Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the ni-hao-ma dept.

Today, Mi is 33 and founder of a startup that aims to give Chinese kids the kind of education American children receive in top U.S. schools. Called VIPKid, the company matches Chinese students aged five to 12 with predominantly North American instructors to study English, math, science and other subjects. Classes take place online, typically for two or three 25-minute sessions each week.

Mi is capitalizing on an alluring arbitrage opportunity. In China, there are hundreds of millions of kids whose parents are willing to pay up if they can get high-quality education. In the U.S. and Canada, teachers are often underpaid—and many have quit the profession because they couldn't make a decent living. Growth has been explosive. The three-year-old company started this year with 200 teachers and has grown to 5,000, now working with 50,000 children. Next year, Mi anticipates she'll expand to 25,000 teachers and 200,000 children.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Francis on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:36AM

    by Francis (5544) on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:36AM (#444669)

    It's astonishing that this bullshit was actually modded up. The people who did that ought to be ashamed of themselves for encouraging this sort of mindlessness.

    In other words, you know nothing about public education and would rather bash unions that actually address any of the problems related to the system.

    Teachers require special certifications because teaching requires a lot more work than just mastery of the content area. I mean seriously, I deal with the results of untrained teachers on a more or less daily basis. Just because you know how to solve a math problem, does not qualify you to teach somebody else to do it. Most days I wind up cleaning up after a teacher that doesn't understand how to teach and I've made quite a bit of money over the years from that.

    The order you sequence material, the connections you draw, the things you gloss rather than cover, the things you cover rather than gloss and the approach you take all require special training if you want to do it effectively. But yes, let's just bash the unions that are actually advocating for the appropriate funding, because we all know that teachers are rich and do no work of any sorts.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=3, Interesting=2, Overrated=1, Total=6
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 22 2016, @12:29PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday December 22 2016, @12:29PM (#444695) Journal

    I'd say you're both right. There is more to teaching than knowing how to solve a math problem. Unions do degrade the quality and performance of teaching as a profession.

    I taught English in Japan, and the level of commitment by the teacher and his involvement with the totality of his student's life is on a whole other level from America. He spends most of his waking hours with him. If the student gets caught shoplifting or something like that, the cops call the teacher, not the parents. In America, thanks to unions, the teachers knock off at 2:30pm after having started at 8am; and in that 6.5 hour day they've had a 90 minute prep period and an hour lunch. So they work slightly more than a half day each day. They get about 50 flavors of religious holidays off, and they don't have to work for 3 months out of the year, in the summer. And, they are not held accountable at all for how many of their kids pass assessment test or what kind of grades they get or whether they can read or do basic math. For all that, they get paid multiples more than the median national salary, and enjoy very generous health and retirement benefits. And when they do something bad, it is nearly impossible to get them fired. (All this I have seen intimately from serving on the school board) Result: 2/3rds of the kid fail the state-wide tests. Not, "pass with an A, B, C, or D," but "F," for failure.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday December 22 2016, @04:25PM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday December 22 2016, @04:25PM (#444754) Journal

      In America, thanks to unions, the teachers knock off at 2:30pm after having started at 8am; and in that 6.5 hour day they've had a 90 minute prep period and an hour lunch. So they work slightly more than a half day each day. They get about 50 flavors of religious holidays off, and they don't have to work for 3 months out of the year, in the summer.

      As someone who actually taught secondary school in the U.S. for a few years (a little over a decade ago), you're exaggerating quite a bit. Most teachers I know spent several weeks of "summer vacation" doing planning, creation of new materials, etc. (because they knew they wouldn't have time during the regular year) and all the schools I worked for REQUIRED us to attend additional summer training sessions/conferences, which took up another 2-3 weeks. You're right that teachers get more "vacation" than most professions, but it's not the amount you claim. And frankly I was happy whenever I did get a long weekend or whatever, because it often finally allowed me to catch up on backed up grading.

      I've never heard of a public school with an "hour lunch." Teachers generally get a lunch period that's the same length as students get, which is typically around 25-30 minutes. That "prep period" is about the only time you have to not only prepare new materials, but to grade assignments, tests, etc., and there is NO WAY that 90 minutes is adequate prep time per day if you actually want to give real attention to your students.

      When I was teaching high school (math and physics), I had 140-150 students per year in six class sections. If I used that full 90-minute prep (and not every school has that much time during the school hours), that gives me approximately 36-40 SECONDS per student per day to grade assignments, tests, etc., and that's assuming I use no time at all to do things like, you know, PREP for teaching, make new handouts, test questions, project materials, etc., let alone basic stuff you might need to do like photocopies, administrative paperwork, etc. I don't think I ever had time to do any grading during a prep period, because I was always immersed in a variety of actual prep work and random administrative tasks each day.

      And actually at the 2 public schools I taught at, we didn't have a prep period each day: a couple days each week or during certain parts of the year we were assigned "duty" during those periods -- monitoring halls, lunchrooms, etc.

      Simply put, there's no way you can be a responsible teacher and get away with your "work slightly more than half a day each day." Have I known some teachers who basically did that? Sure. I knew some delinquents who did nothing, were out the door at 2:45pm each day, and got paid anyway. But most of my colleagues were there for hours either before or after school (or both). It was very rare that I spent less than 9 hours at school each day, and frequently I took additional grading home to do in the evenings or on weekends. And that's after I sacrificed a lot of more pedagogically sound stuff -- I eventually gave up on giving too many tests and quizzes that required detailed grading in my physics classes, for example. I resorted to "ScanTron" multiple choice things just to keep myself sane. And just consider the amount of attention required to grade even one lab report where you expect some "creative" thinking. For 150 students, even looking at each one for 2 minutes each, you're looking at 5 HOURS of grading for just one assignment. If you want to spend a decent amount of time fixing grammar, correcting more subtle mistakes, improving writing, etc. and do 5 minutes each, that's 12.5 hours of your time dealing with one lab report assignment.

      That stuff adds up FAST.

      The last year I taught high school, I moved to a private school that was one of those elite academies that's a feeder to the Ivy League. There I was lucky enough to have only around 50 students, but I worked harder than ever, because expectations were so much higher. Of the science teachers in the rooms around me whom I got to know well, all of us spent at least 9 hours/day, and those of us who didn't have kids frequently worked well into the evening, planning new labs and other creative activities, trying to get stuff to work, etc. We'd frequently go for a quick dinner together and continue until 7 or 8 or 9pm at night. I still recall the time my fellow physics teacher came into my room at something like 10:30pm one night to get something and found me asleep on a lab table, because I was so exhausted.

      Were we required to be there? No. But it was the school culture. And, you know, out of the 10 AP physics kids I had that year, 6 went on to Ivy League schools, so there's that. You have students ready to be challenged, and you need to meet their challenges, so you work harder. All of us did. At that school, if you disappeared right after the bell each afternoon, you probably wouldn't be hired back the next year.

      Anyhow -- bottom line: I know there are plenty of "slackers" in the profession, and plenty who take advantage of union rules (not possible in all states or school districts) to slack off more. But in my years actually teaching, those folks were far outweighed by the number of teachers I knew who were working far beyond the school day most days. And those teachers (again, which I say were the majority of teachers I worked with) were definitely not paid well given their effort and qualifications.

      Just my experience. Will likely vary significantly from school to school and depending on state law/regulations.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @06:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @06:01PM (#444783)

      U.S. teachers who give a shit, and there are a lot of them, will get to school earlier, stay there longer, and bring work home. They prepare for the next school year during the summer and go to mandated workshops. There are far less than "50 flavors of religious holidays off". Benefits and pay vary but are not that great in some states... and this is for someone with a college education.

      Stick to talking about Japanese schoolkids. Did any of them touch you inappropriately?

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday December 22 2016, @01:24PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday December 22 2016, @01:24PM (#444701) Homepage Journal

    There's something wrong with your reasoning...

    You agree, on the one hand, that "teacher require special certifications". I.e., one cannot be a teacher, unless one has certification X. Then you respond to criticism of these required certifications by saying "I deal with the results of untrained teachers on a more or less daily basis". If the certifications are required to be a teacher, then what exactly is an "untrained" teacher?

    I went to a lot of different schools in the US, because my parents moved a lot, basically a different school every year until high school. There were public schools, private schools, and at least one odd hybrid somewhere in between. The public schools, with their certified teachers, were by far the worst. Teachers who openly "didn't like boys". Teachers who couldn't stand kids who were smarter than they were. Teachers who didn't understand the material they were teaching. I'm sure they all had the right certifications, but too many of them were useless.

    In the non-public schools, the teachers generally did *not* have teaching certifications. Instead, they had subject matter qualifications. The teachers liked what they taught, and they taught because they liked kids and enjoyed teaching. These schools were - without exception - better than the public schools with their "certified" teachers.

    For very young kids - pre-school, kindergarten, maybe first and second grade - knowledge of child development and child psychology probably is more important than anything else. However, by the time 3rd or 4th grade comes, teachers need to have a deep knowledge and love of their subject. It should not be possible for a 10 year old kid to stump his math teacher. Geography teachers must know which continents countries are on. History teachers need to love history, so that they can convey its importance. Language teachers ought to be fluent in the language they are teaching. These things are *not* secondary to courses in pedagogy; the reverse is true. Pedagogy is something you teach on the side, to enable subject experts how to teach kids.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday December 22 2016, @04:50PM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday December 22 2016, @04:50PM (#444761) Journal

      If the certifications are required to be a teacher, then what exactly is an "untrained" teacher?

      I just wanted to note that the whole "certification" thing is a lot more complicated for public schools, particularly in "shortage" areas (which are typically math and science teachers in a lot of states). When I taught high school, I started off as uncertified -- in fact, the whole reason I even got into teaching was that I heard a news report about how many classrooms would be starting the school year with a substitute on the first day of school due to teacher shortages, so I started looking around for positions to do a bit of "public service" at that point in my life.

      Anyhow, it varied from state to state, but I was hired under what was called an "emergency permit" which generally granted teachers 3 years to become certified, thought there were some sort of exemptions that I think could allow that to even be extended another year or two under special circumstances. Things changed a bit with "No Child Left Behind" which was initially sold as something to stop this practice of uncertified teachers -- but most states basically just renamed things and ultimately ended up with a similar system.

      There's a LOT of this going on in most states. And once you factor in the "burn-out" factor among teachers, where the MAJORITY of new teachers leave the profession within ~5 years, you realize that a lot of these new folks either never finish their certification or quite soon after, meaning there's a LOT of uncertified teachers continuously required to staff public schools. Again, this is highest in areas like math or science, since people with those degrees are more likely to be able to find jobs with better salaries elsewhere.

      But the net effect of this whole certification shuffle at many public schools is that the worst public schools are often stuck with substitute teachers or people who are hired with no real hope of ever becoming certified in this area. The first school I taught math in, I was hired along with a woman who had a psychology degree. She was also assigned to teach general math, though as far I as can tell whenever I entered her classroom, the students did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. She seemed like a reasonable person, but I'm guessing she was just using this "emergency permit" thing to get a year or two hanging out with high school kids until she could actually find a job she'd prefer more.

      Not an argument for or against certification in general -- just noting that the system is NOT just as it is claimed to be where all public school teachers are certified. And certification requirements vary VASTLY from state to state, and expectations in individual universities for education degrees or teacher prep programs also vary significantly in rigor.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:20PM (#444770)

      In the first grade here, the problem "X - 9 = 9" was given, but with a blank instead of an X because variables are algebra.

      The teacher would accept 9 and 0 as possible answers. When asked by a volunteering parent why 18 was not acceptable, the teacher said it was incorrect because 2-digit numbers hadn't been covered.

      The kids will be confused forever because this causes inconsistency and because unlearning is hard.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:48PM

        by Francis (5544) on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:48PM (#444777)

        That's a problem I often encounter where there's multiple solutions, or usually methods, but only one of them has been covered.

        And yes, that solution would be wrong if they haven't gotten to the point where they've covered that. However, neither 9 nor 0 are correct answers to the problem as using a 9 would give you an inequality with 0 = 9 and 0 would also give an inequality as -9 is not 9.

        That kind of incompetent curriculum causes a lot of the students I get to still need help with remedial math. And not even math, a lot of them struggle just with arithmetic. They haven't even gotten to the point where they're doing anything other than strict calculation that you could just type into a calculator to do for you either.

        One of the hard truths is that the place where the best teachers need to be is teaching those beginning students as your first experience with new content is where you develop a sense of whether it's even possible to succeed.

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:43PM

      by Francis (5544) on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:43PM (#444773)

      That's because at the college level there's no requirement that you have ever had a teaching degree. It's a straight up masters in the content area and often times a PhD because clearly that qualifies them to teach. All too many colleges will focus more on the faculty's published work over their classroom abilities.

      The college I work at is pretty good over all, but there's little ability to really pick good part time faculty to fill out the mix. Many of them are only around for a few quarters anyways as it's not a viable living without working in multiple districts or having a second job.