Code.org Wants Participating Students' Data For 7 Years 90
theodp writes "As part of its plan to improve computer science education in the U.S., the Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates-backed Code.org is asking school districts to sign a contract calling for Code.org to receive 'longitudinal student achievement data' for up to seven academic years in return for course materials, small teacher stipends, and general support. The Gates Foundation is already facing a backlash from the broader academic community over attempts to collect student data as part of its inBloom initiative. The Code.org contract also gives the organization veto power over the district teachers selected to participate in the Code.org program, who are required to commit to teaching in the program for a minimum of two school years."
Self-serving philanthropy (Score:5, Insightful)
What else could be expected from names like Zuckerberg and Gates?
I'll bet they'll veto anyone who tries to use Linux or teach kids about privacy.
What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, even in a supposed "philanthropic" venture, I would always question the motive.
"Push until you meet resistance, then pull back, then push again when people aren't looking" that is the facebook/zuckerberg motto.
Re:Self-serving philanthropy (Score:2, Insightful)
inbloom runs their website on Linux (and their entire software stack is open source). Don't let reality intrude on your conspiracy theories.
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.inbloom.org
Microsoft was ruthless and anti-competitive during Gates's tenure. No one doubts that. But the Gates Foundation is a true philanthropic effort trying to solve really big problems - like improving public education and curing malaria, for fsck's sake. How exactly does curing malaria help Microsoft and Bill Gates? Efforts like Code.org are experiments - to determine if experiments succeed, they need to collect data and analyze it to make sure they are achieving the outcomes they want. Data-driven philanthropy is going to become more and more common - donors want to know their money is accomplishing something, not just giving them warm fuzzies.
Re:Self-serving philanthropy (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Code.org does not need centralized tracking of each individual student's activities over many years. Tracking student achievement; determining who has passed classes and qualified for credits; is the responsibility of the local school district and educators in the classroom. For improving quality of the educational materials, all Code.org needs is aggregate summary data, at the classroom level at the very finest-grained, and to encourage evaluation and feedback from classroom educators on how well each portion of the material engages/baffles/bores/frustrates/enlightens students.
An alternative approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill, Zuck,
Here's an alternative approach. Take your money out of offshore tax havens and pay your taxes so that voters can determine school policy. That may mean public schools, school vouchers, or any other approach with widespread support. Zuck, you've still got majority voting power, so you can even do that with your Face(whatever it is) company.
Re:Self-serving philanthropy (Score:5, Insightful)
The "good and the best," self-motivated learners with the drive and resources to seek out and find the best available resources, don't need Code.org in the first place. Yes, you learned to program and use a broad variety of devices --- without any help from Code.org (who didn't exist).
The Code.org project is primarily about reaching out to a broader selection of students who haven't already learned to program on their own resources. It's mass-educational-material for ordinary classroom students. As such, it should be held to a high standard of being educational in a broader sense than churning out factory-ready robots. Students who would discover the broad world of Free software on their own probably don't need Code.org. For everyone else, learning whether to think "outside the box" of proprietary products, or --- on the opposite side --- being brainwashed into being ignorant and terrified of everything outside that box --- is a matter of education. You can expand students' minds beyond what many would discover on their own; or, you can actively work to chain and constrict those minds. We should be extremely wary about turning the future of computer education over to Microsoft and Facebook's corporate interests. The "best and the brightest" will still escape; but they'll be sentenced to live in a world overwhelmingly populated by the mentally crippled products of megacorporate education.