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Request for Education Startups

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Education Startups

#41

Post by jeffmould »

baby_wipe wrote: post #36
jeffmould wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sch…

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…

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.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#42

Post by germinalphrase »

jfaucett wrote: post #23

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.…

First reaction is that this would work well with ideal students and struggle (probably fail) with real world students. I principally say this not because the general idea is invalid (many online education and digital cognitive tutors are looking in a similar direction) it's just that young people are not good at self motivating when things are difficult (or when they have a more attractive alternative). Those super self directed learners will succeed no matter what, and this sort of program would probably work fine. The vast majority of students (even "good" students) do not fall in this bin. Your untrained hourly teachers may be able to provide such motivation, but there is significant value in the kind of relationships an experienced instructor can create over time with immature/reluctant/distractible/traumatized/hungry/sleepy/angry students.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#43

Post by 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.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#44

Post by germinalphrase »

grendelt wrote: post #24

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.

This is the most important comment in the thread. As a teacher, I've been pitched/required to use too many tools that were obvious designed by someone with little to no knowledge of what I actually do on the day-to-day.

It will save you major headaches.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#45

Post by Pulcinella »

jpereira wrote: post #31

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 hav…

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.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#46

Post by randyrand »

grendelt wrote: post #24

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.

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.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#47

Post by 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.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#48

Post by GuiA »

randyrand wrote: post #46
grendelt wrote: post #24

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.

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.

Salman Khan started Khan Academy after extensive hours spent tutoring family members & friends, IIRC. That's not quite classroom experience, but it's also much more than some random fresh out of college grad starting an education startup just because YC said they were interested in them.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#49

Post by BadassFractal »

Pulcinella wrote: post #45
jpereira wrote: post #31

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 hav…

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.

In addition, the VC model isn't particularly well suited for this.

How many generations will it take for parents to accept en masse a radically redesigned approach to schooling? A big part of schooling is babysitting + credentialing, you can't disrupt that over a few years with so much of society relying on those functions.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#50

Post by randyrand »

alex_g wrote: post #10
baby_wipe wrote: post #4

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.

This sounds terrible. Poor students get slapped down even more than they are now.

Yes we'd have to accept some would benefit more than others. But the idea is education as whole would improve and everyone benefits.
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