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Wired: IBM's School Could Fix Education and Tech's Diversity Gap
theodp writes: Wired positively gushes over IBM's Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), saying it could fix education and tech's diversity gap. Backed by IBM, the P-TECH program aims to prepare mainly minority kids from low-income backgrounds for careers in technology, allowing them to earn a high school diploma and a free associate degree in six years or less. That P-TECH's six inaugural graduates completed the program in four years and were offered jobs with IBM, Wired reports, is "irrefutable proof that this solution might actually work" (others aren't as impressed, although the President is drinking the Kool-Aid). While the program has only actually graduated six students since it was announced in 2010, Wired notes that by fall, 40 schools across the country will be designed in P-TECH's image. IBM backs four of them, but they'll also be run by tech giants like Microsoft and SAP, major energy companies like ConEdison, along with hospital systems, manufacturing associations, and civil engineering trade groups. They go by different names and are geared toward different career paths, but they all follow the IBM playbook.
irrefutable proof that this solution might actually work
Irrefutable proof that it might work.
Learn how to make a thing for your corporate overlords, and, once you're done, have your job shipped to Brazil.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I doubt this is useful except as a method of turning out corporate drones all with the same mental DNA. Where do the arts flourish in an environment dominated by business concerns. Technology is only an enabler, it isn't an end in itself and this destined to produce uni-dimensional beings who cannot and will not think for themselves.
So one can get a 4 year HS degree and 2 year AA, now combined into a 6 year HS+AA degree. Brilliant!
or a magician's diversion tactic: look over here, not over there.
We'll just shoehorn people into fields they may not want to follow. Up next: We'll see IBM and the government fixing the dangerous jobs industries like mining and commercial fishing, while ensuring men don't have problems being called pedophiles for becoming k-12 teachers. And while we're at it, we'll ensure that there are more males entering psychology related fields. Should work out well, since women now make up the majority of the student body in universities.
I can't wait to see women enjoying a long day in the oil patch while men go off to become teachers with no issues.
Om, nomnomnom...
Which diversity ratio is perceived to be out of balance, and why does it need artificial programmes to fix?
Children : Adults?
Hispanics : Asians?
Men : Women?
People who drive to work : People who cycle?
Geniuses : Morons?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I think you've confused news with history. A news site isn't the best place to read about things that have happened in the past.
The issue is most minorities never get the oppertunity to raise to the top. They do not have access to the same sources as everyone else. If given those same supports that others have taken for granted they tend to raise as you say in the same numbers and percentages ... and often higher percentages than others.
that is offensive.
what if minorities are just not smart , indeed sir you are offensive... i am going to refrain from what I want to say
They are not the bottom, they are a group that never gets a chance to even compete and by not competing they get the auto status of failing. Allow competition. which many are scared of.
I believe the article was written in the US. So since in the US things are US-centric it would be referring to minorities in the US. Also as a context clue the summary list US companies that were interested in the program. ( starting to see a theme yet? ) Wired is also a US magazine.
I am happy to clear that up for you.
So what white minded angle were you fishing for troll?
Is that the main reason the black community struggles much harder today (proportionally) than it did in the 1950s and 1960s is the total collapse of the nuclear family in many areas. Every reputable study of marriage and family life has shown that kids from even semi-stable nuclear families tend to be significantly less prone to the pathologies common in the black lower class (where out of wedlock birth is the norm, not exception). Ever deal with white trash (not rednecks, white trash; there is a major difference)? It's the same sociological situation and even the same set of behavior problems and stunted options despite "white privilege."
A large part of the problem is that there is an active segment of society that doesn't want to deal with the moral issues that lead to this situation, denouncing that as "moralizing" and instead wants to focus purely on politics as though it's not all intertwined. Yet those issues are precisely the personal choices, enabled by public policy and culture, that lead to the destruction of the stable nuclear family in much of the black community. Blaming external factors for everything, which is the politically correct solution, is like Josh Duggar attempting to blame porn and Satan for why he graduated from molesting his sisters to serial adultery against his wife.
college transfer after this? how many credits will a 4 year school take from this?
There are issues with moving to a different school like
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new...
"Columbia wouldn’t accept credits for a class Hernandez had taken and passed in meteorology, for example, she says. “My dean said, ‘Well, we don’t know what that covers.’ I would think that would be so simple: It’s, like, about the weather.”
"For example, while some credits from one school may be accepted by another, they may not count toward a major, something students often don’t find out until after they’ve transferred."
Privilege has a weak link with intelligence. Supportive parental attention is your main metric for determining the intellectual success of a child. If society allowed poor families to not have to work all of the time, the parents could spend more time with their children and the gap would be closed. Of course this wouldn't help in the stereotypical welfare case where the parent(s) don't care and wouldn't spend time with their children given the chance.
Sounds more like your workplace is full of idiots than full of men.
Before the great depression, instead of going to college after completing high school, students went to college when they were ready. The expectation to stay in high school until the age of 18 was created to shrink the workforce and artificially reduce the unemployment rate. Not long after, Robert Maynard Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago, began promoting early entrance to college for students who were ready.
The first dedicated college was SImon's Rock College, where entering students are typically about 16 years old. They earn a Bachelor's degree in four years. 78% of graduates go to graduate school. (I was one). The current wave of early colleges started about ten years ago. They are imitations of Simon's Rock. Several of them are run by former Simon's Rock staff. Some of the start-up money came from the Gates Foundation, which is not exactly the same as Microsoft.
In my view, the purpose of early college is to create an environment where young people are free to learn. For me, this was a big improvement over high school.
Simon's Rock College
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What the hell does that mean?
*checks privilege* Yup, still fucking awesome.
IBM sponsors education of 6 minority low-income children, claims success by offering a job to the 6 of them. Billion dollar education contract ensues ...
I mean, is anyone seeing the issue here? Offering these people a job is a small price to pay for IBM to 'irrefutably proof' the success of their program. I'm not saying their program is not good, but really, we should maybe have an external source assess this.
These companies just start enticing kids to learn programming by going back to the promise of a good long career with many possible promotions along the way for good hard work?
When you have to malipulate people into entering a segment of industry, there is something very, very wrong.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It means he saw that once on a pamphlet.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Theodp is trying to gin up another #gamergate around the issue of STEM training programs for girls and minorities. He's been posting these biased summaries ("the President is drinking the Kool-Aid" - real professional of Soulskill for letting that in) on a daily basis here, for years.
He's an ass. Work on your job skills, theodp, and you'll always have a good paying job. Yes, that means you have to work more than 40 hrs/week when you account for self-study, but that's what being a professional is about, and not just in technology. And quit whining about training programs for others
Is that the main reason the black community struggles much harder today (proportionally) than it did in the 1950s and 1960s is the total collapse of the nuclear family in many areas.
You know, we actually HAVE real statistics instead of wild imaginings culled from whatever websites you are glued to... your theory that the "black community" struggles today vs. the 50's and 60's because of the collapse of the nuclear family is directly contradicted by statistics (from the National Center for Health Statistics, a CDC arm), which show that the birthrate amongst unmarried black women is currently about half what it was at the end of the 60's, and this trend has continued despite a steep drop in black marriage rates over the last couple of decades.
... significantly less prone to the pathologies common in the black lower class (where out of wedlock birth is the norm, not exception).
Nor is "out of wedlock birth the norm"; the married birthrate is about 40% higher than the unmarried.
Ever deal with white trash (not rednecks, white trash; there is a major difference)? It's the same sociological situation and even the same set of behavior problems and stunted options despite "white privilege."
So, are they "pathologies common in the black lower class", or are they perhaps pathologies common amongst all low-income residents, and race has nothing to do with it? Making me wonder why you brought it up...
Yet those issues are precisely the personal choices, enabled by public policy and culture, that lead to the destruction of the stable nuclear family in much of the black community. Blaming external factors for everything, which is the politically correct solution,
Wait a minute... these personal choices are "enabled by public policy and culture" (which certainly appear to be external factors to me) but at the same time blaming said factors is the "politically correct" (and by implication, wrong) solution? Which is it? Is everything all the fault of those short-sighted black folk making bad decisions, or does public policy have something to do with it after all? I'm so confused...
The issue is most minorities never get the oppertunity to raise to the top. They do not have access to the same sources as everyone else.
Neither does some poor white kid in Appalachia. Is IBM going to give him a job too?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
A study was run a couple of years ago that collected a group of low-income women, delivered comprehensive sex education, and gave them free access to the birth-control method of their choice.
In the fevered imagination of DittoHeads, the poor women would proceed to choose poor (or no) birth-control methods (or use them incorrectly), get knocked up (which is somehow supposed to be a money-maker... still haven't figured that one out), and become leeches on society.
What ACTUALLY happened? Exactly as you would expect rational people to do; the women had a tendency to choose the more-effective birth-control methods, and consequently birthrates dropped by (IIRC) 60-75% vs. the control group, which had no education nor access to free birth control.
Comprehensive Sex Education and widespread access to birth control WORKS. It's far more effective than abstinence-based sex "education", and leads to a reduction in birthrates (both teenage and otherwise.) If they were REALLY concerned with out-of-wedlock births, conservatives would be pushing for these polices, but really they are oddly fixated on the sex lives of American citizens and undesired babies end up being a side-effect that gives them something else to scold poor people about.
Backed by IBM, the P-TECH program aims to prepare mainly minority kids from low-income backgrounds for careers in technology,
I think they meant to say:
Backed by IBM, the P-TECH program aims to prepare mainly minority kids for low-income careers in technology,
Given IBM's lack of interest in hiring or retaining American workers, that must surely be what they meant.
I'd be fascinated to know, though I admit that I'm not sure how you would disentangle this, how much of the success of this approach has to do with any particular twist on how the education is done(the introduction of the college classes option earlier in HS, curriculum restructuring and shuffling, etc.); vs. how much has to do with the fact that the corporate sponsor is(through the internships and preferential hiring) making the connection between achievement in school and tangible payoff particularly strong and evident.
I'd certainly be the first to agree that many kids are dumb, impulsive, and shortsighted(some grow out of it, some turn into adults with the same traits); and that some schools are just atrocious. However, while slavishly adhering to the 'rational actor' model can lead to absurd excesses best left to economists; it can sometimes be helpful to imagine, at least as test, that people might actually be behaving "rationally", at least in a local sense.
Thinking back on my own education, some of it was undeniably useful for basically anyone(literacy and basic mathematics), some of it was of no direct use but almost certainly good for the mind in ways that are broadly applicable(writing essays about works of literature or classical greek political events isn't terribly relevant; but knowing your way around a coherent thesis backed by a reasonably competent body of argument and evidence sure is handy); and some of it was probably included for reasons little better than 'because tradition'. However, my surroundings always made it abundantly clear that (in addition to being a social expectation) education had rewards. My parents had degrees and jobs that were only possible because of their education; our neighbors and family friends were almost entirely the same way, we watched older kids head off to college, to internships, to various jobs; even if some dickhead still asked "When are we ever going to need this?" during some aspect of calculus that annoyed him, nobody was in any serious doubt that, even if you thought that some of it was just hoop-jumping, education was obviously valuable.
Had I grown up in a worse environment, gone to lousier schools, I would have likely enjoyed worse teachers and facilities; but I also would have been substantially ignorant of, or unbelieving of, the value of education: both because a diploma from the local high school probably isn't all that valuable; and because I'd have relatively few references for people who had done the work and gone on to some sort of professional career thanks to that. Maybe my sheer virtuous love of learning or whatever would have seen me through; but I certainly wouldn't put too much faith in the possibility.
In this case, IBM is making it quite clear that "Do this schoolwork for 4-6 years, depending, and you will see internships and quite possibly a job offer". That's relatively concrete, relatively short-term, easy to understand. To the degree that students are rational actors, that would seem to be a pretty big difference between this program and a school where the payoff is less visible or simply not there.
Tens of millions? Not even close, according to the Bureau of Labor Statics:
"The number of families with at least one member unemployed decreased to 6.5 million in 2014 from 7.7 million in 2013."
"In 2014, about 43 percent of all families included children under age 18."
"Among the 34.4 million families with children, 88.7 percent had at least one employed parent in 2014."
"Mothers with younger children are less likely to be in the labor force than mothers with older children. In 2014, the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under 6 years old (64.2 percent) was lower than the rate of those whose youngest child was 6 to 17 years old (74.7 percent). . . . However, the unemployment rate for married mothers of infants, at 4.1 percent, was considerably lower than the rate for mothers with other marital statuses, at 15.6 percent. "
Nah. Tech giants are interested in programing...erm grooming...erm educating future drones.
It's somewhat tongue in cheek but also I have to look at both sides. Yes, these companies want STEM grads ... heck they need them. And I think the H1-B thing is finally catching up enough with companies that they see the twilight coming.
The answer? Take poor kids and give them enough education (and, of course, propaganda about how great these companies are) to meet the same requirements.
Then you remember they're poor. So if you take a welfare-income family and pay their 20yo kid engineer/programmer 40K our of school they'll think they're rich. It's H1-B, plan B.
Or maybe I'm just in a pessimistic mood today and corporate greed evaporated overnight.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
TBH, the link is more in the social norms of the group. The stereotype exists because, unfortunately, it's common.
Working poor? Yes, dual income + assistance barely puts food on the table.
Public assistance poor? They don't typically work. Have full access to medical programs, food, free education, etc. Heck, non-working parents on welfare apparently get an allowance for *daycare* as I understand it. In theory those parents have all the time in the world to spend raising their kids. They could learn right along with them if they're uneducated from all the take-home work and books if they were so motivated.
Sad but true.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
"Individuals have different potential and interests, but over a population of millions it averages out."
It doesn't mean that the averages over sub-populations are the averages over the whole population. Potentials and interests may well be multi-modal.
"Or are you saying that some races and genders are just inherently inferior?"
Why are you dragging value judgements like "inferior" into this?
Newsflash: Not everyone has the same everything. That's communism.
Discrimination is one thing...and it's wrong.
At the same time this amounts to reverse discrimination. Any random minority* is automatically given assistance in any of a number of ways which give them advantages not available to many others. Of course, it's only if you fit in the right group that's crying about how they're wronged and oppressed. I'd love to see how well a white male scholarship fund does.
*Minority has a star since what's considered minorities these days outnumber the "majority". Protip: the world is pretty racially diverse in first world countries.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
IBM has had the "Consulting by Degree" program for years. Takes newly graduated students and gets them up to speed for a consulting career in IBM:
http://www-935.ibm.com/service...
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
all this constant hand wringing about diversity and lack of minorities, etc., etc., ad nauseam, in IT. We should be concerned about (1) getting the brightest AMERICAN CITIZENS (regardless of sex, age, ethnicity, etc., into IT jobs, and (2) keeping the H1B visa quota as low as possible (India et. al. need skilled people working in their home countries not over here). Further, in my day (I'm 68 years of age) the women in IT where I worked outnumbered the men. And most of them were brighter and better than the men. And as I was usually on the interview committees for hiring, the female candidates were usually better qualified and motivated than the males, as so got hired. What happened???
The course doesn't exclude white children from disadvantaged backgrounds, in fact it includes them. So yeah, they might give him a job if he can meet the required standard.
Instead of complaining that there isn't enough charity to go around so no-one should have any, why not try to improve things yourself?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It means that justice - mercy = truth
The widespread glee and initiatives shared by nearly all relevant tech companies points to suppressing wages in the long-term, and looking good doing it. Money is the only motivation for this level of manufactured enthusiasm. I think Neal Stephenson predicted correctly in the Diamond Age when he depicted engineers as low-level grunts.
It doesn't mean that the averages over sub-populations are the averages over the whole population. Potentials and interests may well be multi-modal.
Do you have any evidence to support that hypothesis? Remember that you are the one arguing against what is being done, the onus is on your to make your case. At least IBM is trying to prove their position by making it happen, with some success.
Why are you dragging value judgements like "inferior" into this?
Because you dragged value judgements into it when you started talking about potentials. I was answering your claim that different individuals have different potentials, which is true but misses the point that over a population it would average out at similar to other populations, unless that population has inherently lower potential.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
While I agree that poverty should be a factor in these kinds of programs, there is still the difference that it's very unlikely that a poor white male from Appalachia who does manage to get into a desirable position probably is going to be told that it's due to affirmative action instead of his natural abilities.
Basically, it sucks to be poor, but being white is still an advantage. Rather be poor and white any day over being poor and black, no question what-so-ever.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
True. But what is the solution to bad parents?
"Do you have any evidence to support that hypothesis?"
*You* asserted that "potentials and interests ... it averages out", whatever that means. Trying to imagine a concrete meaning, one comes up with "there is such a thing as average potential and interest". Which, even if it were true, it's irrelevant, because it is obvious from observation of routine life that different groups of people have different interests. (And no, I'm not dividing up by interest first, then discovering everyone in that group has the same interest.)
"Because you dragged value judgements into it when you started talking about potentials."
A given potential is not "inferior" to another one. I may have a great potential for standup comedy and a lousy one for bedside manner. You may have a great potential for social commentary and a lousy one for shoe shining. I would not label one or the other as "inferior". You dragged in that term: why?
You aren't even making sense now. My meaning is clear in the context of your original post. Potential in CS. If you meant something else, you communicated it so badly that the meaning has been lost.
Are you trying to say that you think some populations may have less potential for CS? Or just individuals. If you mean just individuals, then I agree with you but I don't see what it has to do with this scheme. It's like arguing that there is no point teaching maths at school because some kids are not good at it. It makes no sense at all.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Potential in CS."
So ... are you asserting that everyone has the same "potential in CS" -- with just the right amount of education it will come bubbling forth? Sorry, that is simply not credible. Go ahead and convince us otherwise.
"It's like arguing that there is no point teaching maths at school because some kids are not good at it. It makes no sense at all."
Lucky then that no made that argument. It makes sense to teach everyone some math, independent of their "potential in math", whether said potential is equal or average compared with others. How do you even measure "potential"?
In many of the cases where you have one super successful model is that it's tied to the people driving it, not the model itself. This has happened countless times, where a model is pushed onto a school/classroom, but without the buy in and passion of the original innovators, it fails miserably.
"No. You are totally confused."
Then please say again in small but concrete words, what you meant by "Individuals have different potential and interests, but over a population of millions it averages out.". What does it mean to "average out"? How is such average actionable?
My true narrative is that most minority family institutions are broken and that fact is what keeps minorities from succeeding. The lack of and destruction of family structure has a definite impact on people. There are plenty of people that pull themselves up by their own will. And they get my kudos for traveling that road successfully. But by far the most represented in the higher socio-economic levels are those from strong family structures. This support and guidance and resource cannot be replicated, and cannot be discredited. And you can say that even the lowest socio-economic levels have families that are intact... and in this society it takes person ambition to succeed. My statement is that it is vastly harder while dealing with tons of outside pressures. Some are born to do it, and do it well, but if an entire segment of the population has an issue that can be addressed easily then if we are such a high minded society, then maybe we should be ambivalent in our outreach.
Symbolically Capturing the Inanity of Making Trite Acronyms to Rememberstuff
Seriously, is theodp sleeping with one of the Slashdot editors or something? They publish one of his biased, totally misleading anti CS education rants practically every single day.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Is this the rebirth of trade schools?
IBM backs four of them, but they'll also be run by tech giants like Microsoft and SAP, major energy companies like ConEdison, along with hospital systems, manufacturing associations, and civil engineering trade groups.
This is either a new form of trade schools, or some kind of corporate takeover of education.
I was reading the article and they get people through the system faster by cutting out "extra" courses in high school such as science and history so they only concentrate on English, Math, Technology, and workplace learning in the freshman year. WTF?!?! It's bad enough that they are cutting out the other classes. How are you supposed to learn what you like if you don't get exposed to all of these different things? But what the hell is workplace learning?
Society needs to stop being so anti-social with the whole "screw them" mentality. That's a first step to having respectable citizens that care.
That is one advantage, yes. If one is perceived to have earned their position through hard work/talent then one is more likely to continue to advance because they will be considered for future promotions/opportunities. If one is perceived to have gotten their position as a handout, then one is less likely to advance further because they will be less likely to be considered for future promotions/opportunities.
Another disadvantage of being perceived to have gotten a position through affirmative action is that it's really easy to internalize those perceptions which will further hinder performance. Everyone has experienced impostor syndrome or feelings that they are in over their head even when they are absolutely capable and doing a great job, but when those feelings are being reinforced by others attributing success to handouts rather than ability, or that any good work they do is luck (or due to someone else helping), it's a very difficult thing to dismiss that.
Personally, I loathe affirmative action because it leads to exactly this kind of bullshit. There are better solutions to the inequality caused by systemic prejudice than affirmative action, and it would be a good thing to find them.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
If you can demonstrate a problematic diversity gap in the Olympic 100 meter dash then I'll be totes OK with the suggestion that there is an issue in other areas.