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US Dept. of Ed: English, History, and Civics Teachers Good Enough For CS Class

Posted by samzenpus on from the close-enough dept.

theodp writes: In A New Chapter for Computer Science Education, the U.S. Department of Education explained earlier this month that the federal STEM Education Act of 2015 'provides an unprecedented opportunity to fully leverage federal resources' to address large gaps in students' participation in Advanced Placement (AP) computer science classes based on gender and race. "In three states," lamented the DOE, "not a single female student took the AP computer science exam" (that only 8 boys took the AP CS exam in those same 3 states was apparently not a concern). And the DOE has good news for those hoping to tap Title I and II funds for CS, but don't have any computer science teachers. "A background in math or science isn't necessarily a requirement to teach CS," explains the Dept. of Ed, "as disciplines like English, history and civics can also provide a solid foundation for teaching CS concepts."

35 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And people wonder why so many jobs are outsourced?

    1. Re: Duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is a major problem here in upstate NY. At my kids' school nearly half of the teachers aren't qualified to teach the subjects they currently teach. We a have science teacher teaching math, an English teacher teaching science, and a math teacher that teaching english. Meanwhile, the principle has 14 administrative assistants and is the most abusive, sexist woman I have ever seen. Racism is through the roof as well (though that is district wide, not just from her).

    2. Re: Duh by Crowd+Computing · · Score: 2

      CS is obsolete and needs a medium. English teachers yes would not be qualified but part of the problem is CS itself

      CS is not obsolete. The problem is that the scope of CS has been expanded too much to include low-level skills that require training rather than education. So instead of learning good principles, students are expected to learn specific applications of those principles. Which works for the short term, as students taught to be MS Windows experts become MS Windows experts, but ultimately disastrous when the next IT technology shift comes around, like the current rage about apps and the mobile web.

    3. Re: Duh by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The US has decided teachers are overpaid unionized swine, and have created a new paradigm of minimum wage private corporate schools to pauperize them

      I work in education. The "US" hasn't decided anything. Schools hiring teachers are limited to paying UNION wages for far too many subpar teachers, who whine and complain about having to take continuing education without being paid a stipend. The biggest problem IMHO to the problem with Teachers is that there is NO competition for good teachers. Teachers live where they can get a job, and there is very little (if any) incentive to have teachers improve their skill sets.

      And due to the complete lack of competition, and the inability for any district to hire "the best, at whatever cost" they are left wanting bodies to fill positions.

      And to be very clear, every school district has some really fine and outstanding teachers, most good teachers. What I am talking about are the hanger ons that would otherwise be unemployable without a teacher's credential, who are there to fill seats in chairs in front of students. The problem is, you cannot dodge all the raindrops, and there are enough of them to matter.

      And to my point about teachers who won't take basic skills classes (where they need them) to learn how to properly use Technology in the classroom, without getting paid stipend, it really does matter. I simply look at it this way, teachers who don't want to learn, for learning sake aren't good teachers. Period. And this is proven by a recent training a colleague of mine did, training 2nd Grade kids, and Teachers/staff the exact same "introduction to Chromebooks", and the 2nd Graders fared much better than the adults. They paid attention, didn't talk, and learned how to log in (barely able to write) to Google/Chrome with much more ease. So even being paid to learn 2nd Graders were able to out compete the teachers.

      When teachers don't want to (or can't) learn, it is a sign they shouldn't be teaching. Best teachers I know, all of them have a singular quality, thirst for knowledge and a passion for learning. Far too many teachers basically said "I don't want to learn anymore, I'm done" and that translates directly into the passion they have in the classroom.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    4. Re: Duh by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      So says the chicken AC. I don't post AC, so my views are easily traced. And simply because you disagree with my assessment, and hiding (chicken) behind AC status, you feel you can say anything and that it matters. Coward.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    5. Re: Duh by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 2

      I have an engineering degree and can easily 'out math' or 'out science' any of my teachers through high school level.

    6. Re: Duh by davesays · · Score: 2

      I, also, worked in education and this post nails it. When I started there, I was literally stunned. Teachers are the most education resistant people I ever met, second only to "Administrators" who also have credentials and advanced degrees. Districts are about getting your friends in and making sure they get a high paying admin job a couple of years right before the end to bump their retirement. "The Club" circulates these people. I almost wrote most, but to be sure, many who get into teaching today do it because it pays well, benefits are great, few work more than 8 hours a day, only 9 months a year, and #1 - can't be fired. There are exceptions. My mom is a special ed teacher who works 12 hours a day, 11 months a year and loves it. But I have been there, and those teachers are the exception; there just isn't budget to pay them what they are worth because of the people who are there for "summers off."

  2. The DoE is, and has always been useless. by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have no students. They operate no schools. They piss away billions of dollars and damage education by imposing bullshit federal regulations on local schools.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:The DoE is, and has always been useless. by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They have no students. They operate no schools.

      And worst of all, they have no clue what CS is. They think CS is writing a document in Word, creating an Excel spreadsheet and googling.

      Hey, English teachers can do that, so English teachers can teach CS!

      I'm just wondering where the folks at the DoE got their educations . . . ?

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  3. Unconvinced... by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Back in the mid 1990s, my (otherwise extremely good) private school found itself caught off-guard by the need to provide IT teaching. With no existing staff with computer science experience, it went about trying to rectify the situation in fairly horrible ways. First, it recruited what it thought was an IT specialist from industry, only to find he was a chemical engineer with no more than a basic level of computing literacy (and no teaching qualifications). He lasted a year.

    Then it decided to use non-specialists to teach IT classes, having basically bought a bunch of mail-order courses. I'll emphasise that this was a private fee-paying school with high academic standards that would never have considered this approach for any other subject.

    Anyway, the level of teaching was predictably disastrous. The teachers drafted in to cover the subject (including a number of elderly Catholic Priests) lacked any kind of background in it. Not only couldn't they teach the subject, but they couldn't convey why they were even trying to teach the subject. They would spend each lesson reading from one of those mail-order worksheets, with no idea how to either advise a pupil who was having problems, or how to recover the lesson if something went wrong.

    The fact that the school's computer lab functioned at all was basically down to the volunteer efforts of a few of the more IT literate students (self-included), who would fix things after the latest balls-up and be called on during free-periods to get an IT lesson back on track after a teacher encountered an error message he hadn't seen before. I didn't particularly mind at the time; I wasn't taking any qualifications in IT, so the quality of the teaching didn't matter to me and helping out earned me a few perks. In particular, it got me out of the compulsory (but non-academic) religious education classes from ages 16-18.

    But for those who were actually taking the subject formally (admittedly only a tiny handful in my year-group) it was a pretty catastrophic situation. In any other subject (including the practical ones such as design and technology), my school expected its teachers to be in command of their area. IT was just seen as being different somehow.

    1. Re:Unconvinced... by jcr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When I was in 8th grade, I got my hands on an Interdata 8/32 system that had a pair of teletype ASR-33s, and a BASIC interpreter. I spent a year mostly waiting for my turn at one of the two keyboards that about a dozen of us wanted to use. I typed in BASIC games from David Ahl's book, and I played around with punching large letters on the paper tape and printing out ASCII art.

      In my high school, we had a computer lab with three HP terminals, that connected through a leased line to a pair of HP2000 and an HP3000 minicomputer. The HP machines were able to submit batch jobs to an IBM 360 through an RJE(remote job entry) facility.

      My computer teacher was a retired USAF colonel who had some experience with mainframes, and some exposure to basic concepts of computing back in the 1950s and early 60s. For most of the kids, concepts like hashing and basic statistical methods were over their heads, so he taught me and two or three of my friends, and we taught the class.

      The main thing we got out of the school's computer lab was access. The most interesting things we did had nothing to do with the curriculum, they were all after-school and free period projects. We learned how to defeat the trivial security that HP had at the time, we wrote BASIC programs that did fun tricks on the CRT terminals with cursor control, we had a rudimentary chat and e-mail system which the administration kept trying to shut down, and we got our hands on a BASIC rewrite of Crowther & Woods Adventure, and later Zork games, which we experimented with and modified. About this time, a handful of my friends were getting their hands on Apple and Atari computers at home.

      Where I really learned to write code was on my first two computing jobs: the first was a company that was developing games for Cox Cablevision to run on a set-top box that they were test marketing. The second job was where I learned the C language, by writing code and making every possible mistake while sitting in an office beside two much more skilled C developers (one of whom later went on to serve on the ANSI committee that standardized the language.)

      In the years since then, every good programmer I've worked with has been largely self-taught, and they started at the same age or earlier than I did. I'm convinced that the best thing an elementary or high school can hope for today is just letting kids figure it out by working with their peers on whatever interests them.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  4. tail wag the dog again by OffTheLip · · Score: 2

    This is such a typical gov response to a problem. Too many widgets of one type simply pound them into whatever shape necessary until someone decides either the problem is solved or the "solution" didn't work.

  5. Re:Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not just the USA. My partner is Australia is a Science teacher. She has a Bachelor of Science and a Diploma in education, but is criticised by idiots for not instead having a Bachelor of Education without any formal training in the subjects she's supposed to teach.

    That is becoming the norm. Idiots who "know how to teach" but don't actually "know what they teach".

  6. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hex is not math/science. It's just computer literacy.

    There's no such thing as "business-focused math". It's just dumbed-down crap. The math is what makes CS exist and interesting.

  7. Re:Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    There are some subject-matter-experts who are a genuine menace in the classroom(I suspect that most of us probably took at least one course in college from the TAs they shoved all the actual work of teaching the course onto...); but it is pretty sad how the K-12 level, both in terms of incentives for people teaching there, and in terms of applicants, skews heavy on people with qualifications 'in teaching'; but somewhat light on people with serious grounding in what they are supposed to be teaching.

    Especially at lower grade levels, you'd be a fool to deny that 'teaching' is, in itself, a valuable and necessary skill that some people really, really, don't have; but merely being necessary doesn't make it a substitute for actually knowing what you are teaching and how to teach it. There are some who have excellent knowledge of a field; but simply either need to shape up or head over to a research/professional track and stay away from students(at least until the students are old enough to learn in a capacity as 'junior colleague' rather than 'student'); but exposure to a classroom has a way of weeding out those who can't teach rather brutally; while it is less effective at weeding out people with at least adequate 'teaching' skills; but subject matter knowledge that is a little too shaky to allow them to teach it with full confidence and facility.

  8. Hobbyists can teach ... by drnb · · Score: 2

    I have nothing against CS degrees, I have two of them. That said ...

    My high school's CS-type class was the electrical shop class. Yes, the shop class where you normally learn electrician type stuff, wiring up a light and switch for example. Our cranky old not far from retirement shop teacher said on day one that he wasn't going to teach us electrician stuff, well he would if someone asked but he decided to teach us digital electronics because he thought that would be more useful. His background ... he learned to wire up TTL, burn eproms and do some 8-bit assembly language programming on his own, for his own fun and amusement. His class was not terribly different from the lab portion of the introductory EE-type classes that were part of my undergraduate CS program taught by a professor with a PhD.

  9. Creationism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I live in a county where a few years ago, we had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars because some Christian Fundie wanted "Intelligent Design" and the "controversy of Evolution" taught in our biology classes.

    Our CS budget went to lawyers.

    Local control of schools isn't such a good thing.

  10. Re:Good. by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

    No offense, but if you need to spend hours learning and memorizing hexadecimal (I presume you meant that instead of a base-6 system?) and binary math, CS is probably not for you.

    They teach non-decimal (i.e. binary) math in elementary school in my country. Not because of CS, but because it teaches kids abstract math, and not a bunch of magic tricks that only work with the 10 holy symbols.

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  11. Re:Good. by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    How many people have really used hex and binary math, in a professional position, to the extent that you need to have spend hours learning and memorizing it?

    Anyone who has spend hours memorising hex and binary has missed the point. Once you understand number bases, which is really basic stuff, you can use any positive integer-based number system without having to learn anything.

  12. Subject matter experts vs teachers by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are some subject-matter-experts who are a genuine menace in the classroom(I suspect that most of us probably took at least one course in college from the TAs they shoved all the actual work of teaching the course onto.

    I've had more that a few full tenure professors who had NO business lecturing to a classroom. In many of these cases I was actually glad when they handed off to a TA. I want the best teachers and could not care less if they are subject matter experts beyond the level of the class. The research most professors do has little or nothing to do with what they are teaching most of the time. Even when it is related the classroom stuff is so far below their research that it becomes irrelevant. I don't need a Nobel prize winner to teach me physics 101. I just want someone who is a very good lecturer and has an solid grasp of the material being taught at the level it is being taught.

    That said, the notion that teaching theory is somehow a substitute for actually knowing the subject is an absurd and dangerous notion. Learning about driving in a classroom is no substitute for actually having spent time driving. I cannot fathom how anyone would thing a background in civics could possibly qualify someone to teach computer science no matter how good they are at the mechanics of teaching.

    1. Re:Subject matter experts vs teachers by matbury · · Score: 2

      It shouldn't be subject matter experts (SMEs) vs. teachers. Research into learning and teaching has consistently shown that the more effective teachers are also SMEs.

      What's more, in K-12 education, the teaching skills required are more demanding than subject matter knowledge, so the emphasis is logically skewed in that direction. In other words, we don't expect college level writing or math in K-12 schools so why do we expect college level CS? Kids will more than likely learn the same facts, formulae, and procedures without much meaningful context or purpose just to get the grade, like they do most other subjects. When faced with a choice between learning for understanding vs. cramming to pass mandated tests, which determine a school's future funding, guess which most schools choose.

  13. Re:Scale back Department of Education ... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And stuff like this is why many think the Department of Education should be eliminated or severely scaled back. Perhaps set national standards but not get into the day-to-day operations of a school.

    There may be good reasons for keeping control over schools away from local authorities:

    https://boingboing.net/2015/12...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  14. History, and Civics Teachers should talk about H1b by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

    History, and Civics Teachers should talk about H1b and how they are used to bypass labor laws / make them be locked into the job.

  15. This isn't just at the Federal Level by Pollux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In my home state of Minnesota, they allow anyone with either a business licensure or a mathematics licensure to teach computer science. In college, I majored in Computer Science and Secondary Mathematics Education. I found it ironic that it was my math licensure that allowed me to teach computer science and not my computer science degree. I found it just as silly that I was not allowed to teach keyboarding; mathematics teachers are not qualified for that. Also, just as amusing, anyone in the state with an English licensure is licensed to teach web page design.

    It's a complete joke that our government advocates for increased computer science education, while in the same breath says that anyone can teach it. By that same perverse logic, I should be fully qualified to become a law professor. Right? Computer science is very logical...very layered...very structured...lots of inheritances...sounds like a good foundation of law to me.

  16. Re:Doe != Department of Education by hesiod · · Score: 2

    Facts have no place in a discussion about education!

  17. First learn what the Dept of Education does by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And stuff like this is why many think the Department of Education should be eliminated or severely scaled back. Perhaps set national standards but not get into the day-to-day operations of a school.

    Aside from No Child Left Behind which was mandated by CONGRESS, the Dept of Education has very little to do with the day to day operations of schools. In fact the Dept of Ed is by a wide margin the least involved ministerial level department for education in the civilized world. The US education system is hugely decentralized and demonstrably NOT controlled from Washington. People calling for the Dept of Ed to be eliminated or scaled back invariably have no idea what it does. Any meddling it does with regard to operations of schools is because it was instructed to do so by Congress. All it would take to change that is another act of Congress and in fact such a law was just passed. Repeal NCLB and ESSA and the Dept of Education would have almost no direct interaction with most school systems.

    Once upon a time, well 1960, there was a Presidential Debate where candidates discussed societal issues (imagine that). One topic that came up was the nature of federal support for local schools. Both candidates, Kennedy (D) and Nixon (R), were concerned that federal support (funding) would lead to federal meddling.

    And very little has changed. There is very little funding and for the most part very little meddling.

    I think we are now seeing the wisdom of their shared concerns regarding centralizing too much control and authority in Washington DC.

    "Wisdom"? No. That is ideology, not wisdom. Virtually every other country in the civilized world has FAR more centralized control over education than we do in the US and many of them get measurably better results. If you think decentralized schooling is good I'd invite you to visit the school districts in places like Detroit or Cleveland or Los Angeles. They get terrible results and no one holds them accountable or gives them any substantial help. Federal control has problems to be sure but so does local control.

    1. Re:First learn what the Dept of Education does by drnb · · Score: 2

      So you are arguing that the DOE is meddling based on instructions from Congress rather than its own initiative. That is a failed defense. It doesn't matter who is pulling the strings, it matters only that the DOE is the instrument by which the meddling occurs.

      While local control is not perfect it does afford parents a much greater opportunity to exert pressure to fix things.

      And no, things are not the same as in 1960. We have seen enormous growth in the amount of administration in the educational system. Assuring compliance with federal regulations, eligibility for federal monies, are part of this. We spend more money per pupil than any of those other countries you mention and fewer dollars make it to the classroom.

  18. Dept of Education lacks authority by sjbe · · Score: 2

    I wouldn't have modded it 'flamebait'; but it does fall into the relatively unhelpful category of being overbroad(if you go state-by-state, the degree to which US education is totally fucked varies quite widely); and it also ignores the important fact that the DOE isn't actively changing the state of CS education here; but merely signalling an unwillingness to get tough on trying to improve it.

    That presumes the ED (DoE is the Dept of Energy) has the statutory authority to dictate CS education requirements. In all likelihood it doesn't have any such authority delegated to it by Congress. While I don't pretend to be an expert I do know that the Dept of Education has very little to do with and almost no authority regarding determining curriculum outside of No Child Left Behind the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act.

  19. Re: Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by sudon't · · Score: 2

    We seem to have a lot of young people familiar with computers in the US, but with no English skills. Maybe this will work out after all?

    --
    -- sudon't

    Air-ride Equipped

  20. Re:Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by DarkTempes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It seems really odd to me that a culture which considers college degrees as superfluous and promotes experience and self-teaching would deride someone teaching pre-college programming because of their non-STEM background.

    A good educator knows how to educate themselves as well as students. You can have a brilliant computer programmer and they can be the shittiest teacher in the world.

    The best programming instructor I ever had pre-college was, I believe, originally a band teacher. He ended up teaching AP CS for at least a couple of decades and when I had him we had a lot of fun going to college hosted programming competitions and doing USACO challenges online.

    One of my first programming "teachers" in middle school didn't know anything about programming (this was Pascal.) It was her first year and she had no experience but she had the coursework and managed to use the brightest students to teach the rest of the class.
    Yes, she was terrible.
    Yes, we didn't build good habits.
    But it was still better than nothing as it exposed a lot of students to programming concepts and enabled them to start doing things themselves.

    A summer class I took in middle school at a local university was taught by a hobbyist programmer who, I believe, mostly taught arts and crafts classes.
    She was great and proficient. We had a ton of fun learning QBasic and the final project was to create a tiny video game.
    I ended up staying after class to finish a simple space invaders clone because the class was so fun.
    (As an aside: one could hate on Basic and GOTO here and yet I found it interesting that the guy who always won programming competitions used Basic while the rest of us mostly used C/C++)

    So, anyone motivated can learn basic concepts and data structures like loops and arrays and recursion and teach them to others.

    From what I read in the article they were basically saying you can use federal funds to educate non-traditional STEM teachers in CS so that they can teach students.

    In that context I think a civics teacher can be fit for teaching CS, as long the civics teacher is motivated and uses the funds to become certified in CS in some form.
    It's not like the AP CS curriculum is rocket science. The math requirement for students is fairly low iirc.

    And DICE just wants us angry at the headline so that we'll give them more eyeballs on ads that we don't actually see. Or something.

  21. Re:Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 2

    Not just the USA. My partner is Australia is a Science teacher. She has a Bachelor of Science and a Diploma in education, but is criticised by idiots for not instead having a Bachelor of Education without any formal training in the subjects she's supposed to teach.

    That is becoming the norm. Idiots who "know how to teach" but don't actually "know what they teach".

    Around here, they also get a pay raise for getting advanced degrees. Every single one that I've seen go all the way to getting a doctorate get an EdD rather than a degree in whatever field they're teaching. My kids have had some good teachers but I simply haven't seen any correlation between quality of teaching and higher "education" degrees held by the teacher. Thanks to the unions, though, that's the only way to make more money other than getting older.

    --
    Do you have ESP?
  22. Re:Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

    I honestly despair for the future of the US.

    We basically are now getting education by idiots for idiots.

    Why is this flamebait? Which part of "A civics teacher is fit for teaching CS" doesn't seem idiotic enough to the modpoint distributor? Which is more idiotic, the department or the by-it-educated masses?

    Because the teachers are not necessarily idiots - they just might not be qualified.

    Because the students are not idiots just because they don't know about computer science.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  23. Re: Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by Chas · · Score: 2

    Don't get me wrong. I respect teachers and the jobs they're underpaid (like a motherfucker) to do.

    But your average English/Civics/History teacher has NO business trying to teach a comp-sci course. Even today, 40+ years on since the general inception of personal computers in schools.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  24. Re:Wh3r3f0r3 @r7 7h0u R0m30! by TangoMargarine · · Score: 2

    My partner is Australia is a Science teacher.

    You know you've got programming on the mind when you read that as

    (My partner is Australian) is a Science teacher.

    and then I was trying to figure out what sort of return value (My partner is Australian) would return and whether it would be a string or if there would be a compiler error. I think learning Python has ruined me ;)

    --
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  25. Do you feel the same about IT workers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    far too many subpar teachers, who whine and complain about having to take continuing education without being paid a stipend.

    It's an ongoing refrain (like for years) here about how horrible employers are for expecting IT people to spend their own time and money constantly training themselves on new technologies, new languages or new frameworks or else get laid off for some cheap new graduate who happened to see those things in college classes.

    If new knowledge training is required for your job and directly benefits your employer, why the hell shouldn't the employer be expected to pay for either your training hours or the training fees?