User:Alana.vipkid/sandbox

Below is my suggested update to the VIPKid Wikipedia Page:

VIPKid, also known as VIPKID, is an online teaching and educational company.

Description
Founded in 2013 and formally launched in 2014, VIPKid has become China’s largest online education technology startup. As of June 2019, the VIPKid platform connects more than 600,000 paying students with more than 70,000 teachers in the United States and Canada. VIPKid’s online-classroom portal enables students ages 4 to 15 to receive 25-minute English language lessons from fluent English-speaking teachers.

Business Model
Teachers give lessons using a proprietary platform and in-house developed curriculum in real-time, one-on-one, from the location of their choice during hours of their choice and when the student demand is the greatest, after school and other activities in China. All teachers on VIPKid are independent contractors and are paid service fees per class.

Students and their parents sign up for classes and select the teachers that they want to work with. Parents of the students are closely involved in the process. Parents scroll through teacher profiles, book sessions, and leave and read reviews from other parents. During every sixth class, there is a student evaluation where a different teacher reviews content learned during the first five classes to monitor student progress.

History
VIPKid was founded by Cindy Mi in 2013. Born in Hebei, Mi taught herself English and later worked as an English tutor. Her first business venture was a brick-and-mortar tutoring service she started with her uncle in 2000. These experiences inspired Mi to establish an online-focused English teaching service.

Following its 2013 inception, it was formally launched in 2014 after a year of piloting and development

VIPKid began to develop a curriculum that would involve pairing English speaking tutors with Chinese students ranging in age from 4 to 12. As opposed to other services, VIPKid focused on contracting English speakers from the United States and Canada to teach Chinese students. To bridge the logistical gap between teachers in North America and students in China, VIPKid developed a video chat platform that would allow the two groups to communicate. VIPKid's platform was formally launched in 2014 after a year of piloting and development. By the end of the first year-and-a-half, VIPKid had 20 teachers on the platform and 200 students.

Between 2015 and 2019, the Beijing-based startup grew from serving just over 3,000 students to over 600,00 while growing the number of teachers on the platform to over 70,000. As of 2019, teachers on the VIPKid platform teach over 180,000 classes daily.

In 2017 VIPKid launched a new service to teach Mandarin to young students called Lingo Bus. The program, which teaches students between the ages of 5 and 12, is a subsidiary of the wider VIPKid brand.

VIPKid has experienced rapid growth fueled by the strong Chinese market for English lessons. As noted by sources, the company's focus on one-on-one communication helped to drive growth. In 2017 the company reported that it had raised $200 million in initial series funding, and in April 2018 raised an additional $500 million in series D+ funding. Combined, this amount equated VIPKID's valuation to $3 billion, a fact that received considerable media coverage and resulted in VIPKid being cited as an example of a rising Chinese company in the global economy. It also made VIPKid the most valuable educational technology startup in the world.

In November 2018, the company reported having 60,000 teachers contracted to teach 500,000 students.

In March 2019,VIPKid Founder and CEO, Cindy Mi, launched VIPTeach, a nonprofit that focuses on eliminating socioeconomic and geographic barriers that disallow many students from receiving a high-quality education. The VIPTeach mission is built upon three pillars: online education workforce development, teacher empowerment, and access to education. One key project that VIPTeach focuses on is its Rural Education Project, that provides online, live English classes to thousands of Chinese students living in rural, impoverished areas. Additionally, VIPTeach aims to empower teachers through professional development opportunities, as well as provide financial relief to teachers who face hardships. VIPTeach created its Teacher Courage Awards program to recognize teachers who still display teaching excellence while facing hardships.

During the summer of 2019 the company was valued at $5 billion.

Partnerships
VIPKid has announced partnerships with:


 * Houghton Mifflin Harcourt  - VIPKid utilizes HMH’s reading and language arts curricula to develop learning programs for VIPKid’s platform. VIPKid is the first online education company to acquire these rights from HMH in China. Through this partnership, VIPKid became the exclusive partner for three programs in China.
 * MetaMetrics - VIPKid works with Lexile through MetaMetrics to measure texts on the VIPKid platform and in the VIPKid Digital Library. MetaMetrics and VIPKid have also collaborated to provide a series of reading assessments to VIPKid students.


 * National Geographic Learning / Cengage - VIPKid works with National Geographic Learning to incorporate educational content from “Our World” online courses into curricula exclusively for VIPKid’s platform.
 * Oxford University Press -  VIPKid utilizes content from OUP to develop curricula for VIPKid’s platform.
 * Scholastic - VIPKid and Scholastic announced their partnership at the Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair in November 2018, which will allow thousands of Scholastic titles to be accessible to VIPKid’s learners in China. The stories from Scholastic  will be added to VIPKid’s library collection and used to support the company’s proprietary curriculum. Scholastic is known for many of its titles such as Clifford the Big Red Dog™, The Magic School Bus™, I Spy™, Goosebumps®, Harry Potter, The 39 Clues™, and The Hunger Games.
 * TESOL International - Since entering into a partnership in 2016, VIPKid and TESOL have worked together to provide professional learning for those specializing in teaching English online. With TESOL’s expertise in English language teaching and VIPKid’s deep experience in online education for children, the two organizations developed over 250 hours of professional learning module content that provides professional development to online teachers.


 * SmartStudy - In 2018 VIPKid entered into a strategic content partnership with SmartStudy, a popular Korea children’s education content company well-known for their PINKFONG franchise.

Investors
VIPKid investors include Coatue Management, Tencent, Sequoia Capital, Yunfeng Capital,  Bryant Stibel, Sinovation Ventures, Learn Capital, Matrix Partners and Northern Light VC.

Journey
VIPKid hosts a regional conference for teachers called “Journey” where teachers come together to share their experience and learn new insights about online teaching. Workshops are hosted on a wide range of topics including the student experience, tips and tricks from veteran teachers, using technology in the classroom and Chinese culture.

Past Journey conferences include:


 * Las Vegas - Hosted in Las Vegas on July 13, 2019. Five hundred teachers were in attendance from thirty-nine states to share experiences and advice about how to improve their online teaching skills.
 * Chicago, IL - Hosted on March 9, 2019.
 * Orlando, FL - Hosted on September 29, 2018.
 * Dallas, TX - Hosted on August 8, 2018. Four hundred teachers were in attendance and former First Lady Laura Bush spoke at the conference.
 * Salt Lake City, UT - On March 10, 2019. Nearly three hundred teachers were in attendance for VIPKID’s first ever regional conference.

Teacher Meetups
Teachers on the platform host meetups in their cities to connect with other teachers offline, share their experiences and exchange best practices. Teachers can attend planned meetups or submit to host their own if there isn’t one in their location. This creates an in-person community for those who primarily work online.

Controversies
In March 2019, VIPKid fired two American teachers for discussing the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and Taiwan with their students in China.

Awards & Recognition
The company has been recognized as one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work, BrandZ’s Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands, Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies (twice) and one of FlexJobs’ Top 100 Companies with Remote Jobs. The technology was also recognized by SIIA’s CODiE Awards as a finalist for Best Virtual Learning Solution in 2019.