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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

#71

Post by _qbjt »

This story resonates with me deeply. I grew up in a lower income, single parent household to a family environment plagued with drug addiction and feelings of economic hopelessness. I was on track to drop out by my senior year of high school. My father (who was always in and out of prison) committed suicide my freshman year of high school. I was distraught but blessed. My English teacher at the time noticed what I was going through and got me involved in a program for at-risk kids called AVID [1]. It is because of this organization that I was able to not only graduate from high school but also university and go on to have a successful career in software development.

Our society pays a lot of lip service to youth being the future but we don't actually do much to help them succeed. The person you might call a loser or criminal was once a child who had the opportunity to become a shining example of what our society can produce. These children are being lost at some point along the way. Once they become adults we shame them for their life decisions but what are we actually doing to solve the problem?

When you say, "hey, 90% of these students are outpacing peers in their district based on academic indicators", I say maybe LeBron is onto something. Let's adopt this approach, scale it and study the results.

[1] https://www.avid.org/

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

#72

Post by basetop »

As a minority, I hope this isn't another "minority schools do well turned scam". Seems like we have these "amazing successes" turned to "scams" every couple of years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/tm-landry-college-prep...

If it is a success, why turn it into a national story? Doesn't that put more unnecessary pressure on these schools and kids to "succeed"? Wouldn't that put more pressure on these schools to cheat if expectations aren't met?

I don't understand why this is a national news story. Do the kids benefit from the extra national pressure? No. Do the schools benefit? No. Am I wrong in thinking only lebron and the nytimes benefits from this story? Why not let these kids and schools succeed quietly? These underprivileged kids have enough hurdles as is, do they really the added burden of national coverage?

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

#73

Post by TaylorAlexander »

nine_k wrote: post #67
mindfulplay wrote: post #61

It's a shame that a private citizen has do this. Reflects poorly on our country that the economically disadvantaged really do not have a choice or a voice. And these are not people who choose to be poor or incapable. They really don't have any other option.

OTOH this is great that a private citizen can see an opportunity to give kids better education, and actually follow through that plan, making an example to replicate and build upon. In many countries, this is not a given: either directly forbidden or infeasible due to red tape.

If the choice is a private citizen does or does not do this, then them doing it is better. But there is another possibility demonstrated in other countries: quality schools run by the government. In light of that possibility, I agree with the OP that it’s a shame this kind of thing is necessary. The US does pretty poorly on schooling compared to other countries AFAIK.

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

#74

Post by TaylorAlexander »

dannycastonguay wrote: post #69
mindfulplay wrote: post #61

It's a shame that a private citizen has do this. Reflects poorly on our country that the economically disadvantaged really do not have a choice or a voice. And these are not people who choose to be poor or incapable. They really don't have any other option.

It's a moment of pride that this country has citizens like him. It reflects well on the values of some of the celebrities like him, and hopefully it is inspiring others, thanks also in part to good journalism. It also didn't happen without the efforts of the kids who had to believe it was possible, put in the hours, and demonstrated proficiency on the tests.

Ah yes, America, the country where we take pride in the fact that a few school children will be bailed out of a broken system by some rich folks who want to see change. Let’s not get caught up in why this is needed or the millions of students who haven’t been so lucky. America is proof that rich people can make the lives of a few people better! /sarcasm

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

#75

Post by xienze »

jonknee wrote: post #49
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 progre…

>It's a small experiment, but it's hard to spin the early results as anything but a good thing.

How much are they spending per student? That might put a damper on it if it turns out they’re spending an amount of money that wouldn’t scale.

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

#76

Post by dannypgh »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #73
nine_k wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH this is great that a private citizen can see an opportunity to give kids better education, and actually follow through that plan, making an example to replicate and build upon. In many countries, this is not a given: either directly forbidden or infeasible due to red tape.

If the choice is a private citizen does or does not do this, then them doing it is better. But there is another possibility demonstrated in other countries: quality schools run by the government. In light of that possibility, I agree with the OP that it’s a shame this kind of thing is necessary. The US does pretty poorly on schooling compared to other countries AFAIK.

+1 exactly this. LeBron did something wonderful, in one district. Government has far more means than an individual to scale that up to the whole country.

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

#77

Post by jonknee »

xienze wrote: post #75
jonknee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 progre…

>It's a small experiment, but it's hard to spin the early results as anything but a good thing. How much are they spending per student? That might put a damper on it if it turns out they’re spending an amount of money that wouldn’t scale.

FTA:

> The school’s $2 million budget is funded by the district, roughly the same amount per pupil that it spends in other schools. But Mr. James’s foundation has provided about $600,000 in financial support for additional teaching staff to help reduce class sizes, and an additional hour of after-school programming and tutors.

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

#78

Post by spaginal »

mindfulplay wrote: post #61

It's a shame that a private citizen has do this. Reflects poorly on our country that the economically disadvantaged really do not have a choice or a voice. And these are not people who choose to be poor or incapable. They really don't have any other option.

It’s not a shame. At a time in this country it was expected that citizens of means stepped into the gaps that government either couldn’t go into or couldn’t do well, and some of our best institutions come from this philanthropy.

I applaud Lebron.

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

#79

Post by somethoughts »

I've often wondered about the effectiveness of donations to supplemental after school/summer time tutoring/coaching in under-performing school districts [1][2] versus donations to full time, private charter schools such as this one.

It seems supplemental after school/summer time solutions would build on the existing public school system and fill in the gap between 3pm-6pm and during summer where they are likely to be less supervised. It'd also be more scale-able to more children. I also imagine it also would produce less angst among public school teacher unions as its more supplemental to them versus replacing them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_Education_Found...

[2] https://svefoundation.org/get-involved/events/annual-dinner/

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

microcolonel wrote: post #28
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…

> 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.

[deleted]
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