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0 pointshdctambien10y ago0 comments

There are no teacher unions in Texas. Texas can not only get rid of incompetent teachers, it can also get rid of any teachers that rock the boat or question the administrators or make someone look bad by going an extra mile for a student.

Public schools will never pay $100k+ to someone to teach Computer Science, so how will they ever get someone that actually knows Computer Science to be a teacher[0][1]? Instead they are offering a $1000 stipend to current Science and Math teachers to take a 1 semester course in Java so they can pass the Computer Science Certification Test and teach Computer Science.

So the future computer science high school students will be getting taught computer science by 10+ year Physics teachers that took a 15 week Java course.

[0] I left a $100k Software Engineering job to become a Computer Science teacher... hoping to make a difference with the diversity issues in our field. Luckily I am married to someone that has a job that can pay the bills.

[1] There are at least 3 open Computer Science teaching positions in my district right now if anyone is interested! And in the next 2 years we will have enough students that we will need another CS teacher at my school.

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rebootthesystem10y ago· 2 in thread

Well, the other thing we need to do is look and treat schools differently.

To me every dollar legitimately (with a HUGE emphasis on the legitimate part) spent in schools is a valuable investment in the future. I hope that is a statement that cannot be disputed.

However, we've performed badly enough and have wasted so much money that we are in a situation where someone who thinks teachers ought to be able to make $150K per year would be laughed out of the room.

We are slowly destroying our country from the inside. And a big part of that is in how we are not educating our kids. And perhaps even our population in general. I mean, the fact that the Theory of Evolution is cause for debate in the US is down-right shameful and a sad indication of just how backwards some of our population is in their thinking.

The problem of schools and education is simple. It get's complicated when we are not united in an understanding of what our objectives should be.

What are they? In my view: science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and entrepreneurship. Arts belong in school as well but we are not going to float the boat on arts alone. STEM+E need to be our strong suit and our kids need to be exposed to the arts in order to see, feel and experience the beauty in the human condition.

hdctambienOP10y ago

I totally agree with you. I don't necessarily think that people who are currently teachers should make >$100k. But if teacher pay was competitive with industry pay then we would have more smart people competing for teaching jobs.

The problem with education is that old saying "people that can, do; people who can't, teach" but it's more like "people that can, do even if they would be really good at teaching because teaching doesn't pay nearly as much as anything else you can do with the same skills"

The way things are right now, who cares about tenure! If you fire all the bad teachers who are you going to replace them with? The only people that want those jobs are the applicants that weren't as good as the people that just got fired!

And like you said, an additional problem is that every state gets to decide what the goals for education are and those goals can get very political (see: evolution vs creationism, civil war vs war of states rights).

And the biggest blind spot for HN readers concerning education is that most of the students in school are not like you! Public (and some Private) Schools are full of students that would stare blankly into space all day rather than watch one Khan Academy video. It takes a lot of work and effort to provide an education to both the low achieving and the high achieving students, especially with 25:1, 30:1, sometimes 35:1 student to teacher ratios.

rebootthesystem10y ago

I would love to teach. I am very good at it. But I am also an entrepreneur to the core and hate, hate, hate bullshit.

I am one of two engineering mentors for our local FIRST FRC robotics team. Brilliant kids fully motivated to learn. I love it. We've built a bunch of neat stuff. I happen to own a lot of nice manufacturing equipment so we've taken advantage of that with the kids learning such things are running CNC and manual milling machines as well as soldering SMT, using DSO's etc.

Anyhow, one day I get hit with this business of having to register as an official school system volunteer in order to be able to be a mentor for the team. Mind you, FIRST has no such requirements, this is the school system bureaucracy meddling with things.

What did it entail? Filling out a bunch of forms that nobody could email me. I had to go to the main office and get them. And then they need to do a full-up background check, blood test and other crap. The process takes months. Oh, yes, and I have to pay for it.

Being that part of my work is in aerospace there are certain things I just can't do, at least not without involving certain checks and balances.

I flat out told the school system folks to go stuff it. I further threatened to fully fund the robotics team myself and pull it completely out of the the school. FIRST does not require teams to be attached to schools, so, technically, we could run it out of my warehouse and we'd be fine. The school folks took a few steps back and figured out a way to allow me to continue to be a mentor (after two years of doing it) without red tape. I suspect someone is making money somewhere by having this team be at the school. We are required to have a teacher associated with the team (one who knows nothing about nothing). My guess is he is getting extra bucks for having his name on a list somewhere.

This is just one example of why they don't attract better talent. We could have a lot more engineering mentors in this team but everyone recoils at some of the red tape they toss in front of you.

I know I and other practitioners could be amazing teachers and sources of inspiration for students. Yet, none of us has any interest in dealing with bullshit. And the school systems are permeated by it.

I mean, imagine the idea of having someone like Elon Musk do a physics lecture at a High School even once per semester. Think of the inspiration and effect that would have on kids. The effect would be very similar if you had passionate practitioners, perhaps less well known than Elon, yet passionate about their work, contribute to the education of our kids.

Money, to some degree, isn't the problem or the solution. We just don't have a good system. Teachers could be professional "inspiration organizers" who pull-in from the local and distant communities with the goal of blowing away kids with the passion, wonder and possibilities of the subject at hand, whether it is music, mathematics or physics. That. Something even a little bit like that. Would be amazing.

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saryant10y ago

I took computer science at a high school in Texas (graduated in '08). We were taught everything from basic imperative programming to analysis of algorithms (and this was just a public school, not a magnet school).

I keep in touch with my high school CS teacher and that school now offers four years of CS education with multiple CS teachers. Your profile says you're in Round Rock, I graduated from Seven Lakes near Houston. My experience does not match yours.

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