can give credit for letting me have some freedom to learn on my own in various areas (especially computers).
In some ways, not much has changed in many schools as far as schools and their use of digital educational materials. Some teachers are very helpful (like my third grade teacher or John Taylor Gatto), but some are not, and, in any case, the overall compulsory school system works against most individualized instruction because it is designed to mostly turn out a standardized product like canned hams (or compliant worker drones in this case for most kids).
Yet computer technology offers the promise of more, even if it is a promise not yet realized for most kids. I wrote a related essay here: ... ..."
http://patapata.sourceforge.ne...
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change.
So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process.
That's one reason we homeschool/unschool to better support more learner-directed inquiry.
http://www.holtgws.com/wh
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
If every parent was as responsible as you are at teaching kids how to love learning, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Speaking parent-to-parent, yes, we parents need to give our kids the best. But speaking as a teacher and a tech director for a public school, parents are not giving kids their best. That's the problem.
In one classroom you can every range of student imaginable, from the one that built their own Siemens S7 PLC lab project to the one who slept in a car in freezing temperatures the night before to avoid dad's alcoholic abuse. And you cannot expect even high quality veteran teachers to know how to successfully instruct both, let alone when they're in the same classroom together.
In the 70's they had the SRA learning cards. Read one side. Answer the questions on the other side. Did poor? grab the extra help card. Else move to the next card.
Now it is on a computer.
The new waste of time and money.
Replace the teacher with a system. Only way to bleed the system for cash.
Apple strived to be a major part of the education system, with computer discounts or however they could.
I worked for awhile installing phone systems and installing cat5 cable. We worked at all of the local schools, It was during this time the Apple purge was going on; rooms full of Apple hardware that was on the way out, each school was the same.
While a good idea at the time, it just didn't work out.
Education was always a political issue and always will be one I did not say that it wasn't. The shift in the voting population's PRIORITIES of the issue is what caused it to be elevated to a major issue. At some point it shifted up just 1 position into the top 5 list and became a football.
Administrators are not voted in by the staff; they are hired by politicians. The public likes simple stats - which is why they'll vote for a sheriff with higher arrest numbers even though he got those by skipping real police work for arresting minor offenders that can't be convicted (or more likely plea.)
The union has less power than ever before. The union has it's own political problems and can't ever seem to win against the onslaught of BS coming from all sides.
There is a widespread propaganda war being waged and the public is falling for it. Everybody thinks they are a dentist because they had some teeth pulled. THAT is a big problem here as well.
As far as my family of teachers, we all have a lot of leeway; except in the standardized testing of simplistic metrics... where every year a huge amount of education time is LOST only prepping for gaming the exams. Art teachers not doing art, but teaching to the english test; etc. Perfect is the enemy of good. Some people need to fail and some deserve to fail -- children need to be left behind so the majority and the gifted can continue forward. No, not permanently behind. The only thing good about the technology ideas is how they can customize to an individual level-- and not imposing 1 size fits all. The smart approach would be to profile students and group them by learning styles and emotional problems. COST is a huge factor which is why class sizes are the way they are...
I'm not anti-technology (I built my own stuff) but we can't even measure outcomes competently so how can we seriously evaluate these technology experiments on children.
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So... Walmart needs worker drones, they are the customer and the education system manufactures worker drones to their specifications?
Cost externalization is another new MBA philosophy being pushed in all aspects possible. Even though all the great progress of the past was not done using these new techniques and new economics we will just hammer every nail with the same new MBA hammer.
Don't train employees... Don't give them any reason to stick around if you do train them. Externalize all your needs by blaming everybody else for not providing that for you-- externalize the cost of employee training (that is, after you externalize all the employees you can to China or India.) Complain colleges don't train your employees enough because naturally your XYZ framework is the only one which matters so the school should teach that instead of useless theory...
The "product" is not up to shifting arbitrary and highly biased expectations. We need more H1B Visas because American workers are now all retarded because of the schools; we can't even find people with 10 years of experience in 5 year old technologies anymore!
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