WA Gov. Sides With Microsoft: Philanthropy-Funded K-12 CS Education Now the Law

theodp writes: During public hearings on WA State's House Bill 1813, which took aim at boys' historical over-representation in K-12 computer classes, the Office of the WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction voiced concerns that by relying on the generosity of corporations, wealthy individuals, and nonprofits to fund STEM, computer science, and technology programs, learning opportunities would be limited to a small group of students, creating disparity of opportunity. "If this is a real priority," pleaded Chris Vance, "fund it fully" (HB 1813, like the White House K-12 CS plan, counts on philanthropy to make up for tax shortfalls). But legislators in the WA House and Senate — apparently more swayed by the pro-HB 1813 testimony of representatives from Microsoft and Microsoft-backed TEALS and Code.org — overwhelmingly passed the bill, sending it to Governor Jay Inslee for his signature. Not to worry. On Wednesday, the bill was signed into law by Gov. Inslee, who was perhaps influenced by the we-need-to-pass-HB-1813 blogging of Microsoft General Counsel and Code.org Board member Brad Smith, who coincidentally is not only responsible for Microsoft's philanthropic work, but was also co-chair of Gov.-elect Inslee's transition team. The WA state legislative victory comes less than 24 hours after the San Francisco School Board voted to require CS instruction beginning with preschool.

Comments

I don't see this working

[Cpt_Kirks]

Females simply don't seem to like software development work much.

Female developers tend to move away from development into project management, as soon as they can.

Sure call my sexist, misogynist, whatever. I've been a developer for over 25 years, and am just reporting what I have seen.

At least this won't take too much in the way of tax dollars.

Re: I don't see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

Women tend to gravitate towards easy, risk-free, non-competitive, unprofitable projects. Provide free money for no work in female-only environments and women may very well gravitate towards them.

Re: I don't see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

> Women are also implicitly discriminated against by the traditional "boys only club" mentality that predominates the technology and science cultures.

This is a complete lie. Studies on women in CS show that they dislike the same things that men are willing to tolerate from their projects and management. Women call that discrimination, men call it bad working conditions.

Re: I don't see this working

[NotDrWho]

Provide meaningful projects in gender-neutral environments and women may very well gravitate towards them.

Well that should be pretty easy. We just need to send a memo to the vast, vast majority of companies and agencies doing regular day-to-day programming tasks and tell them they need to save the world instead.

Re:I don't see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

Women were involved in computing 40+ years ago, back when "programmers" were basically typists and the profession was generally considered a secretarial function.

FTFY

Re: I don't see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

People tend to gravitate towards easy, risk-free, non-competitive, unprofitable projects. Provide free money for no work in any environment and people may very well gravitate towards them.

There FTFY..

Re:I don't see this working

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too bad Grace Hopper isn't alive anymore to slap the stupid out of you.

Re: I don't see this working

[sdguero]

Bullshit. I work with a few women developers/testers (5 our of the 40 software engineers on our floor) and they is no "boys only club" mentality. Sure their might be the occaisional off color joke that appeals to men more than women, but over all they are well respected and treated as equals. It's like when my fiancee and her friends are hanging out and they make a joke that appeals to women more than men. Do I get offended and call them sexist because they made joke from the female perspective that doesn't apppeal to me as much as them? No, because that would be abrasive and lame.

If anything I'd say the women I work with are given more slack and more respect than the male developers. I have never seen anyone jump on any of the female engineers here (or anywhere I've worked) for making a mistake. Yet I have seen that happen to male engineers quite a bit, where a colleague or manager forces them to admit to a technical transgression, which sucks because now that female engineer might not learn as much from her mistake. In my experience, male engineers avoid confrontation with women in the workplace, even when it would be constructive.

I agree with OP, most women just don't want to work on the technical side of software development, and the majority of women that I have seen come into software engineering as interns or associate devs have ended up in project maangement. Hell, most men don't want to be software engineers, but there is a minority of men and even smaller minority of women that just have the knack for it. Forcing women who aren't interested into the feild and will make poor engineers is not the answer. If anything that will cause the men to discount minority of talented women (and treat them even more differently than they do now) that deserve to be in the feild.

Philanthropy-Funded?

[fustakrakich]

That will mean "Philanthropy" controlled.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance

[plopez]

The market is already saturated, by clueless newbie lee7 wannabes. We need quality not quantity. It was quantity over quality that devastated the American car industry. If we have quality everything else will fall into place.

Re:bah

[cayenne8]

So...it appears we now have a clearly legislative act passed that legally discriminates against classes of people.

It sounds like sorry boys...and likely non-minorities...you just won't get these opportunities because of your sex and possibly even your race.

Male-ness is a Secondary Characteristic

[eepok]

"During public hearings on WA State's House Bill 1813, which took aim at boy's historical over-representation in K-12 computer classes, the Office of the WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction voiced concerns..."

My problem with the whole "there aren't enough girls in CS" thing is that everyone assumes that males are specifically targeted and tracked into computer-related academic/research/career paths. That's not the case. By and large, it's social outcasts who take up computers as a hobby are tracked into computer-related academic/research/career paths and those social outcasts are more commonly male.

And they will continue to be male. And social outcasts.

So, at best, these kinds of initiatives will just track more female social outcasts into computer-oriented subjects/careers. Want more "normal people" in computer-oriented careers? Fat chance, buddy.

Re:Male-ness is a Secondary Characteristic

[eepok]

To speak to the nursing, the greater problem presented in that industry tends to be that there are more practicing male MDs than female MDs with females being weeded out and eventually going into nursing. So, it gets spun from "not enough males in nursing" to "women get forced out of MDs and over-saturate nursing".

I agree that males and females tend to be different, but a lot of that has to do with upbringing. How many people can honestly say that if their male child wanted to play with dolls and be a nurse, that they would foster it? Not many. Most would keep the dolls away, direct the kid into the hard sciences, and hope he becomes an MD or medical researcher.

If little females did that, "Well great!", right?

We should never discount the effects our own gender biases have on steering our children into their careers down the line. It's still pretty taboo to say, but I'd put at least 40% of the blame of sex-separated industries on the upbringing that those industry's workers.

Blame the old parents and instruct the new parents to lay off the gender-specific career focii, that's what I say. Let the girl play with tools and computers. Let the boy play nurse and care for babies. The boomers had to deal with their daughters choosing to go to college and having a career instead of staying home and having babies. This generation will have to deal with their daughters becoming computer nerds and their sons teaching kindergarten.

it should be re-evaluated entirely.

[nimbius]

I dont have any issues with additional CS or code education in schools, but we need to reconsider how we go about this. educators should take aim at systemic inequality in the classroom and foster a more collaborative experience for everyone. What we typically get from Microsoft and company is half-assed attempts to make computer science pink, cuddly, and dollhouse-shaped. as fo the whole 'The U.S. is facing a shortage of CS graduates.' drumbeat, it is disingenous in its wording. What Microsoft bemoans is the lack of CS graduates as disposably plentiful and affordable as fry-o-lator cooks at McDonalds. Weve spent so much time asking why everyone doesnt code, that we never stopped to ask if everyone could or even should code.

Spending more than you earn

[BitZtream]

Yea, this is a great thing to teach our kids ... do things you can't afford to do, and force someone else to pay for it or beg for money to do so.

WTF happened to running a balanced budget and setting a good example to our kids about living within their means, why the fuck are we teaching them in elementary school that you can depend on someone else to give you hand outs to survive.

Its no wonder the rest of the world likes to take our jobs, we're raising a bunch of dependent babies.

GIRLS DON'T FUCKING LIKE COMPUTER SCIENCE, GET THE FUCK OVER IT.

Its not because all men in it are assholes, its BECAUSE THEY DON'T FUCKING LIKE IT. They are wired differently than men, this is a KNOWN AND ACCEPTED FACT to anyone who doesn't have political correctness shoved so far up their ass they can taste it.

Women do somethings better than men, and like some things men don't like, and dislike some things that men like ... conversely, Men do some things better than women, like things women don't like and dislike some things that men like.

YES THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS, but those are tiny number and you don't change everything because someone who doesn't even DO CS work thinks there should be more women in CS work.

Men and women ARE NOT EQUAL. STOP TRYING TO PRETEND THEY ARE.

If you think men and women are 100% equal, then you haven't paid attention to even basic anatomy.

I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm saying they aren't the same and its fucking stupid to keep shoving shit down the throats of one of the sexes just to appease some douche who things he's crusading for the good of all women.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance

[Archangel Michael]

It is actually worse. We're funding education for the next 20 years, based on what the past 20 years were like. Think about it for a second, we are reflexively thinking that our world in 20 years will resemble our world from 20 years ago (40 year gap). This is fairly short sighted and is always the case with education, we're teaching our kids like we should have been educated, but not according to how they need to be educated.

Re:bah

[BK425]

No, apple gave education a 30% discount (better in some cases) on hardware. They didn't suggest curriculum or standards, nobody came out to your school to say this kid needs such and so, it was just a huge no strings attached gift of hardware. (my experience circa the mid 80's at Bellevue Community College, buying for the student paper)