The AP Computer Science class I took was close enough to first year coursework that they let me pass out of it. The biggest benefit was having a very serious teacher whose goal in life was that class. (He taught others, but his main focus as a teacher was the top 2-3% of programmers in the student body) It was a course that's both rigorous and useful.
The other problem may be salary. Years ago I was looking at teacher salaries for Seattle public schools. Salaries were identical for all subjects and increased only with length of time as a teacher and advanced degrees. They started around $30K with a BA and $36K with an MA. Pay topped out after 30 years at $60 or $70K-ish.
You're just not going to get many competent CS people for that kind of pay. Yeah, a couple of hero teachers will show up, but for the most part you're going to get shortages.
Based on the reading I assembled here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-... , I'm skeptical that we're going to see much improvement in public schools, and especially urban public schools, until we deal with the teacher union issue. Unions enforce lockstep payscales.
It's not like I'm working harder or what I'm doing is more important. You just can't convince Americans to spend money on public schools.
Consider a very important profession, say superhero. Having one superhero to stop the Joker is worth $1M. Having two superheros is worth $1.1M - Batman is sufficient to stop the very dangerous Joker, but two superheros can stop both the Joker and the far less dangerous Harleyquinn. The marginal productivity of an extra superhero is $100k even if the mean productivity is $550k. As a result, superheros get paid $100k because if any superhero quits, society loses only $100k rather than $550k.
But let's say there are multiple employers competing for the superheroes, each with their own bad guys to hunt down... Then you can get paid more.
A monopsonistic situation can drive wages below the marginal product. A monopolistic situation (e.g., multiple school districts, 1 union) can drive it above the marginal product. What I described is simply the ideal situation.
There are professions where that's a good model, but it seems remarkably unrelated to the dynamics of the teaching market.
Americans spend more on public schools than pretty much anyone else, by almost any measure you choose: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-repo....
Chicago spends about the same per student as the wealthy suburb where I grew up. Teachers' salaries are also higher in Chicago than where I grew up, despite having comparable if not lower cost of living.
Half of all children in Chicago live in single-parent homes, and the poverty rate for families headed by a single mother are around 40%: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-11-03/news/ct-edit-x.... That percentage is almost certainly much higher within the Chicago public school system, which skews poorer than the city as a whole.
You can't have functional schools with students who have to worry more about gang violence in their neighborhood than their grades. More money, better curricula, better teachers, none of that matters when the social structure outside the school is crumbling.
I imagine much of the dysfunction endemic to urban school systems is related to the Sisyphean nature of the task we give them. We focus almost single-mindedly on schools and education to solve all the ills of urban society. If only our schools were functional and our teachers competent, we say, these kids would be able to rise out of their condition and better themselves. But teachers who teach in these systems realize the absurdity of that charge. Stuck between a student population that needs help in ways that are not within their power to give, and a society that fails to realize the actual needs of these young people, teachers shift to a mode focused on self-preservation. Hence the dysfunction present in urban school systems.
Of course the new mayor of New York wants to stop their growth, but that's another complaint.
[1] http://www.successacademies.org/
[2] http://projects.nytimes.com/new-york-schools-test-scores/cou...
and
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2013/08/bronx-succes...
Teacher salaries are often higher in urban districts than suburban ones (and often still result in teacher shortages) because the conditions in urban districts are often less attractive to qualified teachers. (Policies which equalize per student spending across states means this also results in lower non-teacher-salary spending in those districts, which results in worse working conditions and more pressure for teachers to reach into their own pockets to meet classroom needs, which makes teaching in those districts even less attractive.)
My sense is there are a few reasons for this:
1) It is very hard to measure the benefits of good teaching, and it tends to be on a much longer timeframe. (Do we value nice teachers, or the ones that force us to learn? And is there a good test for it? I still get lessons from my great high school teachers, but it took a long time to appreciate some of them.)
2) There is little competition for skills of high school teachers. In large cities, there is one employer, take it or leave it. Teachers get one salary - based on how long they've been there. By the time they're most beaten down and least effective, they're paid the most. Meanwhile, the academic literature suggests that after 5 years, there is little correlation between time in classroom and improved skills.
What can be done? Improve the imperfect measurements, and open up the system for competition. Make it easier for schools to compete for better teachers by paying them more. (In the end, parents know which teachers are better) Make it easier for parents to leave bad schools. Make it easier to close schools whose parents leave.
Public schools get plenty of money. It just doesn't go to the classroom teachers.
As a psychologist friend pointed out to me yesterday, jobs that are traditionally held by women tend to be underpaid compared to "equivalent" jobs that are traditionally male. Compare teacher salaries to police and fireman salaries in the same district.
That said, most of the (invariably obscenely overcompensated) superintendents I've heard of have been male.
Under that rationale it makes no sense to pay existing teachers more money. Paying the same people more money isn't going to make them more qualified, more competent, or smarter. Higher salaries are just a tool we can use to recruit people with those qualities.
There's two basic facts:
1) Teachers, in the U.S., are generally drawn from the bottom half of college graduates.
2) Generally, teachers get paid about as much as the average non-STEM college graduate.
If the existing teachers we have are as "good as we need" then there is no reason to pay teachers more. There's no shortage of teachers at existing pay levels and teacher pay is consistent with the market pay for other college graduates of similar qualifications.
Thus, those who lobby for higher teacher pay argue that it will attract more qualified people to teaching. They point to countries like Finland, where it is common for teachers to have been in the top 10% of their college classes. They note that STEM majors, who make more than non-STEM majors, take a major pay cut to go into teaching. But under that rationale, it makes no sense to pay more to existing teachers, who don't have those qualifications.
[citation needed]
> There's no shortage of teachers at existing pay levels.
The fact that a number of districts are forced to waive generally-applicable requirements (e.g., issue "emergency credentials", etc.) to get teachers and/or rely on series of long-term substitutes to assure that there is actually a teacher in the classroom suggests that this is not true
> The appendix to the report confirms that the “top-“ and “bottom” third figures are also based on SAT/ACT scores, specifically those of 1999 graduates whose first job (at least by 2001) was teaching. The breakdown for these graduates is as follows: 23 percent came from the “top third;” 47 percent from the “bottom third;” and 29 percent from the “middle third.”
Comparing performance on entrance exams is more consistent with how private sector employers evaluate non-STEM college graduates. Those 47% of teachers scoring in the bottom third of the SAT/ACT aren't going to be in the running for very high-paying jobs almost regardless of their college performance.
How exactly is that? I've not heard of an employer asking for SAT/ACT scores for college grads. I've heard of reporting GPA and talking about internship/club roles, but never standardized test scores taken before college.
> Those 47% of teachers scoring in the bottom third of the SAT/ACT aren't going to be in the running for very high-paying jobs almost regardless of their college performance.
Seriously? You could score in the middle or poorly on a standardized test and go on to do extremely well in college and the workforce. Further, scoring high on SAT/ACT tests doesn't indicate you will do well in college or the workforce. Employers are almost always looking for a couple of factors for potential hires, not just one, and we would expect teacher hires to be no different in that regard.
Starting salary for a teacher in Chicago with just a BA is almost $50k/year with very good benefits. There are jobs for non-STEM majors that pay that or substantially higher, but the college options available with that kind of SAT score put you at a great handicap for those jobs.
Again, we're talking about aggregates here, not individuals. Lots of people do poorly on the SAT and end up wealthy. But if we're talking about a group where 47% perform in the bottom 1/3 of the SAT, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that this group's expected salary outside of teaching is substantially lower than for the average college graduate, regardless of the fact that individuals may outperform their entrance exams.
Its true that earning such a score may be more limiting in what colleges you can attend, but the reality is that ivy league and highly competitive schools are not within the range of most people for a variety of reasons. However, those graduates are skilled and make excellent employees and we as a society depend on a college system that is accessible to have a better skilled workforce. In terms of how this relates to quality of teachers, that some scored low on SAT/ACT and went to different kinds of colleges doesn't mean they are not qualified or successful as teachers.
> Starting salary for a teacher in Chicago with just a BA is almost $50k/year with very good benefits. There are jobs for non-STEM majors that pay that or substantially higher, but the college options available with that kind of SAT score put you at a great handicap for those jobs.
Of course, its not just the college you attend that opens up those higher paying non-STEM jobs to you, it also highly depends on what field you went into, current economic conditions when you start looking for employment, overall availability of positions, etc. Over the last 4 years we have seen that even attending a more competitive school or highly esteemed school isn't enough to get over some of the external difficulties in finding a job in some fields.
> Again, we're talking about aggregates here, not individuals. Lots of people do poorly on the SAT and end up wealthy. But if we're talking about a group where 47% perform in the bottom 1/3 of the SAT, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that this group's expected salary outside of teaching is substantially lower than for the average college graduate, regardless of the fact that individuals may outperform their entrance exams.
We aren't talking about those that become wealthy, we are talking about low SAT/ACT scorers who go on to get a college degree at an accredited institution. It is unreasonable to say that low scorers are going to earn less than high scorers that attend the same class of institution or that the low scorers are less qualified from the high scorers in the same field that attended the same class of institution.
Fundamentally, degree snobbery isn't helpful here. We require a large body of qualified teacher and an environment where those teachers can succeed. Like any profession, there are bad teachers, but calling all teachers bad because they didn't achieve an academically-defined test score that doesn't necessarily have a present bearing on their ability to be a teaching professional is silly.
"Everyone does it" doesn't mean its a meaningful measure, even if its true (and, AFAICT, its not.)
The number of potential employers that have ever cared -- or even asked -- about my college entrance exams is...0. Several have asked for college grade transcripts, though, though most have just asked about degrees and institutions.
I mean, I'd love it if the fact that my entrance exam scores were in the top 0.1% mattered...but generally they don't seem to.
I graduated during the boom, and knew people who went to Georgia State and the like, which require top half SAT scores, and finding a $35k/year job outside STEM was a great result. Bottom third is pushing your luck for places like Valdosta State, and even the STEM people I knew there had trouble landing real engineering jobs. Not uncommon to see a Mech E working as an HVAC technician.
This is not snobbery. I'd never hold the school someone went to against them. But if we're projecting expected outcomes of a large group of people, it's totally relevant.
Unions perversely hurt themselves. By creating a monopoly for their services, they make it much harder for alternative providers to come along and bid up their services.
The new NYC mayor put the partner of the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) on his transition team. Part of his campaign platform was, "Less measuring, no more charter schools, no more closing failing schools." I fear for the future of NYC schools.
But to the original point, I think the only hope is getting post-career engineers who have already made their money to become CS teachers.
All of those things are positives for NYC, not negatives. Closing failing schools has equated to closing schools in communities comprised of black and hispanic people and replacing them with charter school options that have less accountability. Charter schools themselves have not been shown to be a suitable large scale replacement for the public school system and have their own issues. As for measuring, the strictness of standardized tests and how they tie into student and teacher performance/evaluation has already been shown to be having an negative effect on classrooms.
In many cases, charter schools are both publicly funded and administer. The charter is a governing document providing exceptions and alternatives to the governing rules otherwise applicable to public schools.
Charter schools may be privately operated/administered, but that's not universally the case.
Yes they do. You always have a choice of charter school or non-charter school. Many charters are so popular that they have 10 applicants for every spot. This isn't the sign of a lack of a voice, it's a sign of people voicing their displeasure with their terrible zoned schools.
We allow airlines to compete for our business, and the bad ones should close. We allow grocery stores to compete for our business, and the bad ones should close. Why not allow schools to compete for business and let them close?
Charters have more accountability than district public schools. If a charter misses it's #s, it won't get renewed. Every 5 years they have to prove themselves.
http://projects.nytimes.com/new-york-schools-test-scores/cou...
and
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2013/08/bronx-succes...
This is another form of the "How dare you make a social app when people starve in Africa" objection.
Just in case anyone still feels like it makes sense, be aware of the gross oversimplification it entails. Actually only some students fail to acquire basic reading and math skills, while another group isn't provided with ample opportunity to take their ability to learn to its full extent.
Giving schools the opportunity to add CS as core subject allows schools to offer good students a broader education, and provides an opportunity to capture a larger percent of otherwise disinterested students' attention.
The great thing about CS, at least if it's well taught, is that you can see results. You can think hard, figure something out, and see visible results from your effort. I think/hope that this can be a powerful motivator for a 14-year-old to think analytically - in a way that solving algebra problems isn't.
And where are the schools failing at basic reading and math? I doubt that if there are students who fail at this that they would make it into this program.
My guess is that it's not the schools that are failing children, it's the parents.
I know that doesn't ring nicely with the easy to blame "school" blame the "government" all that other libertarian thoughtless unfortunate stuff that's in people's heads, but there you go.