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

#301

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #245

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…

> I am not trying to blame the parents in all the cases either, a lot of the time there are single parents just trying to get by and make ends meet and don't know what more they can do. If there is a household with one parent, 5+ children, and not enough beds for them, the problem has occurred long before. One cannot blame the parent for "that day", but certainly the adult bears some responsibility for creating such…

This is such a privileged view point... And I don't even like that word. But really, the idea that someone shouldn't have kids unless they have their entire life planned? Unless they have a stable (jobs | spouses | families | friends | environment | culture) that can be relied on? Not everyone has that opportunity. And it sounds very much like victim blaming to then tell them that they should be denied having kids because their life isn't perfectly stable. And let's be very, brutally honest: It's not like stable households don't also occasionally produce broken children. Incidence rate is dropped, but decidedly not zero.

I mean, hell, I have an extremely stable job at an extremely stable company. And I still fear losing my job, and the effect that would have on my family!

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

#302

Post by elil17 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #245

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…

> I am not trying to blame the parents in all the cases either, a lot of the time there are single parents just trying to get by and make ends meet and don't know what more they can do. If there is a household with one parent, 5+ children, and not enough beds for them, the problem has occurred long before. One cannot blame the parent for "that day", but certainly the adult bears some responsibility for creating such…

>a decision SOMEONE made

Ohio (where this school is) lacks quality sex education and access to abortion. Ohio law doesn't require teaching at all about contraception. Ohio law allows parents to block their kids from having an abortion. Ohio law doesn't require teaching students about consent.

So there is a huge swath of people in Ohio schools who are totally uneducated about sex. Certainly SOME of the blame should go to the decision of the Ohio legislature to withhold information about birth control from students.

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

#303

Post by stuckinarut » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #257

JamesBarney wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing for better access to birth control? Or that the children should be punished for the sins of their mother?

Someone might argue that people shouldn't engage in activities that have a strong probability of creating responsibilities they can't handle, no matter how good those initial activities feel. In other parts of society we'd say "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." I know this is a very unpopular opinion the world over right now, but: This applies loosely to sex as well (Don't have sex if you can't afford to…

> I know this is a very unpopular opinion the world over right now, but: This applies loosely to sex as well (Don't have sex if you can't afford to have kids).

because it's a ridiculous opinion that ignores human nature and provides awful advice.

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

#304

Post by naravara » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

neuland wrote: post #194

naravara wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The middle one is absolutely true, the other two I really doubt e.g. in Finland or Germany, schoolday starts around 9AM and ends around 2PM, yielding 3h30 to 4h studies a day accounting for breaks, 5 days/week, with little homework (maybe 5h/week total). Afternoon is usually dedicated to clubs. In the context of at-risk kids, I think the idea is to maximize the amount of time the kids get to spend away from their to…

If the problem is toxic home environments though, why aren't people suggesting that we cut out the middle man and focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it? It seems that everyone is recognizing this is the problem, but the solutions all revolve around school, when it really doesn't have anything to do with schools. Edit: Or boarding schools.

>If the problem is toxic home environments though, why aren't people suggesting that we cut out the middle man and focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it?

Because the prospect of forcibly separating kids from their parents based on the decisions of aloof and poorly managed bureaucrats is a political and ethical nightmare.

The solution revolves around schools because schools are considered a legitimate area of public concern while individuals' family-lives (barring some extreme circumstances) are not.

Also, this program provides job training and counseling services for the parents of the kids too.

Boarding schools don't work for poor communities because the kids are often relied upon to do work for the family. This can mean helping with the family enterprise or it can mean older kids taking care of younger kids, elderly family members, or just helping out around the house.

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

#305

Post by maxerickson » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #261

maxerickson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's really solid evidence that increasing classroom time increases learning. Of course, people haven't yet gotten the idea that we should try to accomplish sufficient learning with minimum classroom time.

As long as you pay teachers overtime for all the extra hours they'll be working to put together curriculum for your longer school days, I'm in. It's not just students who have to be working during those hours, it's also teachers.

Read both sentences before getting ultra snarky please.

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

#306

Post by stuckinarut » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #179

EpicEng wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted, and maybe most of that is a sentiment of "we have to deal with the problem at hand", which is absolutely the only thing an outsider can do, but you're not wrong. My wife works in a low income school, largest and poorest in the area (a relatively large city.) Pumping more money in does not help. More after school problems does not help much. As far as academic achievement is concerned, these…

I come from one of those large, poor inner city schools. The money and after school programs absolutely help. I am a product of those after school programs. That additional money paid for musical instruments, sports, computers, and transportation. I feel personally insulted when people say we shouldn't fund these afterschool programs because they don't feel they are working.

Pumping money in doesn't work.

Having a good plan and the resources to execute is what works.

I know it sounds like I'm talking about a minor difference, but I think it's a lot bigger than that. You can add more money to a lot of the broken systems in the US. It helps, but it doesn't fix core problems and the systems are still incredibly inefficient.

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

#307

Post by dsnuh » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

neuland wrote: post #194

naravara wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The middle one is absolutely true, the other two I really doubt e.g. in Finland or Germany, schoolday starts around 9AM and ends around 2PM, yielding 3h30 to 4h studies a day accounting for breaks, 5 days/week, with little homework (maybe 5h/week total). Afternoon is usually dedicated to clubs. In the context of at-risk kids, I think the idea is to maximize the amount of time the kids get to spend away from their to…

If the problem is toxic home environments though, why aren't people suggesting that we cut out the middle man and focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it? It seems that everyone is recognizing this is the problem, but the solutions all revolve around school, when it really doesn't have anything to do with schools. Edit: Or boarding schools.

Do you have children? The flippant way you say that we should take the children away from their families makes me think not.

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

#308

Post by MLR » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

citizenkeen wrote: post #150

tonysdg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the UK I believe ours is six weeks in the summer, two weeks Christmas, two weeks Easter, then one week in the middle of each term (three per year).

I'd have to actually check though, been a while.

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

#309

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

stochastic_monk wrote: post #100

gnat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And research consistently shows that teenagers perform better if you start school later in the day than 7am. E.g., http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192636502086633... "shifted the school start timefrom 7:15 a. m. to 8:40 a. m. This article examines that change, finding significant benefits such as improved attendance and enrollment rates, less sleeping in class, and less student-reported depression." http…

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?

Follow the money. In this case, the money is in the bus system. You only need one set of buses and drivers if you stagger school starts. Overlapping school starts means overlapping demand for buses.

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

#310

Post by elil17 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #282

antsar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it possible that "income, or stability" experienced a sudden drastic change at some point after birthing the 5th kid? It is conceivable that the parent did not have full control over that change.

They made the choice to have the first, second, third, and fourth kid before the fifth one. Each child is a huge lifelong expense: everyone knows this fact. Condoms, birth control, abortions: these are all available tools to give people control over human reproduction.

But birth control, condoms, and abortions are NOT given as a tool to most young people in America. Looking at Ohio specifically (where Jordan's school is),

Schools don't have to tell kids that birth control exists, let alone show them how to properly use a condom (which is a non-trivial skill: condoms are 98% effective when put on properly but 85% effective in real life)

Schools don't have to tell kids abortion exists. Even if kids did know, their parents can block them from getting an abortion. Also, getting an abortion requires traveling to a clinic, which often requires a car.