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Top Silicon Valley Execs and Others Urge Congress To Fund K-12 Computer Science Education (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report:Some of the biggest names in tech and corporate America, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, have teamed up with governors and educators to ask Congress to provide $250 million in federal funding to school districts in order to give every single K-12 student in the nation an opportunity to learn how to code. On the legislative side, these tech CEOs are joined by governors from both sides, including California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R). Earlier this year, President Barack Obama called for more than $4 billion in funding for states, and $100 million for districts in order to bring computer science curricula to every single K-12 student in the country. What this group of CEOs, governors and educators is asking for today is different. They're saying that this issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget. The petition reads:Not only does computer science provide every student foundational knowledge, it also leads to the highest-paying, fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. economy. There are currently over 500,000 open computing jobs, in every sector, from manufacturing to banking, from agriculture to healthcare, but only 50,000 computer science graduates a year. Whether a student aspires to be a software engineer, or if she just wants a well-rounded education in today's changing world, access to computer science in school is an economic imperative for our nation to remain competitive. And with the growing threat of cyber warfare, this is even a critical matter of national security. Despite this growing need, targeted federal funding to carry out these efforts in classrooms is virtually non-existent. This bipartisan issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget.
Surely those assholes can scrape together a paltry $250 million dollars from their personal piggybank.
The individuals listed could personally pony up $250 million from petty cash. Why ask the government for funding?
Please train our future workforce with someone else's money.
Yours truly,
Rich Silicon Valley Companies
Aren't these the same companies that lay off US based workers in favor of H1-Bs? Why train more US workers just so they can be replaced before they can even start?
They want more people in the industry so they can flood the market with labor and lower the pay of their tech employees.
Close. They want to create the perception that more people are desperately needed in the industry so that they can have political cover to import more foreign workers on H1B visas, so they can flood the market with foreign labor and lower the pay of their tech employees.
Between "No child left behind" and no discipline allowed, there is simply no way to teach many students today. And because they are not removed from the classroom, the rest of the kids that still have a chance are prevented from learning. It does not matter what curriculum you pick. If they refuse simple instruction (like take this quiz) there is no hope.
From the article...This group of CEOs, governors and educators is...saying that this issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget..."We’ll use the money to train over 25,000 public school teachers to introduce computer science to students who would otherwise never have this opportunity.”
This group appears to claim that no additional money needs to be spent if we can use the existing teacher workforce to teach computer science. If that's the case, what will those teachers no longer teach? I mean, it's not like teachers are sitting around all day with nothing to do. Should we pull math teachers, and just teach less math? Or maybe the music teachers? We can always teach less music, and I'm sure music teachers will have no troubles learning how to code, right? And certainly these coders will be top quality, having been trained by the best math teachers and music teachers our country has to offer.
I wish government officials could realize one day that there's never an educational initiative that comes without a cost. Training costs money. People cost money. Computers cost money. Electricity costs money. Time costs money. So tell this group of CEOs, governors and educators not to put another single unfunded mandate onto the table until they fund the ones they've been mandating so far.
All these companies bitch for more H1-B visas and then wonder why there aren't any US CS grads lining up? Seriously this is the biggest two-faced bunch of bullshit to come out of Corporate America in awhile.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Instead of getting the Government to fund computer science education, how about we just require computer companies to pay competitive salary? It doesn't require any tax dollars, and it's just crazy enough to work.
The problem is, the past 30 years have taught MBA's that *they're* the ones who are supposed to get the $200k salary, and the computer engineer is the one who's supposed to have a Masters and 20 years of experience in a 3 year old language and work for $60k until their job gets outsourced to India.
The problem will largely go away once the computer geek's biggest problem is "Do I buy the BMW or the Mercedes", and the MBA's are crying themselves to sleep, praying they can pay their student loans off before they hit 40 and are too old to spreadsheet.