[sandworm101]

How much of this will go to good teachers and interesting programs? And how much will simply be spent on overpriced machines (microsoft) and proprietary "connected classroom" concepts (apple)?

You don't need much equipment to teach CS. Basic machines will do. And there is no need to spend any money on software these days (f/oss). I worry that this money is less an educational initiative and more a handout to those companies who sell services to schools. Which organizations are behind this pledge?

[chjohasbrouck]

This was my only thought. When a system is that efficient at squandering resources, you can't fix it by throwing more resources at it.

I'm reminded of L.A. Unified and the iPad debacle:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ipad-curriculum-...

They bought over 120,000 iPads, they paid above retail, and nobody ever thought of implementing a policy assigning liability or establishing any procedure in the event of damages or theft. To iPads. That were given to the children of low-income parents. In low-income neighborhoods. In Los Angeles.

Another few hundred million dollars went of course to an overpriced and ineffective Pearson curriculum. Another few hundred million to "improve internet connectivity in schools."

All told they spent about $1.5 billion -- not nationwide on colleges, but in just 1 school district (LA Unified) -- and we really have nothing to show for it whatsoever. Apple made some money, Pearson made some money, some company that makes expensive routers probably made some money, and the citizens ... well, not so much happened for us.

[redahs]

School vouchers or, even better, tutor vouchers are the way to go.

If students actually had a choice in how education funding was allocated, they would spend it directly on higher teacher salaries to pay for the additional teacher labor hours necessary to receive individual one-on-one instruction.

They wouldn't spend it on proprietary learning materials, large classrooms, large facilities, large administrative offices, and large campuses.

Get rid of the "smart classrooms" and allow students to pay directly for instruction with a student\teacher ratio of 1.

[dalke]

I have no children, but I want to have an educated population.

When you take my tax dollars and give them to parents as vouchers, you reduce or eliminate my democratic right to influence how we educate the next generation.

Why should only the children and parents have a say in that process?

I'm not saying an elected school board provides perfect oversight, as the iPad debacle shows, but at least it has more public oversight than washing our hands of the problem and delegating all responsibility and economic power to the parents.

Also, there are any number of college students who use their money to go to schools with "proprietary learning materials, large classrooms, large facilities, large administrative offices, and large campuses", so no reason to believe that things will be different for primary and secondary schools.

And there is plenty of evidence to believe that parents are attracted by schools which advertise "smart classrooms", and tout (incorrectlu, IMO) how they use computers to teach more effectively than a teacher does.

[ChicagoBoy11]

You are unfortunately right on the money. Having spent the past few years in this space, I've been shocked at how quickly my drive and desire to work in it has eroded. None of this is really about driving kids into CS/engineering -- to your point, the only investment you'd really need for that to happen at this point is fantastic teachers. Instead, the vast, vast majority of this money will go into buying useless crap, overhead, and consulting fees, with little to nothing to show for it in terms of educational achievement. All you have to do is to go into the vast, vast majority of classrooms that are pushing these "coding" initiatives nowadays to quickly realize how little stakeholders are actually caring about what kids are getting from these classes.

[brendanr]

For Code.org, you will find https://code.org/about/2015 to be quite interesting, including a breakdown of where money was spent. You'll see that a lot goes towards training teachers and building interesting programs.

[devsquid]

Man................. You raise a good point. I read the headline and was pretty stoked to see my country reinvesting in itself. But this is US, fuck.

I think iPads are wonderful devices, but to think a school would buy them for their students just seems stupid and short sighted. I think Chromebooks offer the most compelling class room solution. They are hyper secure, come with a keyboard, and extremely easy to manage and share.

[sandworm101]

Computer equipment for schools is all about limiting how they can be used. iPad are given trackers. Desktops are locked behind content filters. The last thing anyone wants is some kid running unauthorized code.

[bobwaycott]

I think the last thing anyone wants in a school system is some kid accessing porn, or something judged to be equally offensive. I see school tech policies each year. They're never worried about, and rarely ever mention anything that could arguably be interpreted as, prohibiting running unauthorized code. That would require school administrators to know what unauthorized code is.

[ethbro]

My curriculum: give a student a laptop with a pornography filter compiled with debugging symbols, a compiler, and a book on reverse engineering and exploiting.

Never underestimate the power of hormone-driven learning.

[qb45]

And level 2: implement simple web crawler and combine it with the filter in creative way :)

[sandworm101]

Can I download a linux distro via a bittorrent client, then boot into that distro? Can run metasploit on a school machine attached to the school network?

There are plenty of things worse these days than kids downloading porn. Top of the list: kids creating porn. Terrorism, bomb threats, malware, cyberstalking, organizing flashmobs ... there are plenty of ways for kids to cause real trouble for a school far beyond them downloading adult content.

[qb45]

Guess what, I did run metasploit (and more) on school network. Nobody died.

And the fact is, if more people started exploiting things, things would get fixed. It's not 2000 anymore when neither vendors nor users gave any fuck about security. Nowadays metasploit doesn't turn you into as much of a god as it used to :)

And "creating porn, bomb threats, cyberstalking" - come on, anybody who wants that, can do that without school-provided computers. And yet few people actually do.

[bobwaycott]

I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying.

[qb45]

Or something like Raspberry Pi. Reimage the SD card from know good master and the machine is good to go.

Who cares if kids install new software or screw something. I'd argue that this is what they actually should be doing, instead of running some crap overpriced "educational software" on locked-down hardware.

[jt2190]

  > How much of [the pledged 
  > 4,000,000,000 USD] will go 
  > to good teacher and interesting programs?

It looks like about 1,000,000 USD will go directly to educators. [1]

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-...

[sandworm101]

I don't even see that single million going to teachers. At most, I see lots of money for "training" teachers, but that isn't money in their hands. That's filing PD days, not hiring teachers with CS backgrounds to actually inspire kids.

[ashark]

Some consultants are going to make a ton of money selling some stupid "solution" backed by a couple anecdotes, a mediocre book, and a single never-reproduced study, though. Then administrators will only implement the parts of the program that don't make them uncomfortable (maybe half of it) and in two years they'll be scratching their heads wondering why it didn't work like the stories in the book.

And it'll probably add another 15 minutes of paperwork to every teacher's day, somehow.

Just like any other time a bunch of money is thrown at teacher training and curriculum.

[dikaiosune]

I'm sure many teachers would appreciate a few paid summer days they wouldn't have had before. I agree that it's a woefully tiny amount from the entire initiative, but teacher training can still be a good thing for teachers and for kids.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The organizations that want to sell common core style instructional materials to school districts. Their lobbyists just wrote them a $4B check.

[serge2k]

This is more fitting with the US style of "just toss money at it" philosophy. Spending money effectively is hard, but the US has absurd amounts so just try to outspend the inefficiency instead.

[sandworm101]

It is hard for the feds to do more than throw money. Education is a state or even a local issue. Obama cannot be seen telling school boards what to teach else half the country recoil from the concept.

[redahs]

If they want to throw money around, they should fund an individual tutor voucher program which offers students a choice in how the money is spent.

Then students can spend the money directly on additional teacher salaries by seeking out individual instruction rather than spend it on proprietary learning materials.

Improving education isn't hard if the student/teacher ratio is 1.

[hackuser]

> there is no need to spend any money on software these days (f/oss)

I think FOSS should be considered, but more important is that they study which software gets the best results and pay for that if needed. Also, let's remember that FOSS often is not user-friendly and most students have nothing close to the typical aptitude found on HN, nor the interest, nor the expertise and years of experience. Most will not grow up to be professionals in the IT industry. Emacs and Vim probably aren't going to yield the best results, for example.

[dsfyu404ed]

O-O_language + $free_IDE is good enough for the vast majority of educational programming. There are free gui "intro to intro to programming" drag + drop IDEs/teaching tools available as well.

IMO there is no need to pay for programming related software in an educational environment

[hackuser]

Have you seen any research on this subject, or do you have expertise with teaching K-12?

[hdctambien]

I use Java and jcreator in my classroom. Both free. There are also free tools that help students get a grasp of concepts before mastering the syntax (bluej, scratch, alice)

There are also packages that help with teaching, karel J robot comes to mind.

I also use codehs.com as a supplement for my class.

[hackuser]

Great, thanks. Any thoughts on what works and what doesn't, more generally?

Also, what do you teach and to students of what levels of aptitude and skill?

[Twirrim]

According to the National Center for Education Statistics there were 98,817 public schools in 2009-2010 fiscal year. 4 billion / 98,817 = 40k each. So it's not that much money towards it.

[gravypod]

From my understanding the money is far from evenly divided.

[hackaflocka]

Far from software and hardware. A good chunk will go to administrative overheads, pensions and the like.