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Education Government Programming The Almighty Buck United States Technology

US Dept of Education Has Big Payday For K-12 CS, Including Tech-Backed Code.org 47

Posted by BeauHD from the priorities-in-education dept.
theodp writes: On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced $123 million in new Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant awards to 41 school districts, nonprofits and state educational agencies. Over $78 million of that went to 29 grantees focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, and more than 85% of the funded STEM projects include a specific focus on computer science. The announcement was scant on details, but the awardees listed include tech-bankrolled Code.org, whose Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith, Amazon CEO of Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke, and Google VP of Education & University Programs Maggie Johnson. In his new book, Tools and Weapons, Smith interestingly reveals how Microsoft, Amazon, and Google each pledged to commit $50 million to K-12 computer science education to get First Daughter and Presidential Adviser Ivanka Trump to work to secure $1 billion of Federal support for K-12 STEM/CS education.

From the book: "While you would be hard-pressed to say that every student must take computer science, you could say that every student deserves the opportunity. That means getting computer science into every high school, and into earlier grades as well. The only way to train teachers at this scale is for federal funding to help fill the gap. After years of lobbying, there was a breakthrough in federal interest in 2016. In January President Obama announced a bold proposal to invest $4 billion of federal money to bring computer science to the nation's schools. While the proposal produced enthusiasm, it didn't spur Congress to appropriate any new money. Ivanka Trump had more success the following year. Even before her father had moved into the White House, she was interested in federal investments in computer science in schools. She was confident she could persuade the president to support the idea, but she also believed that the key to public money was to secure substantial private funding from major technology companies. She said she would work to secure $1 billion of federal support over five years if the tech sector would pledge $300 million during the same time. As always, there was the question of whether someone would go first. The White House was looking for a company to get things rolling by pledging $50 million over five years. Given Microsoft's long-standing involvement, financial support, and prior advocacy with the Obama White House, we were a natural choice. We agreed to make the commitment, other companies followed, and in September 2017 Mary Snapp, the head of Microsoft Philanthropies, joined Ivanka in Detroit to make the announcement."

The $300 million was apparently money well-pledged. Surrounded by children, educators, Ivanka Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, President Trump in late 2017 signed a presidential memorandum directed to DeVos calling for the expansion of K-12 computer science and STEM education in the U.S. with at least $200 million in annual grant funding.
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US Dept of Education Has Big Payday For K-12 CS, Including Tech-Backed Code.org More

US Dept of Education Has Big Payday For K-12 CS, Including Tech-Backed Code.org

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  • Even though theodp doesn't like CS education (they are coming to take his jerb), this is a good investment. The Department of Defense budget is $700 billion, so $123 million is about nothing.

    • 123 million is about nothing

      Nothing? That's about $380k per American resident!.. And, unlike military, which is the Federal government's duty by Constitution, this is completely unnecessary.

      Moreover, it is, likely, harmful. The per-pupil spending in American public schools has quadrupled since the 1960-ies [ed.gov], while the results remain mediocre as only about 1/3 of 8th-graders qualify as "proficient" in Math [educationdive.com] and in Reading [patch.com].

      Spending other people's money is rarely efficient or even particularly effective...

      • The per-pupil spending in American public schools has quadrupled since the 1960-ies

        Funny, you're claiming quadruple is bad, which everything else has gone up 11 times and change since then.

        • Funny, you're claiming quadruple is bad, which everything else has gone up 11 times and change since then.

          GP needs more schooling himself. He appears to have a problem doing math with large numbers.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by mi ( 197448 )

          Funny, you're claiming quadruple is bad, which everything else has gone up 11 times and change since then.

          Nothing has.

          The quadruple figure I cited is inflation-adjusted — the nominal increase of the per-pupil spending, which is what you're talking about, is over 25 times.

      • You might want to check your math. That's not $123B.

        • Or even $123T.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by mi ( 197448 )

          Oops...

          The point about unchecked growth of per-pupil spending remains, however.

          • On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced $123 million in new Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant awards to big tech.

            That puts it into perspective.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by mi ( 197448 )

              Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant awards to big tech.

              That puts it into perspective.

              Does it? A nasty waste of taxpayers' money — though I can see, why the "Big Tech" love it...

      • Yeah its about nothing. If you want to complain about spending how about the $700 BILLION which is TWENTY TIMES the amount the next country spends on the military. There is always some ahole who complains about educational spending when literally trillions are being siphoned away in "Constitutional" activities. Yeah, right. What part of the Constitution says we need to spend $700,000,000,000 on defense?

    • No it isn't. It's an attempt to lower wages in an industry with already artificially low wages. The whole Teach kids to Code movement is great for reinforcing the slashdot crowd's (look how important society thinks our skills are yall) egos, but not really a good idea otherwise. All that will end from it is coders will be paid even less because "I can just hire a high school kid to do it" All of the so called soft skills coding is supposed to promote are already taught in schools. It's a major selling

      • How many of these will be qualified applicants for any coding job? Or survive their first year?

        Yes there will be some entry level jobs created to take advantage, but they won't take my job. Or if they do I'll be rehired at a premium in 6 months.

        Let the kids learn how the new digital world works. If they decide it's a passion, let them put in the hours. If not, they will at least realize that code is not magic. And we do teach basic Health and Biology. If that begets a Medicine career, good. They had the opp

        • Tell that to people working at UC San Francisco Medical Center, who thought their specialized tech jobs would prevent them from being out sourced.

          EVERYONE IS REPLACEABLE.

    • If Microsoft is involved, you know it's evil. Every time they involve themselves in education, they dick up everything they touch.

    • That's $716 Billion PER YEAR and that's **ONE** defense budget. There are multiple defense budgets.

  • Probably be blown on gadgets (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @10:16PM (#59254944)

    The concept of educational outcomes - growing CS knowledge/skills is probably not even on the radar.

    • Wait, were drooling over IoT coverage here, but you don't want kids to have gadgets?

      • No. Because, with 40 odd years of history that shows districts have zero clue on IT budgeting, and planning. Even less clue on getting educational value from it all.

        • People used to enjoy subsidy-priced cell phones and chips. CompUSA used to be the store of government giveaways, owned by the government until it ran out of funding.

          This is basically a subsidy here... why no cheap gadgets for us?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by wijc ( 6261312 )
            What exactly do you mean by this comment, specifically the statement "CompUSA used to be the store of government giveaways, owned by the government until it ran out of funding"?
        • Right. I learned to code in highschool... While skipping a class that the teacher was supposed to teach but literally outright refused to teach. They tried to expel me for my studiousness. School is where learning goes to die.

  • I've got to say, there's a lot for schools around me to show off lately, including $5 Domino's Pizza lunches, Teaching of events that hadn't even happened when I was a high school student, covered by a constantly revised America the Book, and 10-student / 10-computers situations.

    It's sort of the revenge of the COPPA law kids... when they get big enough to work a keyboard they off to a firewalled Internet.

  • The ridiculous part about this push to get kids to code is that the clear goal is to make programming such a common skill that wages become depressed. The secondary goal is probably to get schools to buy stuff such as hardware and cloud services.

    Perhaps I'm just a cynic, but I think this STEM push is an attempt to manipulate the market. Right now in the U.S. an engineer can do pretty well with just a bachelor's degree. In many countries engineers can't get a job without going to grad school. I wouldn't be s

    • I was taught coding back in the 90s... with plenty of help from Enter/3-2-1 Contact magazines... teaching coding in school has gone on for a while now. And hey, in 2000/2002 I was working with an immigrants. H1-B visas must be strictly quota-limited, because we don't want outsiders taking our jobs, but do need them when there's not enough of us to fill a type of job.

    • "The ridiculous part about this push to get kids to code is that the clear goal is to make programming such a common skill that wages become depressed. The secondary goal is probably to get schools to buy stuff such as hardware and cloud services."

      You have confused "coding" and "programming". And you have confused the order of the goals.

      The primary goal is to get schools to "rent" cloud services from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft (Oracle will probably jump in there too, eventually). They will give the sup

    • STEM is more that a push to manipulate the market. STEM should be a national priority. Remember, China statistically has more smart people than the USA has people. The USA can't afford to NOT develop potential talent. As far as I can see the tech industry keeps growing and growing with piles of legacy stuff needing support and piles of new stuff needing development. If America doesn't get the education system sorted out and sticks with the de facto standardized tests as a measure, the prediction is the

  • Just as anyone can form a ball of clay into a head shaped object, anyone can produce code that can appear to produce the desired output, but it will be buggy, riddled with errors and hackable. Sorry to burst your little wall flower bubble, but coding is an art form. It takes a certain logical thought process that not every one possesses and I don't believe can be taught.

  • Ivanka Trump took to Twitter [twitter.com] and Facebook [facebook.com] to tout the big STEM/CS education payday: "$123 Million in new Education grants announced today with more than $78 M focusing on #STEM and Computer Science education and $30 M to grantees serving rural areas! Learn about the 29 awardees: https://ed.gov/news/press-rele... [ed.gov] @usedgov 3:18 PM Sep 27 2019 Twitter for iPhone." And the U.S. Department of Education in turn retweeted Ivanka's approval.

  • States (Score:3)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @11:34PM (#59255160)

    >"Obama announced a bold proposal to invest $4 billion of federal money to bring computer science to the nation's schools. While the proposal produced enthusiasm, it didn't spur Congress to appropriate any new money." [...] "secure $1 billion of Federal support for K-12 STEM/CS education"

    The Fed has no right or mandate to mess in education. If it did, it would be in the Constitution. It is, like most things, supposed to be handled by the States. But, yeah, I know, who cares.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      The Fed? The Federal Reserve Board? I presume you mean the Federal Government. The Federal Government does all sorts of things not mandated in the Constitution because it is impossible to have a modern society based on something some men, and there were no women, wrote over 200 years ago. This sort of misapprehension is as bad as the Evangelicals claiming society can be based on something men, and there were no women, wrote down 2000+ years ago.

      The world is complicated, either the nation evolves or dies.

      • >"The Federal Government does all sorts of things not mandated in the Constitution because it is impossible to have a modern society based on something some men, and there were no women, wrote over 200 years ago."

        Because ideas and principles can only be good or valid if they were given by 50% male and 50% female? Let me guess, you are all-in on "identity politics"?

        >"The world is complicated, either the nation evolves or dies."

        The nation can evolve without throwing away what is good. It was DESIGNED

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

          The federal government has a legitimate interest in ensuring a minimum standard of education across the country. Imagine if, say, Michigan, West Virginia, or Oklahoma decided students only needed the equivalent of an 8th grade education to graduate, just enough to get by working on a farm , coal mine, or in a factory/assembly plant?

          • >"The federal government has a legitimate interest in ensuring a minimum standard of education across the country. "

            They might have a legitimate interest in doing just about anything. That doesn't mean they can or should do it. The Constitution limits the Fed to just what is listed in the Constitution and everything else falls to the States or the People. If the country believes it is so important that the Fed must have such power, then they can amend the Constitution to give them that power. Those a

      • With regards to markdavis' post, the executive branch is granted implicit power by Article II to set up executive departments for the purpose of carrying out laws passed by Congress (this power is not made explicit but George Washington did so as the very first President). The powers of Congress in Article I have been interpreted to include the power to pass laws related to education (this is controversial, education is never specifically mentioned, but a few of the enumerated powers of Congress have been u

    • "The Fed has no right or mandate to mess in education."

      Lol. The Fed has. You mean the feds have. Noob.

      The Constitution contains at least two blank checks, interstate commerce and the general welfare.

      You've been listening to dopes, which is bad enough, but you're also repeating what they said, and that's foolish.

    • something something Commerce Clause

  • Assuming that schools will be able to provide high-quality curricula & teaching for coding, teaching school kids to code is a waste of everyone's time. There are only so many classes & subjects that can be taught in a school week, so what are coding classes going to replace?

    The knowledge, skills, & attitudes acquired from studying Literacy, Maths, & the Sciences (especially biology) transfer to many other subjects. The research I've seen so far has found that Literacy, Math, & the Scienc

  • How much of that public tax money is going to private Christian schools?

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by wijc ( 6261312 )
    Why is computer science more important than, say, physics, biology, mathematics, astronomy or engineering? Those are going to have more widespread impact in many ways than teaching computer science. And this is coming from someone that studied computer science - it just isn't a widely appealing discipline, and not easily picked up by the majority of the populace. Programming just isn't going to be a common skill that I can see - while the ability to think abstractly is useful, it's beyond the abilities of
  • To be honest, I am new at this topic because I have never read about it before. This doesn't attract me. Now I am really concerned with the tasks I have to do for my studying. Of course, I will order most of them and you can click to read more [papersowl.com] pay for papers.
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  • I believe learning should be fun and students should be well motivated by the teacher to want to learn. They are like a seed, who has everything it needs to become a mighty tree, bearing lots of fruit. The job of the teacher is to provide the best environment for the seed to grow and get strong.In order to free my time, I order here Paperial.com [paperial.com] professional dissertation for college.

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