
Request for Education Startups - hobaak
https://blog.ycombinator.com/request-for-education-startups/
======
shanev
Naval Ravikant's tweetstorm today is highly relevant to this [1]:

1/ If the primary purpose of school was education, the Internet should
obsolete it. But school is mainly about credentialing.

2/ Schools survive anti-educational behavior (i.e. groupthink) due to
symbiosis between institutions that issue and accept credentials.

3/ Employers looking past traditional credentials can arbitrage the gap.
@ycombinator made $Bs doing this for young founders.

4/ The more meritocratic an industry, the faster it moves away from false
credentialing. I.e., the MBA and tech startups.

5/ A generation of auto-didacts, educated by the Internet & leveraged by
technology, will eventually starve the industrial-education system.

6/ Until then, only the most desperate and talented students will make the
leap.

7/ Even today, what to study and how to study it are more important than where
to study it and for how long.

8/ The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet.
The best peers are on the Internet.

9/ The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s
scarce.

10/ Educational credentials are badges that admit one to the elite class.
Expect elites to struggle mightily to justify the current system.

11/ Eventually, the tide of the Internet and rational, self-interested
employers will create and accept efficient credentialing...

12/ ...and wash away our obsolete industrial-education system.

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/naval/status/912220382450524160](https://twitter.com/naval/status/912220382450524160)

~~~
untilHellbanned
Ycombinator doesn't care about credentials?

Sam Alton - Stanford Drew Houston - mit Collision brothers - mit/harvard
Airbnb guys - RISD

We could go on, so let's do...

Please tell me honestly if you think google Facebook Amazon Microsoft would be
where they were without the "traditional credentials" of their founders?
Stanford, harvard, Princeton, harvard, respectively.

At this point all these SV demigods like Ravikant (Dartmouth/Stuyvesant-look
it up) are just being irresponsible getting kids' hope up.

~~~
KGIII
Do those folks really count as traditional credentials?

Google founders suspended their Ph.D. programs.

Bezos has a BS.

Gates dropped out.

Zuckerberg dropped out.

~~~
sannee
> Gates dropped out.

> Zuckerberg dropped out.

Both of them managed to get into Harvard, which is an academic achievement in
itself though.

~~~
wellboy
Not as much really as it is about who you know.

------
graniter
It seems to me that education needs its own "industrial revolution." Education
with 30 kids and a teacher in a classroom for 9 months doesn't seem to scale
well. There aren't enough good teachers, and it's inefficient to have so many
kids together learning the same thing, and the same time, at the same pace.
It's too inefficient, and any improvements are going to be cost prohibitive.

I think we need to separate instruction, student work, and assessment.
Students should be able to receive instruction in multiple ways (1on1, group,
watch videos), do their work with something like TAs, and be assessed at their
own pace.

Japan is starting to see to super-star teachers that parent pay for. Why do we
always need a teacher to provide direct instruction in the classroom? Why
can't we reward the best instructors, like Kahn, by having kids be instructed
that way? The reason is because instruction, work, and assessment are not
separated now.

I wish there were more experimentation in education, but since everything is a
big ball of wax paid for with property taxes, there's a lot of reluctance for
anyone to experiment with their kid, and since it's all or nothing, there just
are minor experiments in the classroom

We need tech to find a way to scale the classroom and deliver it cheaply to
students, and I think we need a separation of concerns in order for that to
happen.

~~~
jpereira
It's kinda crazy that assessment has been coupled with instruction for so
long, it pretty obviously creates a warped incentive model that stands on some
real shaky ground.

I think the model also doesn't scale well for assessment, which prompts the
creation of few, ineffective, but highly scalable assessments upon which the
functioning of the entire system rest, which in turn prompts practices like
teaching to the test. This creates even more messed up incentives but this
time facing students and teachers as opposed to institutional practices.

I think that assessment, when decoupled, can't be done with an institution or
institutions. Instead we need social networks that use a consensus process to
define knowledge and who has it.

~~~
graniter
Agreed. I think about the analogy of interchangeable parts and if that might
apply to education. Maybe teachers should just teach and assessors should
assess. Interchangeable parts made it so equipment could be more efficiently
be manufactured. But that didn't preclude there being a lot of different types
of equipment. In fact, there's probably more types of equipment because of
interchangeable parts. So for education, having an assessor focus on
assessments, independent and separate from instruction, might make it so that
there could be easier to assess and more types of assessment, so the teacher
doesn't have to always do it. And that might help compare results across
teachers.

College Board owns SAT, AP, and (essentially) Common Core so there's been a
trend to tighter coupling. I like the idea of an AP Test that anyone can and
be assessed separate from the teacher. Same for SAT. I think we need more of
that model, not less.

~~~
germinalphrase
I agree that we need more and better assessment - but I don't understand why
we would allow a private body to do what should be a utility function of our
educational system. Currently, the College Board is able to fill this niche
(at great cost) due to a lack of trust in the assessments of individual
instructors. Rather than further increasing the cost of assessment by
expanding the use of private arbiters, we should seek to make the assessments
that are already taking place (in _far_ greater number and scope) more
reliable and trustworthy.

I believe this would take the form of a dedicated assessment tool that allows
teachers to create individualized assessments JIT based on - or in concert
with - their planning and performance workflow. If I'm teaching a structured
lesson on polynomials, I should be able to create a valid assessment simply be
requesting that one is made. My students should be able to take that
assessment on the spot and the results should be immediately available.

I will take assessments with 80% confidence of validity 10x/week over
assessments with 100% validity once per year every. single. time.

There's more to be said here - but that's the gist.

~~~
graniter
Why not have multiple assessors? Let people/parents/whoever pick who they
want. Some schools use ACT and others SAT. Having a single assessor seems
suboptimal. Alternatives tend to keep things more in check.

------
grendelt
_PLEASE_ have someone with an education background on your team. (Preferably
classroom experience.) Don't assume what teachers want and need. Don't just
survey teachers. Get them on your team and have them help steer your product
development.

~~~
randyrand
If you closely followed this advice, I don't think Kahn academy would have
been invented. What teachers want and what students needs are not the same.

~~~
germinalphrase
Perhaps, but KA is a supplement - not a replacement for - more traditional in-
person educational experiences.

~~~
sannee
KA lecture videos were much more in-depth and much more useful than any high
school math lesson I ever received.

I mean, Khan is obviously a top teacher, if he wasn't, he'd get replaced by
Johnie Academy or whatever pretty quickly. You can't really staff every high
school with top teachers, especially if they earn below average wage (that's
the case where I live).

It's also a feature of the whole digital format. The lecture can be bugfixed
until there are no mistakes left. And have you ever tried telling your high
school teacher to rewind 3 minutes and speak 2x times as quickly?

------
jpereira
These all seem to be assuming the institution-teacher-student model of
education we have today. Even the "New school models" section is assuming a
delivered experience, which has an institutional bent.

I think biggest area of disruption in education would be in building
fundamentally new architectures for educational systems, based on networks and
social communities instead of funnels and institutions. The latter have a
pretty huge list of undesirable properties and negative externalities,
especially in how they limit diverse experiences and learning.

An eye-opening read on this front for me has been Deschooling Society by Ivan
Illich [0]. It's insane how much of what he wrote 40 years ago still holds
true.

[0]
[http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1970_deschooling.html](http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1970_deschooling.html)

~~~
Pulcinella
The way to achieve your goals would be through lobbying your local school
district, state education agency, and state legislature (if your American). A
startup has limited power and no legal authority to change the public
education system.

~~~
jpereira
I don't think this needs to be directly tied to public education. My concern
is more that educational startups tend to assume an institutional model (i.e
an institutions defines what is being learned, how it's being learned etc
etc). They don't need to change public education but rather create services
that embody a different educational paradigm.

For example a matchmaking service for shared learning goals or interests could
for sure be within the power of a startup. Something like 42[0] but without a
fixed institution. Or community level organized learning environments for
various subjects. Or even to go more in the vien of Papert and Turtle, a npm
type system but with a strict pedagogical focus.

There's a ton of systems that can be hugely powerful without depending on a
classroom model or a school/institution. And there's no reason these can't be
as impactful or more as systems and services targeted towards
public/institutional education.

[0] [https://www.42.us.org/](https://www.42.us.org/)

~~~
germinalphrase
I am sympathetic, but an obvious hurdle is that our employment system is
largely biased toward that traditional pipeline. High school GPA/ACT Scores >
Various Tiers of High Education > Standardized Credentials for Employment.

I'm not sure how you would resolve the two (without, of course, cracking the
nut on a neutral, true-ability assessment system).

~~~
jpereira
I think the latter is possible, but even without there are options.

There's a long-tail of credential consumers beyond traditional employers that
holds a ton of value. Community level organizations, digital social networks,
even open-source communities.

There's also a decent set of skills that can't currently be measured or
conveyed by traditional standardized credentials.

Both of these represent an opportunity for a new academic/assessment paradigm
to step in and create real value today.

That being said there's definitely going to be huge hurdles in getting to
traditional employers, their logic is not necessarily based on best placement
or best skill set, but often times on bureaucracy/ass-covering/good-enough
mindset. Not to say that isn't valuable at very large scale organizations.

------
tonydiv
I would love feedback on my project BlockSchool from anyone who is interested
in ed-tech!

BlockSchool is an online coding school for kids ages 6 to 13. We hire teachers
from top colleges and companies like Stanford and Facebook, and connect them
with students who don't have easy access to high-quality instruction.

Our classes are conducted via video chat in a fun 3D block-based world where
everything can be controlled by writing Puzzle code (our visual programming
language), JavaScript, and Python. It's collaborative, social, and kids love
the creative freedom we give them.

We are focused on 1:1 and 1:2 instruction now which isn't 'scalable' but later
on, we plan on offering a help service for kids only when they get stuck or
need a new concept explained. This will lower the cost for students
substantially. We hope to follow in the footsteps of VIPkid on this front.

We are based in Seoul/SF, so we have a number of students in China, Japan, and
Korea already, but a majority of our customers are in the US.

If anyone is interested in offering feedback, here is our website:
[https://block.school](https://block.school)

We'll be applying to YC too! Hopefully our project is relevant to what they're
looking for. We're also growing quite fast :)

~~~
hobaak
I am running a startup that is a market place,
[http://greensprout.co](http://greensprout.co) for afterschool programs and
summer camp providers (limited to Bay area). Naturally I am interested in this
space. As a Korean, it is great to see startups working from Korea. The coding
school is getting popular. So, it is a good place to start. But, there are
many varieties. This seems to me like a tutoring service for computer
programming. As you said it is video chat, is there youtube video to introduce
the service? That will be helpful.

I have one kid, who is at your target. But I am not sure if I need tutoring
like for block programming. I am more interested in real programming. Also, it
is not clear what you will achieve at the end.

But, keep doing the good work since you have traction and I guess that people
like the teaching quality, which you need to keep it consistent.

~~~
tonydiv
How old is your child? Has he/she done programming before? We strongly believe
any beginner should start with visual programming first. Happy to share all
the reasons with you if you're interested.

Here's a short clip of a class (it's also on our website):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4xaiZrbD_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4xaiZrbD_Y)

------
Mz
Something I don't see on the list:

Homeschooling related startups

Big companies can be a unique resource for small, independent operations. In
k-12 education, some of the smallest and most independent are homeschooling
families.

They need to comply with state laws. They sometimes need to accommodate 2xe
students. They need to prove their children actually received an education.

There are no doubt other areas where they could use help. This is often done
currently via free websites, free email lists, etc. There is a homeschoolers
legal aid group or something. I was a member when I was homeschooling. So,
there are some supports already, but it tends to be pretty sparse and a lot is
local, homegrown.

~~~
philipps
Homeschooling is the right entry point for disruptive change. The new home
schooling community (as opposed to the traditional religion focused home
schoolers) is large and growing and much more open to new ideas than the
education system.

~~~
Mz
I was a secular homeschooler, so I forget that this distinction even needs to
be made. Thank you for bringing it up.

One subset of the homeschooling community is gifted kids who don't fit in well
at school. They frequently have either a very high IQ, above what gifted
programs are geared to, or are 2xE or both. Their parents are often well
educated and comfortably middle class. The needs of this populatuon would
likely be a good point of entry.

------
kodable
Oh hey! We're one of the companies on this list :)

We went through IK12 (now a part of YC, same people) and it was the single
best decision we ever made for Kodable. Education companies have some pretty
unique problems, and it is almost guaranteed that the partners will have seen
it before, know how to handle it, or at least be able to connect you with
someone that has. At this point I think that YC/IK12 companies have a presence
in pretty much every school in the USA and most countries around the world, so
the network of edtech startups you get access to is just incredible.

Edtech startups can be really hard, but this is one of the few things you can
do that will actually make it just a little bit easier. If you have any
questions please feel free to reach out - Jon at Kodable dot com

------
snomad
May I point out - to YC and others interested in the space - their is a fairly
large market for continuing education. Nurses, accountants, lawyers, and lots
of other industries require practitioners keep up to date and take courses
throughout their professional career. Perhaps their are not enough students to
warrant a massive big name startup, but there are definitely enough students
for a reasonable sized businesses.

~~~
Swizec
In fact, there is a huge cottage industry of exactly this in at least the
software engineering world. Several companies with enough revenue to make any
seed-stage startup sneeze.

Making tens of thousands of dollars for a 2 day workshop/corporatetraining is
not unheard of. No millions of dollars from VCs required.

------
ams6110
> For instance, we believe there’s potential for a company to build a service
> that meaningfully connects schools and parents, and to charge parents for
> the service.

I disagree. I already pay taxes, book fees, technology fees, extracurricular
fees to my school district. I would not pay another cent for anything I didn't
have to pay.

A big problem in K-12 education today is actually over-involvement of parents.
Helicoptering, or whatever you want to call it. Sure a teacher wants parent
support -- but from home. They do not want to, do not have time for, and
should not be dealing with 20 parent interactions a day, technology-assisted
or not.

~~~
jacquesm
The bigger problem is that it would make it much harder for poor parents to
keep up with the richer ones because they _could not afford the service_.

~~~
jamestimmins
This problem has a solution (albeit an imperfect one), which is charging
wealthier schools more in order to charge more poor schools less. Obviously
that model has drawbacks, but it may work better with a tech product than
other areas, where marginal cost is relatively small.

~~~
BadassFractal
We already have that, it's called Title I:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_and_Secondary_Educa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_and_Secondary_Education_Act#Title_I)

------
pier25
I work in an education company. As ironic as it sounds, we've found the
biggest factor that is stoping change in K12 education is that teachers
systematically refuse to learn anything new.

It's not in the US though so YMMV.

------
ChicagoDave
If I didn't have five kids, one in college, and monthly financial minimums
that preclude taking time off from regular work, I'd jump at applying for YC.
I even _had_ a great ed-tech startup... 5 years ago ...

Textfyre Final Presentation, 2012
[http://plover.net/~dave/textfyre/Textfyre%20Investor%20Prese...](http://plover.net/~dave/textfyre/Textfyre%20Investor%20Presentation%20September%202012%20V3.3.pdf)
(The slide with the team has been removed...no need to share that info)

We were in talks for a couple of months with Gates Foundation, but our timing
was off. They had just pivoted away from helping startups to giving millions
of dollars to big education publishers like Pearson.

I gave up after realizing that I'd vastly under-estimated the networking (and
cash) requirements in even proving the plan. Education is a really hard
business to crack and we were targeting textbooks.

Fast-forward a couple of years, maybe 2014-15, and I'm listening to a gal from
Pearson being interviewed on NPR. She's essentially spouting many of
Textfyre's ideas (embedded testing, interactive content, variable reading
levels).

I laughed and cried at the same time.

The funny part is, not a single person ever told me the plan was bad. They
just told me the education business sucks and it would cost a lot of money.
But bar-none, everyone _loved_ the plan. And this goes through to today. I
chat about this plan once in awhile with someone that's peripherally
interested in ed-tech and they all say, "Why aren't you still working on
THAT!"

I'd love to. Write me a check.

------
jacquesm
> For instance, we believe there’s potential for a company to build a service
> that meaningfully connects schools and parents, and to charge parents for
> the service.

I'm sure that will play well with parents that are already straining under the
load. This sort of thing is so rife with bias that it is _very_ hard to step
away from your privileged position for the 30 seconds that it takes to vet the
idea that you have to wonder why this cycle repeats over and over again.

 _Any_ kind of parental contribution to the school system outside of taxes
will end up as a way to differentiate between the haves and the have-nots and
at best will lead to children from disadvantaged environments not being able
to take part in fun stuff, at worst it will disadvantage them even further.

This kind of thinking seems to be present in more than one YC project, the
misguided attempt at their version of 'basic income' which fails to take even
the most basic precautions against doing damage rather than improving things
is another.

------
baron816
I don't know if this exists, but I think something like a "GitHub for
textbooks" would be valuable. Let people (teachers or otherwise) collaborate
together on open source textbooks and create a pretty UI for reading those
books (like GitBook).

------
alphonsegaston
I really hope this isn't driven by a desire to capitalize on the coming wave
of school privatization under DeVos. What she and her compatriots have done to
Michigan's school system is not only a tragedy for the communities they serve,
but also a demonstrable failure:

[http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-
michigan-s...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-michigan-
school-experiment-232399)

Tech lipstick on underperforming, segregated, for-profit schools isn't going
to make them any prettier.

------
adamsea
School has played a socialization role for kids and a role in the community -
teachers have often been role models, and education has often extended beyond
the subjects taught, to, at its best, teaching deeper life skills.

And then of course there are various troubled or at-risk populations of
students where no amount of educational technology will help because they come
from broken homes and underserved communities.

This is not to denigrate the idea of Education Startups, but rather, to point
out the broader scope of "education".

------
BinaryIdiot
I used to work as a developer for an online charter school many years back so
this space is very familiar. I even thought about starting my own company and
breaking into this space because the software I worked on wasn't very good (it
was miles above what was already out there, for sure, but I thought there were
many places that could be improved).

The problem I ran into, which completely discouraged me at the time, was that
of making money. You need a significant amount of capital to sell to a private
school and a public school requires sales cycles of at least a couple of
years. It just wasn't possible with me already having a family, mortgage, etc.

I would love to see the whole thing get disrupted. I even think about doing
something in it from time to time. Having YC behind you would certainly be a
big help. One big issue you face is that you're going to be teaching children
and helping to shape their minds so _you must_ use valid scientific research
to back up your ideas less we create a generation of adults who cannot think
about the world. This is the biggest hurdle, IMO, because it's so easy to just
appeal to someone's bias narrative. For example "brain games" which "train"
your brain basically only train it to play those games but they're still
hugely popular and sometimes marketed to the same demographics.

~~~
barry-cotter
> One big issue you face is that you're going to be teaching children and
> helping to shape their minds so you must use valid scientific research to
> back up your ideas less we create a generation of adults who cannot think
> about the world.

Don't let the barely adequate be the enemy of the actively harmful. Most
education research is of low quality and education does not incorporate known
effective techniques like mastery learning or spaced repetition.

Education degrees and education research deserve all the respect they get.

~~~
hdctambien
Honestly, fixing the education of educators would be the best long term
solution.

Alternatively, creating a complete, ready-to-go curriculum package for every
course (as defined in every state) that could be handed to _anyone_ might be a
startup-able solution to that problem.

Although, that might also just be a patch that leads to a local maximum of
not-very-good teachers teaching from better-than-before curriculum. Where
making better teachers would lead to better teaching (eventually).

~~~
germinalphrase
I believe there is opportunity in giving teachers better tools to teach _as
well as they are capable_.

Teaching is difficult enough from a personal performance and logistical
standpoint that there is low hanging fruit in simply helping teachers be their
best professional self.

For example: I have approx. 200 high school level students. If I assign them
to write _one page_ I have just given myself 200 pages of assessment to
complete. Assessing writing is more cognitively demanding than simply reading
200 pages, so if I can read and provide feedback on each page in 3 minutes -
working non-stop - I have 10 hours of work. I have 5 hours of prep time per
week which is primarily used for preparing the 7 hours a day I spend actively
in class with students. Given that we don't complete just one assignment per
week - you can see the logistical difficulty.

I teach english. There are commenting/notemaking tools in almost every online
word processing toolset, but none of them are streamlined for assessing
writing (i.e. providing rubric based feedback, rapidly annotating with custom
or pre-created notes, allowing for layered annotations to identify different
structural features of writing). There's opportunity in figuring out what
teachers already do and slash the time required to do it.

~~~
hdctambien
I completely understand. I teach AP Computer Science to about 100 students a
year and I assign _many_ Open Response questions which are solved by writing
code by hand on paper. I grade these using the same rubric as the College
Board which takes into account much more than "would it compile". For every
hour of homework I assign my students, I assign myself double digit hours of
grading.

Some AI + a pool of previously graded assignments could probably automatically
pre-grade essays (or my open response questions) with comments and notations
which would allow a teacher to skip the 100% correct papers, and focus on the
hot-spots of the others. Automatically identifying plagiarism (via the
internet and other students) would be a nice side effect, too.

Those kinds of solutions seem way more useful than Yet Another
Gradebook/Attendance System or a Teacher->Parent Chat Room or even Distributed
Tutoring Systems.

------
ontouchstart
A lot of great ideas and important issues on Education startups can be found
in this 5-hour long video "Technology In Education: Witnesses testified on
technological advances in education." recorded on OCTOBER 12, 1995.

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?67583-1/technology-
education](https://www.c-span.org/video/?67583-1/technology-education)

~~~
philipps
I second this. The panel includes true visionaries like Adam Kay and Seymour
Papert. Seymour's comment about kids learning french in France remains one of
the most compelling suggestions for the type of technology-supported learning
we should be focusing on. The comments above contain many of the reasons why
change is hard and slow, but education needs more of these kinds of big ideas
rather than incremental improvements of the current system. I also find it
useful to distinguish between the process of learning and the system of
education.

------
sjg007
I would like something that increases parental involvement or at least
oversight of their kids. 1:1s and close contact with your manager or team in
problem solving is invaluable. What does that mean in the context of a
classroom? Is it valuable? Teachers probably have 120 kids at some level so it
may not scale.. And I think it's to early or weird to have kids participate in
a stand up but an app to help parents understand what kids are working on and
how they can help would be interesting. How can you improve the feedback
loops. I think kids hit critical periods where they don't understand something
and may not have the skills necessary to solve so providing some sort of peer
pair (programming?) may help? Maybe start this in AP CS or a high school
programming class or something and see if it is effective.

The other idea is work/life balance for kids in school. How do you monitor
that and help them? I think kids have more energy but at the same time need
downtime etc.. What does that mean in the context of education etc..?

~~~
jeffmould
My fiance's children just started in a new school system and they use an app
called ClassDojo that is intended to increase involvement between teachers,
parents, and the students. At any given time, my fiance can login, see photos
of what the kids are doing in class, send/receive messages with the
teacher(s), check grades/assignments. Compared to their previous school
system, the level of involvement is beyond compare. Her son who is in middle
school also uses an app called Remind that has all the assignments and
communication between parent/teacher/student on specific assignments.

~~~
2arrs2ells
ClassDojo and Remind are both alumni of ImagineK12/YC Education!

~~~
jeffmould
I can't speak from personal experience, but based on my fiance's feedback they
are great tools!

------
Kevin_S
I know it doesn't fall neatly into any of those categories, but I'd love some
feedback on my idea:

I want to create an organization that is essentially a 6 week retreat for
students before they begin college. Selecting the best applicants possible,
they will go through rigorous training to become their most successful selves,
covering Academics, Social life, Health, and Lifestyle topics. Elements of
secrecy will help it's applicant pool, I was heavily inspired by the Bohemian
Club.

Long term, the alumni network itself will more than make up for the cost, in
turn making the applicant pool stronger and stronger.

It's an aggressive plan, and requires years of building up from the ground.
But it's my dream to make it happen.

~~~
MikeTheGreat
"Selecting the best applicants possible"

I predict stunning success, based on this sentence alone.

That said - I think that providing help for people who are already doing well
is nice, but it doesn't really support the real goal of public education:
educating (all of) the public.

Unless you're thinking that this will be a great for-profit biz, with the most
successfully students+parents most able to pay top dollar for this?

In which case - yeah, you've got a solid idea. It's essentially the same as
idea as going to Harvard/Yale/Cornell/etc. If you can get a good round of
'seed families' (students+already successful parents) it just might work.

~~~
Kevin_S
Sorry I didn't see your comment until now.

Right, it is intended to be a for-profit business, not really interested in
tackling better education for everyone.

Long term I think a great case will be made for taking some % of students that
couldn't afford it, just based on their accomplishments/skills to date.

Rich parents send their under-14 yr olds to a summer camp (just for fun &
MAYBE some sports lessons) and pay 10k+. For a program proven to boost their
kids' chance of success, I think they'd be willing to pay even more than that.

------
peterburkimsher
I'm making my own learning materials for self-studying Chinese.

[https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)

VoiceTube is a similar startup company that scaled this up to help people
learn English.

[http://www.voicetube.com](http://www.voicetube.com)

I have no idea how to turn my Chinese-learning data into a practical business.
I emailed 100 Chinese teachers in universities around Taiwan, but didn't get
any replies.

If someone wants to do the business and marketing, I'm happy to give you
everything I've done so far.

~~~
rahimnathwani
> [https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)

> I have no idea how to turn my Chinese-learning data into a practical
> business.

A couple of suggestions:

1) Find someone learning Chinese who's physically near you (so you can be in
the same room) but who you don't know personally, e.g. someone at a meetup.
Open your site, and give them your laptop and observe what they do. (Don't ask
them questions, until they get stuck and ask for help. Just observe.)

2) Try to answer these questions:

\- What do you have now (data and/or functionality)?

\- To what people could those be useful?

\- In which contexts?

\- What else would they need in order to get started using this?

3) Try out some other Chinese learning tools (ChinesePod, Popup Chinese,
Decipher Chinese, Chairman's Bao, ...) and, for each one, make notes on paper
about each thing that happens after you first visit the site (or open the
app). That will help you understand onboarding flows.

My email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss in detail. I'm in Beijing,
so same time zone as Taiwan.

------
jerrac
I work in the IT department at a community college. One of the biggest costs
we face is our ERP, Ellucian's Banner. I'm not on that team, but the number of
times I've been interrupted by them talking about a problem in Banner is
really really high.

AFAIK, the biggest reason there are no real competitors is that Ellucian does
a good job packaging the law and regulation related stuff for financial aid.
Apparently that's difficult enough that no open source alternative or non-open
source company has been able to do better.

I'd love to see someone fix that problem.

------
gnicholas
Interesting that learning science is not represented in the categories —
something along the lines of:

 _" There's lots of research on ways in which material can be presented that
makes it easier for kids to learn. We would encourage companies that have
relevant expertise and the ability to bring research-backed technology to
market."_

Or is there not an interest in something like this?

------
pergadad
I work on the policy side of digitalisation. Looking at the things listed in
the YC call this all doesn't seem too much line the things that are really
needed. Here some major issues that education (thinking here mainly about
schools but this covers all sectors. And about developed counties other than
the US, which has a strange, immensely commercialised education) faces : \-
cost (depending on the country education can be 3-8% of GDP), most of which is
salary \- equity - even in the best of countries kids with the right parents
fare much better \- changing demographics - massive increases (including
migrants but also due to housing cycles etc) in some areas while in some
villages a school might end with 6 students, all at different ages. \- how to
truly personalise learning (without kids being on devices all day or teachers
having to insert massive amounts of data) \- teacher training in subject
matter, technical skills and pedagogies, while time and resources are limited
\- lack of good teachers (often due to pay...) \- relevance of learning
content and methods \- improving assessment \- lack of time for teachers
(choose resources, plan lessons, learn new rules /curricula, do a lot of
admin,... -measuring impact of new policy /tools /... (issues are scale, the
direct cause-effect link, worry about too much /instructive tracking, etc)

I think for none of these there are any good solutions out there short of
throwing money at the system, which few places can /want to do. For anything
to find actual uptake in education it needs to be timely, cost-effective, easy
to train /use, respect very specific laws, and tested /proven in a real
setting.

There are huge concerns about issues such as vendor lock-in. And looking at
some of the proposals listed, there are things that seem crazy /near-evil, eg
the suggestion to give a system free to schools but let parents pay.

This seems like a rather negative post, but I just mean to give a bit of
perspective. Education is complex, deeply personal, so emotional, immensely
important, shapes and determines society and our common future. There is a
massive amount of both idealism and frustration on the part of the people
involved (especially teachers) . Most have experienced a dozen broken tech
promises and been covered in advertising leaflets of questionable commercial
providers.

All that ends with either the same pretty much evil players dominating this
complex market (everyone in education hates Pearson but few can avoid using
some of their products as they know how to play the system, including the
funding models and rules ), or with an increased influx of highly commercial
tech players (Google, Microsoft, Apple,) which don't understand/care for the
aims of education and just see a massive market and an opportunity to train
the next generation of users on their systems.

Maybe you'll have some ideas... :-)

------
v4n4d1s
It's not K-12, but some of you may be interested in reading this paper about
the online exams service at ETH Zurich (Switzerland).

[http://dspacecris.eurocris.org/handle/11366/478](http://dspacecris.eurocris.org/handle/11366/478)

------
jxramos
I wonder if the Ycombinator folks may have recently watched School Inc
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrDfCy5Q9wI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrDfCy5Q9wI))

------
MozillaUser
Please make an alternative computer science DEGREE, YES with a DEGREE
(equivalent to brick and mortar) that is affordable and suitable for working
adults

------
ankyth27
A professional football player starts playing at the age of 4-5, a
professional dancer starts practicing right from childhood, but I see most
people only get interested in code when they need a job and they start
fearing. Our education system should introduce problem solving and coding
right from primary classes, teachers should be trained exclusively for these,
and the big G, F and others should collaborate with government/NGOs to produce
better curriculum and teachers.

~~~
Kevin_S
Disagree. Coding is one of hundreds of skills that can lead to a good career,
and coding is absolutely not for everyone.

Football/dance are extra-curriculars, I am all for coding being an option
early on (high school?) but not anytime before then. If a kid shows an
interest in coding, they'll find a way. And parents nowadays are more aware of
it as a viable option

Even if this seems worth it anyway, a teacher "trained" in coding is not a
programmer I would trust to teach my kids coding, and hiring CS majors would
be monumentally too expensive. At the end of the day it's not practical.

~~~
tonydiv
Why not before high school? As someone teaching kids, they grasp the concepts
just fine at young ages and if the material is presented in a fun and
personalized way, they tend to enjoy it more than other subjects (depending on
how those are taught).

Actively exposing your child to coding will greatly increase the likelihood
they pursue it later on.

Our pricing is as low as $22.50 per hour with a friend, which I consider
pretty affordable compared to many extra curriculars!

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
There's no issue with having an introduction to computer classes and the
fundamentals to some, but the original comment was more in the line of making
it a mandatory class. They need exposure, but it shouldn't be forced on them.
Fostering an interest is far better than demanding kids sit in a 40 minute
class to learn functions.

Also $22.50 may seem cheap, but it is quite expensive especially if a family
has 2-3 kids that they'd like to enroll.

------
baby_wipe
TeachBay (for grade schools) - Parents bid in an auction for seats in a
teacher's classroom at the beginning of the school year, instead of having the
principal assign students to teachers. This will reward the good teachers,
punish the bad ones, and give everyone an incentive to do better.

~~~
jeffmould
While I believe your idea is with good intent and I am not going to bash you,
I would strongly consider going back to the drawing board on this idea. I
can't even imagine the number of ways this could possibly go wrong. From
punishing lower-income students where parents are able to compete for the
"good teachers", abuse by parents to punish a teacher, and even going as far
as to create a racial barrier within the school preventing access to "good"
teachers by parents blocking access to classes.

~~~
baby_wipe
The number of ways this could possibly go wrong - It's true. It could end up
being a disaster. But there are also probably unimaginable ways it could go
right.

Lower-income students being punished - Lower-income students are already being
punished for living in poor neighborhoods and being forced to go to terrible
schools. Parents are already competing for good teachers by moving to
wealthier neighborhoods. It wouldn't bother me one bit that some kids would
get better teachers than others because I believe this system would provide
better education for all students in an absolute sense.

Abuse by parents - I'm not sure what mean by "abuse". I am certainly not
advocating for physical violence. I wouldn't use the word "abuse" for teachers
having to be responsive to parents' demands.

Racial barrier - I'm not sure why anything in this proposed system would
inherently be racist.

~~~
jeffmould
To address "abuse by parents", I am not referring to physical violence. Abuse
by parents in the sense that a group of parents can conspire to "punish" a
teacher they perceive as being unfair to their child by not bidding on that
teacher's class, potentially resulting in the teacher being fired.

The racial barrier doesn't mean that it has to be inherently racist. It can
simply mean that, for example, white parents avoiding African-American
teachers. Or vice-versa. A bidding system such as this could potentially
result in an unintended segregation within the school.

In many school systems, there is already a "bidding" process among schools
that put the good teachers at the good schools and the bad teachers at the bad
schools. It is called school choice and allows parents to choose which school
their child goes to.

------
cosinetau
Anyone want to take a crack at MyMathLab?

~~~
peterburkimsher
Speaking of maths, I'd like to see a cheaper TI-83.

Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/768/](https://xkcd.com/768/)

~~~
cosinetau
Do you mean wolfram alpha?

~~~
cosinetau
Or, whatever you know. You can reinvent the wheel for all I care.
[https://play.google.com/store/search?q=ti-83](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=ti-83)

------
bluetwo
What about corporate educational systems?

------
jfaucett
I've been slowly working on an idea in this area for a while and and would
love to be able to work on it full-time, part of its a software problem and
that's the only part I've been working on thus far. I'm not doing this for
monetary reasons at all, and don't really see how VC would ever be the right
solution and lawmakers probably wouldn't allow it to happen either. But anyway
I'll put the gist of the idea up here. I'd like to see what everyone thinks.
I've been working on it anyway even if it is completely futile, just because I
at least want the software for this to exist and maybe somewhere, some
government would allow it to happen. So here goes.

Basically, number one indicator of success in school (excluding socio-economic
factors) is having good teachers and very low student/teacher ratios, ideally
1-1 for most tasks (i.e traditional tutoring) and very small groups i.e. 3-5
per teacher for group work. Small groups have tons of benefits from keeping
kids focused to dealing with misbehaving kids, etc.

Anyway, the idea consist in doing away with the traditional concept of a
teacher at the primary school level (but eventually all levels). You can do
this by hiring all your teachers on an hourly basis and leveraging college
students, stay at home moms/dads, or just anyone with a GED and wanting to
make a few extra bucks on the side. These teachers can work even just a couple
hours a week if they want. Also, you don't have to have high standards on
anything other than the teachers ability to communicate, being nice and
helpful,liking to work with kids, and having a GED. The calculations I've done
allow you to cut your student/teacher ratios by about a factor 3-4 and
additionally allow for special tutoring of kids who need it for a couple hours
a week.

Another key aspect of the model is that now kids are in smaller groups and can
be paired with others who work roughly at their own pace, also I want to note
that age no longer plays a role in determining which classes a student is in.

The whole time we're doing this the teachers and students are using software
that has learning algorithms designed to tailor learning materials to the
particular student. That student, then has a personalized and adaptive
learning pathway through the digital courses at his school. There is also no
longer the idea of a particular "year of work". Students take a comprehensive
exam to exit every class and a fully comprehensive end of year exam for the
courses they have mastered in that years time frame. All students can move
more or less freely to and from groups and take these exams whenever they
want, skipping entire courses if they have already mastered the materials and
can prove it by passing the exams. So its not age but ability which determines
where a student is placed. You can think of a school year (or a entire primary
through high school curricula) as a graph where the classes are nodes and to
go from one class to the next all a student needs to do is pass a particular
exam.

The only real pedagogical emphasis is that we try to teach students how to
teach themselves and provide them the digital materials to do so. Also my
dream would be to be able to offer this to kids from the poorest neighborhoods
first, because they're the ones who would benefit the most from a small group
learning environment and 1-1 tutorship.

Anyway, that's the idea. If anyone is interested in helping out, please ping
me up (email in bio). Right now the software is slow going since its just been
me and my brother working on this in our spare time. Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
hdctambien
You have to imagine a school full of children like a room full of hackers that
will work harder to break your system than they will to follow it.

On this forum people say "all you need is a library card" to learn Computer
Science, but you also need to _read_ those library books.

How does your system deal with students that just refuse to do anything?

~~~
jfaucett
> How does your system deal with students that just refuse to do anything?

How is this dealt with in normal schools? From what I remember, students that
didn't do anything just got passed on to the next year (maybe having to go to
summer school which just meant showing up and you get passed on to the next
grade).

Obviously, software can only help minimally here (by giving teachers better
insights sooner into which students aren't doing their assignments, etc). I
think overall, you really have to lower student/teacher ratios a lot. This
helps significantly with misbehaving or problem kids in my experience and
creates a more personal connection to the teacher.

If you have any ideas yourself on ways to solve this problem I'd really like
to hear them.

