Outschooling

https://avc.com/2019/05/outschooling/

by ctulek • 7 years ago

145 166 7 years ago

jaden• 7 years ago

Homeschooling seems like an ideal solution for those with a parent at home to improve their children's academic learning. But it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.

inetknght4• 7 years ago

it's concerning that those actively involved parents are removed from the public school system.

As someone who was homeschooled: it's extremely scary. I've missed out on social experiences and also on actual education and consider myself generally worse-off for it.

Consider: Texas permits homeschooling and has effectively zero oversight. How many homeschooling families are also anti-vaxxers or feed into anti-government paranoia? Especially consider the bitterness of such parents whose taxes pay into the school system but those same taxes aren't utilized for homeschooling families: so it's literally the government taking money to pay for a service for all citizens -- except you, you're not getting what you paid for.

GuiA4• 7 years ago

I can read your comment in several, slightly conflicting, ways:

- homeschooling is in practice mostly undesirable, because it overwhelmingly attracts people with fringe beliefs who are not going to act in their child's best interest

- homeschooling is at a systemic disadvantage because parents that care enough about their kid's education to take an active part in it have no voice in the public schooling system (my understanding of grandparent's point); in addition, they contribute as much as other taxpayers to the public school system while not getting anything for it.

Am I misunderstanding?

negzero7• 7 years ago

I was also home schooled (4th and 5th grade) and it wasn't scary. I missed out on some social opportunities but I joined clubs and played sports to make up for those interactions.

Homeschooling put me far ahead of my peers. I went back for middle school (6th grade) and skated through the next 3 years until I could take AP classes in high school. I am by no means exceptional nor were my parents great teachers. I think being able to go at my own pace allowed me to learn faster and more thoroughly than if I had been in a classroom.

I'd say there are a lot of upsides to home schooling if parents can swing it, and the downsides can be mitigated by a little extra effort on socializing.

rogerkirkness• 7 years ago

I was homeschooled, and I learned way more way faster, your counter argument only applies to people too crazy for school as opposed to too smart. It's immediately clear when you meet people who are too crazy for school and who are too intense / smart.

rayiner2• 7 years ago

What social experiences do you feel like you missed out on? Having teachers ignore you and spend 90% of their time dealing with problem kids? The petty drama? How many people look back fondly on K-12 and think “man, that was great?”

Read Sasse’s “the vanishing American adult.” It’s got some great commentary on what’s wrong with modern school. We take kids, and instead of having them be around adults to socialize them, we let them loose on their own little child-dominated Lord of the Flies society.

camelNotation7• 7 years ago

I don't think this is a problem with homeschooling as much as with a subset of homeschoolers - particularly religious fundamentalists and anarchist types.

My wife and I homeschool, but we have our kids pushing well beyond their grade level in every subject. She had a teaching license up until a couple of years ago (they do expire after a while) and taught for several years before we had kids. Then, once they arrived, she decided this was a natural fit. Meanwhile, they're also plugged in with a local co-op with more than thirty kids that they meet up with several times a week.

Homeschooling can be used to keep kids out of the system and deny them a good education, but it can also be the platform for an elite education like no other. There's a reason the wealthiest families in American pay for private tutors and elite schools with tiny class sizes. Nothing beats one on one from a capable instructor.

As my kids grow older, they'll get one-on-one training in the arts, foreign language, and various extra-curricular skills like swimming, dance, etc. from instructors that we hire to assist them. They'll walk away from this better equipped than any of their peers in traditional school.

Honestly, if there is anything wrong with homeschooling itself, it's that it is only available to middle and upper class families.

OrangeMango• 7 years ago

Consider: Texas permits homeschooling and has effectively zero oversight.

My children are homeschooled in a major metro area not in Texas. We also have effectively zero oversight. But what does it signify? We have an interest in the success of our children that is far greater than any interest a government has.

I understand that in rural areas this can mean that such children have all but disappeared from view, but where we live the school districts allow homeschool children to participate in afterschool activities (including competitive sports) and a recent change in state law allows for homeschool children to attend a class or two at the local school and then leave for the day, if that is something a parent wants. The park district offers many sports classes in the middle of the day for homeschool kids, forest preserves and state parks offer nature classes, and museums have science and art courses. Private businesses love us, they offer discounts to fill up time slots that would otherwise go empty. The public library is very welcoming and typically allows use of community rooms for free.

A public school classroom with 30+ children in it simply doesn't have the time to offer as much educational opportunity that our children get in half the time, allowing them so much time during the day for play, imagination, and reading or exploring topics of their own choice (we typically have 30-60 library books at home at any one point in time).

eadmund• 7 years ago

Especially consider the bitterness of such parents whose taxes pay into the school system but those same taxes aren't utilized for homeschooling families: so it's literally the government taking money to pay for a service for all citizens -- except you, you're not getting what you paid for.

That's also, of course, true of those who send their kids to private school. I think that there's an excellent argument for vouchers which enable parents to allocate the funds that would have gone to a public school to a private school. There are some dangers (because once something is private, it can be advertised and the system can be gamed), but overall I think this is far better than our current 51%-of-parents-decide model.

I don't feel that it'd be a good idea to give homeschooling parents a similar voucher, but only because it's too ripe for abuse: an abusive parent could take the voucher and spend it, and not bother to educate his kids. I don't know how likely it is, but it's worrisome nonetheless.

the_watcher3• 7 years ago

Many of the most actively involved parents are already removing themselves (and their children) from the public school system, as the payoff to fighting for improvement won't come until after it can benefit their kids. I don't think it's exactly a tragedy of the commons situation, more of the inverse, but the costs (to the parent) are so high that it's hard to blame them. Personally, I think the best we can hope for is that models like Outschool can develop into supplements that work in concert with public school, reducing the relative ROI of going private.

tathougies• 7 years ago

The children of actively involved parents now have children themselves. They saw the futility of their actively involved parents actions, and how the school system wore them down and slowed down their growth, and want nothing to do with it.

up_and_up9• 7 years ago

We have homeschool friends who felt the same and tried to get involved with the public school system. They are very civic minded etc. They found the red tape crushing for their kid, who is a bit of genius, plus he was getting beat up etc. Obviously this is anecdotal. They pulled him and now he is winning academic competitions (history, geography) like 3 grade levels above his age. He reads war history for hours and hours.

20years• 7 years ago

Why is this concerning? The public school system has a lot of issues. My son went to public school until 6th grade and I about pulled my hair out with issue after issue. We put him in a hybrid charter school program (3 days homeschool, 2 days in class) for 7th and 8th and started my youngest in this same program from kindergarten. Both are well ahead academically of their peers and grade level.

There are a ton of homeschool groups in our area too that organize activities where all of the kids get together. It is very active giving kids plenty of opportunity to socialize.

We don't homeschool for religious reasons. We do it because we want our kids to get the best possible education without all of the indoctrination and other crap that is pushed through the public education system. This is pretty much the reason most of the other homeschoolers that I engage with do it too. I think homeschooling has a bad rap because of the media and a few bad apples but at least from my experience, that portrayal is not the norm.

GuiA4• 7 years ago

Interesting blog post and theory.

A core counter argument to their base premise is that learning effectively is done in person, as part of a social group, in a physical space dedicated to learning, with hands on practice. It certainly seems to be the core takeaways of Waldorf/Montessori/constructionist/etc. approaches.

When our kids were in school and struggled with a class/teacher/subject, we would get them a tutor to come to our home in the evenings.

In other words, there's a reason they paid the tutor to come in person, and not tutor over Skype or the phone.

The author speaks of their intent being to open up access to education, and replace the "outdated tech" of physical schools and classrooms. I need to be convinced that successful execution of this plan (and its inevitable percolation into policy if it makes financial sense - which I have no doubt it does, for a VC to take interest in it) won't result in a two tiered system, with students from poorer families getting free, public education over video lessons, and students from wealthier family being able to attend private, more expensive, in person schooling.

the_watcher3• 7 years ago

In other words, there's a reason they paid the tutor to come in person, and not tutor over Skype or the phone.

I'll refrain from posting the ages and names of his kids in the interest of privacy (you can figure it out with very light Googling), but his older children are in their late twenties, meaning they are nearly my age. When I was in high school "Skype tutoring" wasn't a thing, because reliable video chat didn't exist, and very little of my schoolwork used a computer for more than web processing. Isn't it a lot more likely that the sentence you are referencing is referring to that experience than evidence "in person" was the reason he paid for a tutor to come in person?

GuiA4• 7 years ago

I buy that it would be a combination of both factors. I don’t buy that it would be exclusively due to the lack of Skype (I assumed his kids had grown up in the last decade or so, but fair enough) because I myself have been paid tens of thousands of dollars tutoring students of fairly wealthy family when I was in grad school and not once was I asked to do it over Skype.

tbirrell• 7 years ago

Simple economics won't allow something to become cheaper just because its a shame that some people don't have access. The goal here isn't to provide elite, one-on-one tutoring with experts, its to provide auxiliary help for those who need it. Outschooling seems to be taking a stab at being the next best thing, not an out-and-out replacement.

the_watcher3• 7 years ago

I'm slightly torn on models like this. On the one hand, the cost savings and potential to improve outcomes by scaling the impact of the best classes is obviously wildly important. At the same time, it does seem like there is hard to quantify value in the social aspects of a traditional school. As I write this, however, I realize that there are plenty of private and parochial schools where the class sizes are so small that you could probably replicate the social value pretty easily, since you wouldn't need too many students in the same place to do things like "class trips".

hoytech• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air

up_and_up9• 7 years ago

My wife are secular homeschoolers and have homeschooled our 3 kids: 10,8,5 for 5 years. We use outschool regularly, its a great platform to introduce random topics. I would invest in it honestly. AMA I guess

charliesharding• 7 years ago

What were the primary motivations for homeschooling? Cultural? Political? Quality? Access?

Also how do you go about socializing them? I've been considering it myself

up_and_up9• 7 years ago

My wife was from a very competitive school district which forced overachievement and I got beat up by bullies in a small town school. Besides the personal anecdotes,

1. we felt like time was passing too quickly and wanted to have them around, we wanted to be together basically.

2. with 3 kids my wife hasnt been able to work (her line of work is not well paying), so it made sense to start homeschooling vs private schooling.

3. I have issues with what public schools are now, hyper focused on testing, lack of critical thinking, no outdoor time.

The "socializing" concern is a farce imo. Granted we live in area with plenty of groups. Maybe a solo kid way out in the sticks will have problems. Our kids also regularly play with kids 2-5 years older or younger so things are different. Our kids have activities with other homeschool kids 4 days a week.

The schedule looks like this:

M: Outdoor Nature camp: think building fire with bow drills, axes, skinning animals, foraging for wild plants

T: Academic day at home then occasional horseback riding

W: Academic day at home, private music lessons, then playdate at friends house

TH: Homeschool meetup group: think art, music, dance, karate, extracurricular classes with a group of 100 kids and 10 teachers

FRI: another Homeschool meetup group: with various classes and open play

SAT: Climbing, iceskating, skiing, biking, something outdoors

Our life is a mellower version of "Captain Fantastic"

analog31• 7 years ago

My kids are school-schooled, except for having learned to read at home. But they were in a music program that was popular among homeschool families, so we met a lot of those kids and their parents.

Based on that limited observation, I think that the socialism of homeschool kids depends on the kids and their parents in the same way as any other aspect of homeschooling: If the parents are reasonably social, they will find ways to get their kids involved in social things, and their kids will be social too.

If the parents are reclusive, or inclined to isolate themselves from mainstream society for whatever reason, this will also be reflected in their kids. What may seem like a negative outcome of homeschooling could just be a matter of kids resembling their parents. And it wouldn't shock me if genetics plays a role.

wutman• 7 years ago

What does outschool offer that khanacademy doesn't have?

up_and_up9• 7 years ago

Lots of random extracurriculars like:

"Travel to Paris"

"Viking Art and History"

"Waldorf Form drawing"

"The History of Halloween"

They also get to see the instructor and interact with them and other kids.

formalsystem2• 7 years ago

Oh man I have so many questions. I've been thinking about doing this one day myself but haven't been able to find good answers to the below.

How much time do you spend as a parent teaching or overseeing homeschooling? Are you encouraging your kids to go to college? And if they did want to go to college do they realistically have the option to pick the school they want? Any state or country requirements you need to adhere to in terms of curriculum? Have your kids ever expressed an interest in going to school? I can see homeschooling work well for disciplines like math or programming but have any of your kids expressed interest in something like medicine or law where prestige matters a lot? Are kids really self motivated to learn anything? How much structure do you impose? Do you find that they do more projects and experiments as opposed to reading theoretical stuff?

up_and_up9• 7 years ago

How much time do you spend as a parent teaching or overseeing homeschooling?

Its a busy schedule for my wife, granted we have 3 kids. She also works part-time at their nature camp

Are you encouraging your kids to go to college?

Depends. I plan on enrolling them at the local community college by age 14-15.

And if they did want to go to college do they realistically have the option to pick the school they want?

I want them to attend community college then transfer, which is what I did and I transfered to a public ivy school

Any state or country requirements you need to adhere to in terms of curriculum?

No requirements here in MI, depends on your state.

Have your kids ever expressed an interest in going to school?

Nope.

I can see homeschooling work well for disciplines like math or programming but have any of your kids expressed interest in something like medicine or law where prestige matters a lot?

Why would that matter? Top tier colleges are looking for/encouraging homeschool applicants because they are generally very independent thinkers and self-directed.

Are kids really self motivated to learn anything?

Definitely. For example, my one daughter loves birds and is studying everything she can find about the local bird population. Kids are naturally very curious.

How much structure do you impose?

This depends on the homeschooling family. We have a decent structure now but other families use no structure.

Do you find that they do more projects and experiments as opposed to reading theoretical stuff?

50/50 I would say. They are still young so the reading is not like deep theory on anything yet.

carlob11• 7 years ago

I think this is going to be very controversial on the typical HN crowd: maybe too European, or too socialist. However here it goes.

Some ten years ago I was convinced that private schools had a right to exist, but that they should never impact the funding of public schools, not even indirectly.

Then I discovered that homeschooling was a thing in the US.

Now I tend to believe that private schools should not be allowed to exist. School is far too important as a social mixer and a way to educate well-rounded citizens to leave it to the whims of parents. Parents already have a large enough impact on their kids, to let them take over 100% of their time.

I also strongly believe that parents whose beliefs prevent their kids from getting the medical care they deserve (from refusing transfusions, to refusing vaccines) should get a hard look from social services.

In general I don't believe that parenthood trumps some things that as a society we consider basic human rights. I think most people would agree with me when it comes down to issues like violence, exploitation and child labor, but I think this should extend to the access to healthcare and to a secular education.

surge11• 7 years ago

You have a very narrow view of home schooling and only the worse cases. Take a look at the worse outcomes of public schooling and the averages in performance of home school kids versus public school kids. The social anxiety and other issues of kids going through a modern high school versus kids who socialize with mostly adults and socialize in sports programs, co-ops, or groups and learn to be self driven in learning.

Public schools have a long way to go before they should be made mandatory. Until it is the very best solution for everyone, until it addresses every learning disability, the class sizes are smaller, teachers are paid better, classes track with a students ability and mental development and actually run in line with the latest in neuroscience and child development, have flexible hours so teenagers can sleep longer, put less on the kids when they go home so they have time for family activities and social interaction instead of 3-4 hrs of homework. Maybe when the solution isn't to medicate kids who don't learn by sitting still at a desk 6 hours a day with few breaks, elimination of recess and 20-30 minute lunch periods and few if any opportunities to "socialize" in the current schooling environment. When they teach problem solving and critical thinking, rather than rote memorizing for one standardized test at the end of year. If going to school was more like being an adult or put responsibilities on the student, like a college does, rather than treating the student population like they're in a low security prison. When it uses a system that wasn't developed for training factory workers and hasn't transitioned at all since then. When all the new money added to their budgets isn't siphoned up in administrative costs. When schools in many neighborhoods put kids in physical danger, involve gang activity and a good option simply isn't available to them because of their district. Then maybe we can talk about making it mandatory.

Even then, the most rich and privileged still would have loop holes for tutoring their kids for something other than factory work. We would still need exceptions for kids who for a variety of reasons, medical or otherwise need to be at home, students who travel or work in acting/performance. Kids who are on specialized career tracks in schools geared towards where its best they learn very young (perforamance arts and music, CS) to compete in a global market.

This idea that one education fits all is myopic and doesn't line up with the results that public schools produce thus far, and you want to take away any alternative.

It would be like if the only healthcare option in the US was the VA, and no one was allowed to seek healthcare else where because some people make bad health decisions and go to homeopathic healthcare providers.

ryanobjc• 7 years ago

In America we've had decades of various people attacking public schools. So to look at the state of public schools and saying this is how things are, well you're ignoring a broad history of American conservatism taking objection to public schooling.

hawkesnest4• 7 years ago

My children receive a secular homeschool education. They score well on standardized tests, interact well with their peers in extracurricular activities, and have healthy and meaningful relationships with other children and adults in their lives.

I recognize that there are some in the homeschool "community" who are ruining their children (imho). For the sake of freedom, I accept that there are terrible people in the world who should not have reproduced, but for me to have rights they must have them too.

carlob11• 7 years ago

I'm sure your kids are great, as you are probably well educated and wealthier than the average. Have you ever asked yourself what is the effect of removing your kids for public schools on the less fortunate?

Let me put it another way: most children who have some medical doctor in their extended family don't really need to be visited regularly by a pediatrician. That doesn't really imply that most people who refuse to take their kids to a doctor are in their right mind to do so: a lot of them have some weird belief that might put their kids life at risk. And even if they weren't a majority, but a tiny minority, the law needs to protect that tiny minority even if that means being a bit overbearing on people who have doctors in their families.

adolph• 7 years ago

Don't stop there, there's more to discover--keep going to the Kibbutz!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_communal_child_rearing...

camelNotation7• 7 years ago

School is far too important as a social mixer and a way to educate well-rounded citizens to leave it to the whims of parents.

Literally zero evidence for this. On average, kids that are homeschooled walk away with higher levels achievement and fewer psychological issues than their traditionally schooled peers. They integrate just fine into society.

I also strongly believe that parents whose beliefs prevent their kids from getting the medical care they deserve (from refusing transfusions, to refusing vaccines) should get a hard look from social services.

This has nothing to do with homeschooling since many of us homeschool for secular reasons and aren't teaching our children fundamentalism or denying them vaccines/healthcare.

In general I don't believe that parenthood trumps some things that as a society we consider basic human rights.

You don't have kids. Not that it invalidates your opinion, but you don't. I, as a parent, adapt to society and obey society just like I, as an individual, obey the law. But I am still a parent if the social order breaks down and the government disappears. My responsibilities as a parent precede my responsibility to society. As long as society is not abusive, they mesh well and that isn't an issue. But saying that parenthood doesn't trump society is a slippery slope you really don't want to go down.

I think most people would agree with me when it comes down to issues like violence, exploitation and child labor, but I think this should extend to the access to healthcare and to a secular education.

Healthcare makes sense, I suppose. But "secular education" assumes the education received in a homeschool context is not secular. On the contrary, many homeschoolers are secular homeschoolers, especially in the upper middle class.

I think you need to do more research on this before you start throwing out uninformed opinions.

carlob11• 7 years ago

Literally zero evidence for this. On average, kids that are homeschooled walk away with higher levels achievement and fewer psychological issues than their traditionally schooled peers. They integrate just fine into society.

There is plenty of evidence of the contrary though, that kids born in families with low income and educational achievement do much much better when they are in a socially diverse school as opposed to a ghetto. Sure maybe homeschooled kids are slightly better off, but that comes at a huge cost for all the kids who have a single parent who works three jobs that will never be able to afford to homeschool them.

You don't have kids.

You don't know that.

But I am still a parent if the social order breaks down and the government disappears.

Every day hundreds of thousands of parents "break down" and government takes over for them. Government breaking down is a much rarer event.

"secular education"

If you don't like the distinction between secular and religious, you can take any other strong belief. What if my parents are flat earthers? What if they are holocaust deniers? What if they hold some very strong political opinion? Or even what if they are some staunch atheists? They will just create a bubble around their kids.

somethoughts2• 7 years ago

The one I would be interested in would be "home-after-schooling". I would love to have more resources to help support K-8 students learn how to do original research for science fairs, MOOCs for non-math subjects and programming. Basically Khan Academy type courses that can enable teaching economics, literature, philosophy to a 12 year old. The interesting non-math stuff for Khan Academy doesn't start until 9-12th grade.

I'd be curious as to why there is not an option to watch a recorded version with Outschool.

amirnathoo• 7 years ago

It's a matter of focus. We'd love there to be more self-study content available for kids also. But MOOCs have a famously low completion rate and it's hard to stay motivated without interaction. So we're focused on connecting learners and teachers and having them interact over video chat.

droithomme3• 7 years ago

low completion rate

Most people who sign up don't actually want a certificate and aren't trying to complete. They are interested in the subject, watching some videos, move on. When you have class sizes with 1000-30,000 students, it's OK if 90% don't complete the certificate since many more did than in a brick and mortar school, yet it cost much less per student to deliver the class.

In online classes where you need to pay to get the certificate, it's been found that paid students have the same completion rate as brick and mortar university students.

https://www.afr.com/news/policy/education/fee-payments-lift-...

Students in massive open online courses (MOOC) who pay a modest amount for a "verified certificate" are just as likely finish their course as regular university students, according to a new large-scale study of online education.

somethoughts2• 7 years ago

Cool - Thanks for the reply! Will definitely be checking outschool in more detail.

I think the benefit of the pre-recorded sessions like from Coursera and Khan Academy, is that one concern is unsupervised teacher-learner interaction could be problematic if its unclear how the teacher has been screened.

For instance is the teacher in live mode going to do anything inappropriate or try to initiate in person contact with the learner, etc.

surge11• 7 years ago

Kids are exhausted enough after 6 hours of public school, 3 hours of home work and any extra curriculars, don't screw up what little childhood freetime they have left in the current system with home after school.

HNLurker23• 7 years ago

, 3 hours of home wor Should I feel guilty for doing no homework at all?

momokoko3• 7 years ago

I think EdTech forgets that student success has much less to do with schooling(home or otherwise). This is why education has bounced from trend to trend over the last 50 years. Because we constantly think we've found a silver bullet, but then after a decade or so, we realize it was once again correlation.

If you really look at the data, student outcomes essentially boil down to parents and the students themselves. We've see this with how standardized testing has gone over so poorly. The truth is that, outside of gaming the test system with essentially test prep style cramming, schools really have not been able to make any real meaningful changes to student outcomes.

Absolutely, schools can move the needle a bit in either direction, but outside of edge cases, I feel as though it may be a challenge to show the kind of outcome data that makes any EdTech product a must have in US education.

barry-cotter4• 7 years ago

Improvements in teaching are very unlikely to change the rank ordering of who learns fastest/most/best. It can absolutely change how much I’d learned and when individual students learn something. Online teaching is far more conducive to mastery learning and ability grouping than offline education. Look at Lambda School for an example. If you have large cohorts starting on a regular basis you can have some people progressing slower than others but ensure they get there eventually in a way that’s not going to happen in a normal classroom environment. The scope for individualised instruction in an environment where you have classes of 15-30 students is limited. If you have 200 students starting every four weeks you can divide them into ten 20 person classes based on where they are in the curriculum and they’ll do much better than if they were doing things they’d already mastered or for which they just don’t have the prerequisites.

On a more purely technological basis integrating spaced repetition into instructional design would be a massive win. Imagine if people actually remembered what they’d been taught in school instead of having a hazy idea the US Civil War was somewhere in the 1800s.

momokoko3• 7 years ago

Lamda school picks winners from the outset. Public education doesn't get that option.

jacobolus2• 7 years ago

If by “student outcomes essentially boil down to parents and the students themselves” what you mean is “largely boil down to structural societal factors out of individuals’ hands, such as poverty, pollution, homelessness, unemployment, neighborhood crime, state-supported violence, lack of access to nutritious food, ...

Then sure.

momokoko3• 7 years ago

I do. But those are all things still end up with parents and the students.

If you have a single mother that works odd hours and can't do basic algebra, it's very unlikely you'll excel as a student. That isn't a judgement of anyone, that is just a fact based on the data we have.

How to prevent that situation is a different discussion, but does illustrate that resources may be better used fixing the root of the problem as opposed to putting all the effort and responsibility on education.

iambateman2• 7 years ago

In the late 90’s my parents homeschooled me. We had a subscription to a teaching service that broadcast lessons on Satellite at 2am. My parents set the VCR to record each night and then we played the tape back for “class”. Everything was awful. To this day, my understanding of elementary science is a little worse than one would expect because my mom didn’t enjoy teaching science.

I’m so glad for advanced services making more forms of schooling possible for people.

Just to throw some ice on some of the heat in the comments...

- homeschooling isn’t for everyone, but it works wonderfully for some. My sister hated it and I loved it. People are different and need different approaches to learning.

- some people who homeschool are religious, and some of them are “fundamentalist”. But most of the people I encountered were simply “religious.” There’s a difference. ;)

jpm_sd• 7 years ago

Students can also access "real time group classes taught largely by very experienced K12 teachers" by... going to school.

linuxftw• 7 years ago

Opportunity cost can't justify public school. Seems to be a large waste of time, super authoritative, and mentally damaging to many.

forgotmypw• 7 years ago

I completed grades 1, 2, 3, and 5 in the USSR, right before its breaking apart. (I skipped grade 4 not because I was exceptionally smart, but because of the conversion from 10- to 11-year system.)

I went to an average public school, not like a specialized math-heavy school, which also existed.

Then I moved to the U.S. and started 6th grade, decent public school in a major city.

I went to ESL class instead of regular English. Some of the history stuff was new to me. I struggled with integrating and being bullied, though not too badly.

But as far as math and science goes, I was coasting up until 9th grade, when I started high school.

In 8th grade, I was added to the "gifted" program, which basically meant I spent one period a week hanging out with the other gifted kids doing I don't even remember what.

I've been told that while USSR designed its cirruculum to be passable by 80% of the students, in the U.S. it's designed to be passable by close to 100%. Which means that even if your child is smart, they'll be dragging along with the least capable 20% of the school population, doing busywork and being bored, wasting their time instead of learning all they could be at the most capable time of their life.

(Russia's current education system has been stripped and crippled, so it's on par or worse than U.S. now.)

Matticus_Rex2• 7 years ago

As a former high school teacher, as intuitive as this seems, it's dubious at best. To truly have "access," you need a lot of things in place (nutrition, sleep, prerequisite learning, a good school, an experienced teacher), and a lot of things not getting in the way (other kids, the institution, the teacher, circumstances). The bar is much lower for Outschool to hit the target.

jonny_eh4• 7 years ago

Hiring a high school student to tutor a kid in math is not a "1%er" solution. Maybe 50%er?

_7fvc• 7 years ago

I think public school system provides a good return for dollars spent. It has the scale that is difficult to match with other schooling methods. This is my experience from shuffling between private preschools. I think other schooling methods are appropriate if your circumstance forces you (e.g. bad public school system.)

You can always opt out of the crazy things that happen at public schools. After school, you can homeschool your kids. This way you can get the positives of both systems.

Education is complicated. We need to avoid comparing and optimization. It's idiotic to make a personal stance in education.

master-litty• 7 years ago

I interviewed with Outschool a few months ago, happy to see them here!

They're a wonderful team. I've never seen a group of people with so much positive chemistry before; I've started asking more culture-centered questions in my interviews since then, now that I think about it.

I think it's the best kind of team to front an educational endeavour and it's one big reason I believe in them. It's easier to have a healthy classroom environment if the providing workplace is healthy too.

mdaniel• 7 years ago

And perhaps related to this post, there was a YC "ad" a few links above this post saying:

Outschool (YC W16) Is Hiring a Senior Software Engineer in SF

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20048401

killjoywashere• 7 years ago

Unless this results in better education outcomes spread across the entire population in the red states, this is effectively a bid to support the Republican agenda. This will follow the same pattern as standardized testing: those with the means will pursue the best investments. Those without will be left behind. And so the cycle of inequality worsens. This is "greed is good" politics.

Think about it. If they were serious about education, why are they not investing, Koch-style, in local politics? Why are they not funding candidates who will advocate for stronger school systems, better transportation, school lunches, etc?

This has nothing to do with kids. This has everything to do with extracting as much money as possible from the most anxious, which is incidentally the rapidly vanishing elbow of middle class in the ever-steepening power law curve of wealth distribution in the US.

carlob11• 7 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out. I, too have the impression that most of the commenters here are completely oblivious to the effects of their choices on society at large. The fact that I have been accused multiple times of not having children is evidence of an appeal to emotion: "You can only understand this if you think about your own family".

burfog9• 7 years ago

The accusation of not having children is the polite one, assuming no malice. The worse ones are that you would exempt your own children (the rest of us get to sacrifice ours), or that you wouldn't exempt your children (due to not caring about them).

falcor842• 7 years ago

...students in the US who need to learn things like Algebra, European History, Biology, etc...

HN, what's your take on the above? Do you believe that there is any particular curriculum of subjects that students "need" to have studied to be prepared for doing well in the world they will be living in?

burfog9• 7 years ago

economics, law, financial planning, accounting, cooking, how to repair things, business writing, estimation

That's all. No, we mostly don't teach this stuff anymore.

For those going the college route, obviously the STEM prerequisites must be satisfied. This means AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics C (both halves), and AP Calculus BC.

falcor842• 7 years ago

Thanks for responding. I wanted to contest the word "need" - given that the best majority of students aren't taught (in a schooling setting) even 1 of the subjects you mentioned, and we still live in an arguably quite civilized modern society, would you agree that they don't actually "need" to be taught?

HNLurker23• 7 years ago

This sounds to me like an American problem

Outschooling

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