15 ms·

If the U.S. Won't Pay Its Teachers, China Will

122 points by kawera 10y ago

Pilfer 10y ago
For anyone wondering what VIPKid lessons look like, here is a sample demo of one from their Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5fb0KlUjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5fb0KlUjU
- superplussed 10y ago
  It's interesting how overly animated he is given that the student is not a child, but you can tell that she is pulled in by all of that energy. But if you look at other videos you'll see that most teachers are a little more contained (and maybe sane-seeming): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swc0RTrxjpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swc0RTrxjpw The one thing, I saw that in their teacher training they aim for a 70/30 ratio of student to teacher speech and I haven't found any videos where that was the case. Though maybe it is only for more advanced students. Overall a really nice platform though!
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    >It's interesting how overly animated he is given that the student is not a child Absolutely don't knock this. I teach robotics and tech part time to middle schoolers and if there's one thing that has helped me connect more than any other its being a living cartoon. Exaggerate everything. You should be half-way to full clown when lecturing or you're simply not getting through. To prep for lessons, I don't study circuits, I watch CN. I'm a 40yo man who quotes Rick and Morty and can name all of the Crystal Gems. But it works like crazy.
    - hash-set 10y ago
      Ha! I found out the same thing teaching college students!
spiderfarmer 10y ago
It continues to amaze me that the US is so unambitious in this regard. Donald Trump on education: http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Education.htm http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Education.htm His solution? School choice, competition. Completely ignoring what the 25 countries do that rank higher when it comes to education.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Our current regrettable situation originates in a century's worth of extremely ambitious educational systems design. Taking a step back from such things doesn't seem like all that bad an idea; we've had enough schoolmen on horseback to last us quite a while.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Completely ignoring what the 25 countries do that rank higher when it comes to education. You mean have lots of Asian and white students but not so many black ones? Unfortunately it would be kind of racist to do that. Trump is hoping to come up with a plan that helps all Americans, rather than simply excluding the underperforming ones from the stats. https://web.archive.org/web/20150525165748/http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-average-american.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150525165748/http://super-econ... (Archive search is down, but search archive also for this URL: https://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html https://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abo... )
  - altcognito 10y ago
    It is fair to have doubts that charter schools will be regulated enough and held accountable by a guy who was largely elected on "getting rid of all that red tape". http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/06/22/michigan-spends-1b-on-charter-schools-but-fails-to-hold/77155074/ http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/06/22/mi... When we turn children and education into a commodity, the problem is not going to get better. The system will be turned into a cost center for the country, and we'll get what we deserve per the usual.
bko 10y ago
> In the U.S. and Canada, teachers are often underpaid—and many have quit the profession because they couldn't make a decent living Is there a source for this? I often hear similar notions lamenting the demise of US education spending but from what I can tell, the US spends more than most other countries per student. And spending has been growing in practically every respect > This graph shows that average education expenditures per pupil (for fall enrollment) rose from $3,400 in 1965 to $8,745 in 2001. This graph shows that spending on education from all sources—local, state, federal, and others—rose from $249 billion in 1990-91 to $442.7 billion in 2000-01 and $501.3 billion in 2003-04. This graph shows that the federal investment in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act rose from under $2 billion in 1966 to $15 billion in 2000 and $25 billion in 2005. [0] Perhaps teachers are underpaid, but where is the money being spent going? [0] https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart....
- the-dude 10y ago
  I thought it was telling that in 'Breaking Bad' the chemistry teacher needs a second job at a carwash. And nobody seems surprised or finds it odd.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    He had extra expenses due to having a special needs son. His wife was pregnant and presumably not working at the time. Also, they probably had too nice of a house if they had those other financial pressures. Their biggest financial problem was probably their impulse to overspend on big ticket items "because my family is worth it". If I recall correctly, his wife pressures Walter to go to an oncologist that wasn't on their plan. In general, teachers tend to have better than average healthcare options. Chemotherapy for newly discovered cancer is almost always covered. If it's not, local news stations would love a story about a local science teacher who gets cancer that the big bad insurance company won't cover. Me extrapolating here, but it's possible that they also spent big on different off-plan options for their son.
    - 10y ago
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Good story about Cindy Mi transitioning her business to online, and also the teachers in the USA now getting 20+ dollars an hour with remote flex time work. Off topic, but as a computer programmer I have been hired twice in the last ten years by customers in China: I told my friends I was trying to reverse the balance of trade imbalance <grin>. Anyway, even with the time zone differences, it was fun.
ceejay 10y ago
First, in the US I think we need to convince a substantial chunk of the population that it's not religion that will solve our problems, but better education.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Probably you should start by providing evidence of this. Most of the evidence I've seen suggests we are far past the point of diminishing returns on education, and we should have less education rather than more.
  - sehr 10y ago
    note they said "better", not "more"...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - metaobject 10y ago
    Less education? Did I miss the obvious joke/sarcasm here?
    - hash-set 10y ago
      I think what he/she meant is that higher education has become the new high school. What we need is a restoration of secondary school education, not "universal college degrees." That, and we need to re-value our currency in the same fashion.
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Actually I meant that we should probably send fewer people to college and have fewer people graduate high school. Maybe some of them should go to trade school instead, but generally we should just reduce the quantity of education provided. Most education seems to be wasteful; see Bryan Caplan's writings on the topic, for example.
brownbat 10y ago
The most moving and informed coverage of the US education system I've heard have all been through This American Life.[0][1][2][3] Ok, there's an easy four hours of content to listen to. Enjoy! The short takeaway for me was basically that local funding through property taxes is a terrible idea if you want anything approaching fairness. If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school system is great, your kids probably go to a great school. If you are struggling to get by, though, living in an apartment? Your kids are usually banned from going to that same great school by law. It's like anti-literacy laws were too obvious, so we just made them more byzantine. [0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t... [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-two http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/t... [2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/house-rules http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/h... Significantly, on how redlining contributed to the achievement gap. The heartbreaking story of why a girl who wants to go to school down the road is turned away. [3] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a... A description of another poor high school where the kids basically have recess, lunch, or permanent substitutes all day, because it's failed by local control.
- greghendershott 10y ago
  > If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school system is great, your kids probably go to a great school Such affluent towns are effectively private schools by other means. They are a kind of boarding school where the entire family resides.
- phd514 10y ago
  The problem with that conclusion is that some of the highest-funded public schools in the country such as DC are among the worst performers. Funding is not the sole (or even most important) determinant of quality in education.
  - 10y ago
rb808 10y ago
Does anyone know how much a typical teacher in China is paid? A quick google told me $17k which sounds high for me.
- logicchains 10y ago
  I live in China and that seems about right, and it's probably even more in richer cities like Shanghai/Beijing.
scott00 10y ago
Headline is wildly misleading. The company that is the subject of the article pays $21/hour, which works out to $42,000 a year, probably without benefits. The 25th percentile for a US high school teacher is $45,520, plus significant benefits. Median pay is $57,200.
- witty_username 10y ago
  The purchasing power of that money is much higher in China.
  - devilsbabe 10y ago
    Yeah but the teachers are in the US, giving classes over the internet.
jccalhoun 10y ago
It sounds like the pay is pretty good compared to other online tutoring stuff. In grad school I was an online tutor for Pearson for 3-4 years and the pay was minimum wage. I hated every minute of it. You would log onto a creaky old system (one entire year their scheduling system was down and we had to sign up for hours by filling out a google form) then download a rnadomly assigned college paper. You were expected to critique it in 30 minutes and give feedback using their very specific format. There was often little context to the papers or what the actual assignment was. I would often get nursing papers full of all kinds of medical things I didn't know anything about. Then you would get evaluated by your suprevisor and emails about how long you took per paper. So there was constant pressure and it sucked so much.
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  Why they have non-experts grading specialized subjects is beyond me. I don't want my physics work graded by the PE teacher or vice versa; unless they're knowledgeable in both. Profit motive? If so it seems short sighted.
aviator168 10y ago
This is ridiculous. All most all of the comments here are about the US education system instead of the company the article talks about.

122 points by kawera 10y ago

For anyone wondering what VIPKid lessons look like, here is a sample demo of one from their Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5fb0KlUjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5fb0KlUjU

superplussed 10y ago
It's interesting how overly animated he is given that the student is not a child, but you can tell that she is pulled in by all of that energy. But if you look at other videos you'll see that most teachers are a little more contained (and maybe sane-seeming): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swc0RTrxjpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swc0RTrxjpw The one thing, I saw that in their teacher training they aim for a 70/30 ratio of student to teacher speech and I haven't found any videos where that was the case. Though maybe it is only for more advanced students. Overall a really nice platform though!
- noonespecial 10y ago
  >It's interesting how overly animated he is given that the student is not a child Absolutely don't knock this. I teach robotics and tech part time to middle schoolers and if there's one thing that has helped me connect more than any other its being a living cartoon. Exaggerate everything. You should be half-way to full clown when lecturing or you're simply not getting through. To prep for lessons, I don't study circuits, I watch CN. I'm a 40yo man who quotes Rick and Morty and can name all of the Crystal Gems. But it works like crazy.
  - hash-set 10y ago
    Ha! I found out the same thing teaching college students!

spiderfarmer 10y ago

It continues to amaze me that the US is so unambitious in this regard. Donald Trump on education: http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Education.htm http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Education.htm His solution? School choice, competition. Completely ignoring what the 25 countries do that rank higher when it comes to education.

throwanem 10y ago
Our current regrettable situation originates in a century's worth of extremely ambitious educational systems design. Taking a step back from such things doesn't seem like all that bad an idea; we've had enough schoolmen on horseback to last us quite a while.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Completely ignoring what the 25 countries do that rank higher when it comes to education. You mean have lots of Asian and white students but not so many black ones? Unfortunately it would be kind of racist to do that. Trump is hoping to come up with a plan that helps all Americans, rather than simply excluding the underperforming ones from the stats. https://web.archive.org/web/20150525165748/http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-average-american.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150525165748/http://super-econ... (Archive search is down, but search archive also for this URL: https://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html https://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abo... )
- altcognito 10y ago
  It is fair to have doubts that charter schools will be regulated enough and held accountable by a guy who was largely elected on "getting rid of all that red tape". http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/06/22/michigan-spends-1b-on-charter-schools-but-fails-to-hold/77155074/ http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/06/22/mi... When we turn children and education into a commodity, the problem is not going to get better. The system will be turned into a cost center for the country, and we'll get what we deserve per the usual.

bko 10y ago

> In the U.S. and Canada, teachers are often underpaid—and many have quit the profession because they couldn't make a decent living Is there a source for this? I often hear similar notions lamenting the demise of US education spending but from what I can tell, the US spends more than most other countries per student. And spending has been growing in practically every respect > This graph shows that average education expenditures per pupil (for fall enrollment) rose from $3,400 in 1965 to $8,745 in 2001. This graph shows that spending on education from all sources—local, state, federal, and others—rose from $249 billion in 1990-91 to $442.7 billion in 2000-01 and $501.3 billion in 2003-04. This graph shows that the federal investment in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act rose from under $2 billion in 1966 to $15 billion in 2000 and $25 billion in 2005. [0] Perhaps teachers are underpaid, but where is the money being spent going? [0] https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart....

the-dude 10y ago
I thought it was telling that in 'Breaking Bad' the chemistry teacher needs a second job at a carwash. And nobody seems surprised or finds it odd.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  He had extra expenses due to having a special needs son. His wife was pregnant and presumably not working at the time. Also, they probably had too nice of a house if they had those other financial pressures. Their biggest financial problem was probably their impulse to overspend on big ticket items "because my family is worth it". If I recall correctly, his wife pressures Walter to go to an oncologist that wasn't on their plan. In general, teachers tend to have better than average healthcare options. Chemotherapy for newly discovered cancer is almost always covered. If it's not, local news stations would love a story about a local science teacher who gets cancer that the big bad insurance company won't cover. Me extrapolating here, but it's possible that they also spent big on different off-plan options for their son.
  - 10y ago

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Good story about Cindy Mi transitioning her business to online, and also the teachers in the USA now getting 20+ dollars an hour with remote flex time work. Off topic, but as a computer programmer I have been hired twice in the last ten years by customers in China: I told my friends I was trying to reverse the balance of trade imbalance <grin>. Anyway, even with the time zone differences, it was fun.

ceejay 10y ago

First, in the US I think we need to convince a substantial chunk of the population that it's not religion that will solve our problems, but better education.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Probably you should start by providing evidence of this. Most of the evidence I've seen suggests we are far past the point of diminishing returns on education, and we should have less education rather than more.
- sehr 10y ago
  note they said "better", not "more"...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- metaobject 10y ago
  Less education? Did I miss the obvious joke/sarcasm here?
  - hash-set 10y ago
    I think what he/she meant is that higher education has become the new high school. What we need is a restoration of secondary school education, not "universal college degrees." That, and we need to re-value our currency in the same fashion.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Actually I meant that we should probably send fewer people to college and have fewer people graduate high school. Maybe some of them should go to trade school instead, but generally we should just reduce the quantity of education provided. Most education seems to be wasteful; see Bryan Caplan's writings on the topic, for example.

brownbat 10y ago

The most moving and informed coverage of the US education system I've heard have all been through This American Life.[0][1][2][3] Ok, there's an easy four hours of content to listen to. Enjoy! The short takeaway for me was basically that local funding through property taxes is a terrible idea if you want anything approaching fairness. If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school system is great, your kids probably go to a great school. If you are struggling to get by, though, living in an apartment? Your kids are usually banned from going to that same great school by law. It's like anti-literacy laws were too obvious, so we just made them more byzantine. [0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t... [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-two http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/t... [2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/house-rules http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/h... Significantly, on how redlining contributed to the achievement gap. The heartbreaking story of why a girl who wants to go to school down the road is turned away. [3] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a... A description of another poor high school where the kids basically have recess, lunch, or permanent substitutes all day, because it's failed by local control.

greghendershott 10y ago
> If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school system is great, your kids probably go to a great school Such affluent towns are effectively private schools by other means. They are a kind of boarding school where the entire family resides.
phd514 10y ago
The problem with that conclusion is that some of the highest-funded public schools in the country such as DC are among the worst performers. Funding is not the sole (or even most important) determinant of quality in education.
- 10y ago

rb808 10y ago

Does anyone know how much a typical teacher in China is paid? A quick google told me $17k which sounds high for me.

logicchains 10y ago
I live in China and that seems about right, and it's probably even more in richer cities like Shanghai/Beijing.

scott00 10y ago

Headline is wildly misleading. The company that is the subject of the article pays $21/hour, which works out to $42,000 a year, probably without benefits. The 25th percentile for a US high school teacher is $45,520, plus significant benefits. Median pay is $57,200.

witty_username 10y ago
The purchasing power of that money is much higher in China.
- devilsbabe 10y ago
  Yeah but the teachers are in the US, giving classes over the internet.

jccalhoun 10y ago

It sounds like the pay is pretty good compared to other online tutoring stuff. In grad school I was an online tutor for Pearson for 3-4 years and the pay was minimum wage. I hated every minute of it. You would log onto a creaky old system (one entire year their scheduling system was down and we had to sign up for hours by filling out a google form) then download a rnadomly assigned college paper. You were expected to critique it in 30 minutes and give feedback using their very specific format. There was often little context to the papers or what the actual assignment was. I would often get nursing papers full of all kinds of medical things I didn't know anything about. Then you would get evaluated by your suprevisor and emails about how long you took per paper. So there was constant pressure and it sucked so much.

paulryanrogers 10y ago
Why they have non-experts grading specialized subjects is beyond me. I don't want my physics work graded by the PE teacher or vice versa; unless they're knowledgeable in both. Profit motive? If so it seems short sighted.

aviator168 10y ago

This is ridiculous. All most all of the comments here are about the US education system instead of the company the article talks about.