public / private partnerships in Oregon and the future of math teaching

[kirby urner]

This post has an Oregon focus but I think scales to

other places.  Our ballot measure M-97 would up

the tax rate on Walmart, of Walmart Labs fame, 

where best / brightest use Node.js and such tools,

i.e. Chamber of Commerce types want students to

learn JavaScript and SQL etc.

So Walmart goes to the Teacher Unions, backing 

M-97, and says:  if we pay more taxes, what will you

do for your students in terms of JavaScript in return?

I think the teachers *might* say:  "mind your own 

business, math teaching is our profession, whereas 

you're a big box consumer store chain".  But since 

Walmart is expected to pump in millions, that's not 

diplomatic.

I think where Unions and Walmart would agree is 

more professional development (PD) is in the cards,

as we really do need to keep up with the technology

at some level, and what we're doing today is not 

what we wanna be doing tomorrow.

M-97 could result in chartering a lot more public 

schools (open to all), especially in light of the national

debate regarding free education (Sanders).  A lot of 

these new public schools would look a lot more like 

code schools than the high schools today, which 

means they'd do a lot more with servers and getting 

students comfortable with hosting their own domains 

or subdomains.

Given Technology Association of Oregon and IEEE

both have a vested interest in promoting a curriculum

that accounts for Silicon Forest needs, the infrastructure

for an accountability framework is already suggesting 

itself.  Just enumerating what Walmart and others 

(Nike, Intel...) would consider improvements, and 

then seeing if the teachers will commit in advance 

to any of them, will help determine the outcome of

the M-97 measure.

Kirby

Related blog post:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2016/07/measure-97.html

[Peter Farrell]

I don't know what to think about Walmart putting conditions on paying more taxes, but in this case it seems they're pushing for teaching some real-world skills. 

[kirby urner]

I don't think they can actually put conditions.  What they can do is come forward with curriculum reforms and ask:  if you had more money and training, would you agree in principle to implement something more like this?  It's good to ask now, ahead of the vote.

Kirby

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