Education Week - June 8, 2022 - 14

Using Virtual Teachers to Fill Vacancies:
Smart Solution or Big Mistake?
By Alyson Klein
" A simple solution to equity-related
problems caused by the teacher shortage
crisis. "
" Make high-quality instruction
available to all students, irrespective
of where they live, bringing equality
to education. "
Those are the the pitches Proximity
Learning and Elevate K12, rapidly
growing for-profit companies that
live-stream teachers into classrooms
nationwide, make to districts struggling
to find an algebra or physics
instructor.
The companies' approach to virtual
learning, they say, offers more than
just help for districts in filling vacancies
and the chance for teachers to set
their own hours and work from anywhere:
It provides a glimpse into the
future of K-12 education.
Staffing shortages and the desire
to prepare kids for in-demand jobs
will eventually propel many schools
to offer a combination of face-to-face
teachers and this new live-streaming
model, said Shaily Baranwal, Elevate
K12's founder and CEO.
" I one hundred percent think that
is coming, " Baranwal said. In some
places, " it's already happening. "
While it's preferable to have an inperson
educator, there are some communities
that will likely always struggle
with staffing, and without companies
like hers, their students will miss out on
opportunities, she said.
But critics question the true value of
such virtual teaching services.
The companies may have " good
marketing, " but they are not necessarily
good for students, said Samuel
Abrams, a former teacher who is now
the director of the National Center for
the Study of Privatization in Education
at Columbia University's Teachers
College.
In fact, he sees these companies'
very existence as a " symptom ... of a
diseased school system " that refuses
to pay teachers fairly, or improve their
working conditions.
Is a remote teacher better than no
teacher at all?
Both companies have grown exponentially
since the start of the
pandemic, meaning more and more
students are likely to be taught by
a teacher who is not in their school
building and might not even be in
their time zone.
At the end of the 2020-21 school
year, Proximity, which is used by 164
districts, had 295 teachers working
for schools around the country. This
school year, that number has almost
tripled to 868. And the company has
projected that next school year, its
teaching ranks will almost double
again, to about 1,500, including a mix
of full- and part-time teachers.
Elevate K12, meanwhile, is currently
tion, it makes sense that teachers like
Liang enjoy having a more focused
set of job responsibilities, said Evan
Stone, the co-founder and CEO of
Educators For Excellence, which
seeks to elevate teachers' voices in
K-12 policymaking.
School districts should take that as
a sign that the profession needs a big
rethink.
" I think what this shows is that we
have a lot of work to do in the country
to improve the teaching role, what it
means to be a teacher, " he said. What
makes jobs at these companies " appealing
to educators is that they can
control their time. And unfortunately,
in most school buildings right now,
educators aren't able to plan their
days and control their time and that
impacts their ability to deliver for their
students. "
Some experts are worried that
schools would begin replacing
regular teachers with virtual ones
working for about 250 districts, but expects
that to double next school year
to 500. The company had over 1,300
teachers this year, and will likely have
more than 3,000 next year, Baranwal
said. Its teachers work part-time.
Both companies say equity is part of
their mission. But Susan Moore Johnson,
a professor at Harvard University's
Graduate School of Education,
is skeptical.
These services are most likely to
" be used by districts that either can't
or choose not to pay teachers adequately, "
she said. Such schools are
" often in communities that serve kids
that have been underserved for years. "
For most kids, virtual instruction
hasn't been very effective, Moore
Johnson said. And if teachers live
several states away, they aren't able
to coordinate with their colleagues
or connect with parents in person, or
be part of the community. " That it is
advertised as providing greater educational
equity seems very suspect to
me, " she said.
" I actually find it disturbing that
a company is peddling this as a legitimate
answer to a serious problem
and that anyone who cares about their
schools would see it as something that
they could benefit from, " Moore Johnson
said.
Baranwal, who worked in earlychildhood
education in her native
India, agrees that " an awesome
teacher in the face-to-face classroom
is the best. " But she said that is
not always available anymore, given
that fewer people are going into the
profession and even fewer to work in
certain geographic locations or teach
certain subjects.
The pandemic, which brought widespread
adoption of virtual and hybrid
learning, seems to have made it easier
for K-12 leaders to accept the big
changes that companies like Proxim14
| EDUCATION WEEK | June 8, 2022 | www.edweek.org
ity represent, said John Rollack, a former
teacher and principal who is now
the senior head of human resources at
the company.
" The way that [the K-12 system is]
doing things is pretty dated, pretty
antiquated, " he said. " Colleges have
been doing online instruction for 20
years. ... And they've done it well. But
for some reason in K-12 education, it's
'no, no, no, everybody has to be in a
classroom.' "
Other professionals work from
home, why shouldn't teachers
have that option?
The teacher shortage was already
a problem before the pandemic. But
it's gotten worse, in part, because
teachers say meeting kids' academic
and social and emotional needs in the
wake of the crisis made an already difficult
job even tougher.
Teachers are quitting-or contemplating
it-in staggering numbers.
Almost half of district leaders and
principals labeled their staff shortages
as " severe " or " very severe " in a fall
2021 survey by the EdWeek Research
Center.
That's likely to continue. Between
the 2008-09 and 2018-19 academic
years, the number of people completing
a teacher-education program
dropped by nearly a third, according
to a report by the American
Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education.
College graduates considering future
careers want the option to set
their own hours and work from anywhere,
Baranwal said. " Other professionals
have gotten [flexibility] that
teaching has not yet gotten, " she said.
" If you go to the pain points of why
they're quitting, it's flexibility. "
More flexibility, though, may come
with serious salary cuts.
Elevate K12's pay ranges from
roughly $20 to $50 an hour, depending,
in part, on the subject being
taught.
Proximity currently offers $25 to
$30 an hour for part-time teachers.
The company recently created fulltime
positions paying $40,000 annually.
That's a lot less than the estimated
average yearly teacher salary
of $65,090 during the 2020-21 school
year and even lower than the average
estimated salary in Mississippi-the
state where teachers are paid the
least-of $47,655, according to the
most recent figures from the National
Center for Education Statistics.
But when teachers go to work for
these virtual teaching services, a lot is
taken off their plates: bus duty, attending
faculty meetings, chaperoning the
prom, scheduling in-person meetings
with parents, and making sure kids go
to the nurse to take their medications,
Rollack said.
" The more that you pile on to a
teacher outside of their classroom,
the more he or she becomes frustrated,
and they burn out and decide
to leave, " Rollack said.
For Joseph Liang, a former Chicago
public school teacher, leading classes
in Mandarin and sciences for Proximity
has been " a dream come true. "
When he worked in a traditional
setting, Liang didn't have a classroom
and had to drag a cart through
a three-story building, which was
tough on him physically. And if a student
raised their hand and asked to
go to see the nurse, it would interrupt
the whole class.
He feels more connected to his students
now. One even visited when he
was in the Windy City. Liang and his
family took him to dinner.
While most students aren't going to
benefit as much from virtual teaching
as they will from in-person instrucProximity
and Elevate K12 teachers
aren't unionized, though some
do work in states and districts with
unions. And in many states, it is likely
they are identified as temporary employees.
School
districts provide an adult to
stay with students in the classroom,
often a teaching assistant or paraprofessional,
while the virtual teachers
run the lessons and work with the
students. In schools working with
Proximity, for example, that person
who is physically in the classroom
might manage the day-to-day of the
classroom, contact parents when necessary,
and help with grading. Ensuring
that there's a school district person
on-site might add to the cost of working
with these companies.
The arrangement may not be the
best use of a district's scarce resources,
Stone said, because the virtual
teacher " is getting less money,
and there's a profit margin being
carved off. "
What's more, companies like Proximity
and Elevate K-12 may drive
down wages for brick-and-mortar
teachers, Abrams said.
He continues to be concerned about
the quality of instruction. " You need
personal engagement with a teacher.
We've known that forever, since the
days of Socrates, " he said.
Kids who want to learn, say, Mandarin
Chinese might be self-motivated
enough to benefit from the virtual
classes offered by these companies,
Abrams said.
But if a district opens the door
to that, it's " a slippery slope " he
warned. " Spanish could be next and
then you don't have any language
instruction in house, then the same
with calculus and then, say, physics.
Pretty soon, you've gutted your
whole school. And I think it's a dangerous
path to travel. "
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Education Week - June 8, 2022

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