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LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

nytimes.com

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Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#41

Post by b_tterc_p »

I like the concept. I’m not sure their stats check out. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in. The article suggests a lot of the kids here were bottom percentile performers on standardized tests (literal 1th percentile).

I do wonder if the test is valid at scores that poor. Could it be that the bottom percentile is just the kids who guessed randomly and had bad luck, as opposed to, say, the ninth percentile who guessed randomly and had good luck? How likely would it be for a bottom percent student to stay bottom percent with no special schooling? I really just don’t have a good sense for what it means to strive for 10th percentile performance on tests like these.

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#42

Post by singhrac »

tracker1 wrote: post #37

I'm just happy to see a positive article.. I see so much political or tech news, I don't get much on the positive side, generally speaking.

I read this regularly to get that :) https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-week-in-good-news

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#43

Post by microcolonel »

icelancer wrote: post #40
microcolonel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This differs from a charter school or other alternative schools that skirt responsibility of special needs kids This is illegal in a lot of places, and I doubt it is common.

This is extremely common. It is just not done explicitly to do that. Much like many other things that are common but not designed to exclude protected classes like ageism, sexism, and so forth in hiring funnels.

Do you know of any research on that? I haven't seen much good research on this topic in my searches.

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#44

Post by luckydata »

The stuff that school is doing is really just common sense and the success they are experiencing is both a symptom that what we always known works... still works but also that we do a real shit job at education in this country.

This is not a problem you can fix with technology, the only technology needed is good food every day for the kids and parents (or guardians) that can be involved in their kid's education.

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#46

Post by luckydata »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #19
matt4077 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there was ever much debate that parents are the single most important factor for children. It’s just that, from a policy perspective, it is extremely hard to actually have any impact on that behavior. It’s basically social work, a concept for which there is essentially no money at scale in the US.

More wealth/economic security, safe environment, conscientious and attentive parents, good community of role models, peer kids with good parents as well = decent students. In other words - children are reared by their parents, as they always have (!) and their academic achievement is mostly a function of their upbringing. Sure, some kids hate school or are bad at at even with good parents. Some schools are better tha…

god, I totally agree, don't get me started on all that modern education bullcrap that people with no business being involved in teaching constantly peddle. The worst of them all in my opinion is Vinod Khosla, I rarely heard so much bad information coming out of a single man.

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#47

Post by spraak »

_lessthan0 wrote: post #45

Top comments, shock people cant feel good about something because it didnt happen to them. I was hoping for some uplifting commentary but like all other social media sites HN is going down a bad path.

The predominant attitude is cynical

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#48

Post by robdachshund »

ThomPete wrote: post #18
icelancer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is selection bias for sure; except it works in the opposite way regarding successful outcomes. IPS takes low-performing individuals and puts them in a lottery system. This differs from a charter school or other alternative schools that skirt responsibility of special needs kids... but it should bear mention that IPS is not without controversy. The lottery system causes a lot of strife in eligible-but-unpicked i…

Charter schools dont skirt special needs kids they take them in. Whats really absurd is that a lot of people are against the lottery but totally fine with public schools zipcode method. Edit: why the downvotes? My two sons are at a charter school they take special needs children. They have to by law.

I don't know if you've noticed but you aren't allowed to say things on hn that go against silicon valley political talking points.

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#49

Post by jonknee »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #41

I like the concept. I’m not sure their stats check out. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in. The article suggests a lot of the kids here were bottom percentile performers on standardized tests (literal 1th percentile). I do wonder if the test is valid at scores that poor. Could it be that the bottom percentile is just the kids who guessed randomly and had bad luck, as opposed to, say, the ninth percentile w…

> The 90 percent of I Promise students who met their goals exceeded the 70 percent of students districtwide, and scored in the 99th growth percentile of the evaluation association’s school norms, which the district said showed that students’ test scores increased at a higher rate than 99 out of 100 schools nationally.

It sounds like almost all the students met their individual goals which means they are making progress no matter what percentile they started in. They're not out of the woods, but this is a population that previously had only ever seen bad results from the school system. It's a small experiment, but it's hard to spin the early results as anything but a good thing.

Re: LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

#50

Post by warent »

_lessthan0 wrote: post #45

Top comments, shock people cant feel good about something because it didnt happen to them. I was hoping for some uplifting commentary but like all other social media sites HN is going down a bad path.

The article was only posted a couple of hours ago. Give it some time; the comments almost always come out really great. Scrolling through them now on my end the top comments currently look uplifting or scientific. I'm not really seeing the negativity you're referring to.
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