How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind • Hacker News Board

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#141

Post by sndean » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

ythn wrote: post #122

wiremine wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a longer school year helps students stay focused My kids (4th and 7th) attend a school with a year-round schedule, and we (kids and parents) love it: * They are less stressed because there is more breaks throughout the year. Teachers seem less stressed, too, because they don't have to pack so much in. * They retain more in the summer. * Outside of academics: it's really nice to have the option to take longer vacati…

One nice thing about 3 month summer is the ability to get a temporary job. When I was in high school I worked every summer as a landscaper/food service/lifeguard/etc. and gained lots of experience/money I otherwise wouldn't have gotten. With year round school that doesn't seem possible.

Definitely. I probably wouldn't have been able to have done internships over the summer with year-round school. And, at least in my case, the internship(s) led to a full-time job at the same place years later.

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#142

Post by pbreit » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

rory096 wrote: post #54

mliker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it's a magnet of underprivileged and at risk students. Not your typical magnet. Props to LeBron for starting the school.

No doubt! I definitely don't mean to denigrate the project at all, it's an incredibly philanthropic move by LeBron and he deserves every ounce of the praise he's been getting. I just see a lot of people using the "public school" line as a cudgel to bash charter schools, but charter schools are exactly the mechanism to accomplish something like this for people who aren't revered/rich enough to exercise the kind of inf…

What prevents non-charter/magnet schools from doing such things?

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#143

Post by tonysdg » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

wiremine wrote: post #89

roland35 wrote: post #50

I am excited about this approach and I think LeBron's organization has put a lot of though and work with experts on this project. - This school is a true public school and not a charter school. In Ohio a lot of charter schools can have some degree of selection in their students and kick out families which don't meet the requirements which leads to more at-risk students left to the public schools. This school is makin…

> a longer school year helps students stay focused My kids (4th and 7th) attend a school with a year-round schedule, and we (kids and parents) love it: * They are less stressed because there is more breaks throughout the year. Teachers seem less stressed, too, because they don't have to pack so much in. * They retain more in the summer. * Outside of academics: it's really nice to have the option to take longer vacati…

Growing up in Upstate NY, I always assumed part of it was also due to the fact that breaks during the winter basically translate to hours spent cooped-up inside, watching TV or playing on the computer.

I know that the 3-month summer break stems from historical harvest/planting schedules... but when there's 20 inches of snow outside and the wind chill is -10 F, I'll take 3 months of summer vacay over 6 weeks of summer and 6 weeks of winter breaks any day.

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#144

Post by nojvek » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #110

stochastic_monk wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t imagine most working adults would be willing to work starting so early. Why do we force children who need even more sleep to do so?

So that the adults can get to work on time.

Mostly this ^. As a parent you want to get to work on time. So staggering when school starts is both good for traffic and parents’ sanity.

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#145

Post by tonysdg » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #119

BurningFrog wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warren is a lawyer, not an economist. Her academic career in that field is very impressive, but that has nothing to with an understanding of the science of Economics, which is notoriously full of counterintuitive and misunderstood truths.

This is a fallacious appeal to authority. Credentialed economists are not the only people who can make claims about economics. If you can substantively debate her assertion then please do. Otherwise you are not contributing.

Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean, but isn't this the exact opposite of an appeal to authority? The claim is that she's not qualified because she's not a credentialed economist.

(I'm not familiar enough with Ms. Warren's background to have a substantiated opinion either way, though I certainly don't doubt her intelligence.)

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#146

Post by naravara » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #129

byebyetech wrote: post #88

I wish Jeff Bezos can get his head out of his rocket and do something like this with his 100s of billions.

A friend of mine was ranting about how evil Bezos and Musk are. I generally don’t see those two as the worst of the worst, so I spent some time listening to her thoughts. Her basic assertion was that the simple accumulation of that much wealth is itself evil. They could do many things like build schools and since they choose not to they are evil. I mentioned to her that they can’t sell their stock without ceding cont…

>Her basic assertion was that the simple accumulation of that much wealth is itself evil. They could do many things like build schools and since they choose not to they are evil.

This is, essentially, a debased version of the standard leftist argument that economic systems that permit this sort of concentration of resources are fundamentally broken.

Since people have to personalize everything into morality plays, the idea that the existence of such people is symptomatic of something broken in society turns into these people are why society is broken.

Granted, since they DO have the resources to fix a lot of issues and choose not to still doesn't say anything good about them. There is something to the adage that if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem. And if you're directly profiting off the problems, potentially spending money on lobbyists and political donations that prolong the problems, and bidding for contracts with groups that are directly responsible for the problems. . . it starts to get a bit dicey.

The way the economy is, it is extremely doubtful that anyone can accrue that kind of wealth without having their fingers in at least a few morally questionable pies. Like, if you were a steel magnate in Nazi Germany, you were definitely involved in making the holocaust happen regardless of your personal feelings on the matter. If you didn't, someone else would have though, so how much are you really obligated to address?

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#147

Post by zjacobi » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

First: longer days worries me if they aren't starting later. American schools start WAY TOO EARLY and probably make children chronically tired because of this. See https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/back-to-schoo...

Second: Even if this school has good results, it seems unlikely that it will scale well, because it's relying on more money (from outside donors, etc.). You can't throw more money at a problem, then declare you've come up with a general solution.

From Larry Summers talking with Tyler Cowen:

COWEN: And this is K–12.

SUMMERS: Yeah. That’s likely to be the most effective thing that you can do, but that you need to be very careful not to succeed by cannibalization. Many, too many, philanthropists interested in education decide they’re going to set up a charter school. Only their charter school is only going to admit highly motivated kids with highly motivated parents.

Their charter school’s going to pay 20 percent more than the regular schools and cherry-pick the best teachers out of the regular schools. Then they’re going to be really thrilled about how they have better achievement than the regular public schools when it’s clear from the nature of their model, selecting the kids and cherry-picking the teachers, that it is supremely nonreplicable.

I would say impose a replicability constraint on yourself and innovate in the area of education. My general view has been that a lot of the way successful innovation happens is alongside big systems.

(Link: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-larr...)

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#148

Post by triviatise » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

The #1 factor for improving schools would be public school choice. Competition makes the participants in any system better. The schools need to use a lottery for acceptance of students.

We can drop all the regulation around testing results and simply let people choose which public school they go to. Some schools will be great and have a lot of demand. Some schools will be crap and will have little demand and they should get a reset.

The big challenge will be getting kids to the schools, but this can be done in conjunction with public transit using rideshare type shuttles to create custom routes

The next biggest factor is demand from students themselves. Making education exciting like sports could work. Create academic contests that can be televised, have small prizes at the school level (thousands of dollars), tens of thousands at the regional level, and millions at the state or national level.

Televise the competitions and have a variety like debates, math, science, etc.

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#149

Post by jhall1468 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #60

Invictus0 wrote: post #32

I'm wondering if this school will be sustainable in the long term. Given the correlation between low-income neighborhoods and poor school performance, how is I Promise going to be supported by taxpayers? Many school districts scrounge for basic supplies; how long will they be able to keep this free bike program going?

They could make it self-sustaining by adding some business model to support it. As others have said, maybe buy up and renovate/rent out homes near by driving up property costs (and taxes), or 'encouraging' college alums down the road to give back from their success. Maybe the model itself proves something on a national level, and the government decides this is the 'future' and earmarks more money for schools like thi…

> As others have said, maybe buy up and renovate/rent out homes near by driving up property costs (and taxes), or 'encouraging' college alums down the road to give back from their success.

Thus defeating the entire purpose of this school. Gentrifying will result in the school being surrounded by housing that the students parents can't afford.

Re: How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind

#150

Post by citizenkeen » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

tonysdg wrote: post #143

wiremine wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a longer school year helps students stay focused My kids (4th and 7th) attend a school with a year-round schedule, and we (kids and parents) love it: * They are less stressed because there is more breaks throughout the year. Teachers seem less stressed, too, because they don't have to pack so much in. * They retain more in the summer. * Outside of academics: it's really nice to have the option to take longer vacati…

Growing up in Upstate NY, I always assumed part of it was also due to the fact that breaks during the winter basically translate to hours spent cooped-up inside, watching TV or playing on the computer. I know that the 3-month summer break stems from historical harvest/planting schedules... but when there's 20 inches of snow outside and the wind chill is -10 F, I'll take 3 months of summer vacay over 6 weeks of summer…

Current system: 2 weeks in winter and 10 in summer.

I don't think the alternative is 6/6. I think it's more like 3 in winter, 3 in summer, 3 in spring, and 3 in fall. Or even more spread out.