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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

#81

Post by vvpan »

_qbjt wrote: post #71

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…

AVID has information on their website but in your own words could you describe how it helped you? Very curious.

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

#82

Post by thatoneuser »

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.

Um so what about the endless govt programs out there that were supposed to achieve things like this brat have failed?

It's not like our country doesn't do anything - it's a very complex problem. There are efforts and they tend to have mediocre results at best. I've personally worked in some of these programs and the reality is govt just isn't well suited for the nuance and individual attention/thought different disadvantaged groups require. I'd wager that if you have ideas about how to fix these issues they'd be similarly flawed.

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

#83

Post by thatoneuser »

basetop wrote: post #72

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…

Because if this truly is a success then we want to spread the concept as far as we can as fast as we can. It can receive national attention and not harm those inside if done right.

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

#84

Post by stevenwoo »

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.

Wyatt Cenac's show Problem Areas is talking about school issues this season and the second episode focused on solutions focusing on different areas including continuing education of kids kicked out of regular school for misbehavior, the principal put her desk in the main hallway and changed the school police (New York school system has about the same number of education "cops" than Houston has actual cops) to a more humane, almost UK/Peel approach, and also education of prisoners for rehabilitation, for the title of the show it was pretty upbeat.

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

#85

Post by thatoneuser »

_qbjt wrote: post #71

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…

I grew up similarly. I've seen program after program come into my home town just for the administrators to pack up and leave town 1-2 years in, blaming everyone but themselves. It's very refreshing to see someone who "wants to make the world better" actually doing it rather than paying lip service with the real goal of boosting their ego.

Hope this is legit. Tip my hat to LeBron for being a real hero to the underserved.

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

#86

Post by TaylorAlexander »

spaginal wrote: post #78
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.

School is not supposed to be funded by philanthropy in America.

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

#87

Post by owyn »

jonknee wrote: post #77
xienze wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That seems like a pretty good result for 30% in additional funding.

According to wikipedia, the federal gov't only provides 8% (or maybe 10%, I saw some different numbers) of the total budget for primary education at the moment...

Total spending (federal+state+local) is apparently around $620B so an additional ~30% kick from the federal government would add $180B for a total of around $800B. Is that worth it?

The military budget is about $600B just by itself so a 30% cut there would pay for it.

Seeing how much work goes into fund raising vs actual teaching at local schools this really seems like a mis-allocation of teacher priorities that could be fixed with some slightly different spending priorities.

These are all pretty big numbers of course but not out of the realm of possibility.

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

#88

Post by externalreality »

This a good thing! I am 100% in support of James' endeavor here. However, students doing better when put in a better environment should not be surprising. I was a lower income student who was shipped across town to a majority white school as a anti-segregation program that was brokered with a federal oversight committee. The African Americans in that school were treated quite bad. My first day at school I was labeled " Brown" by the kindergarten because there was a student who already had my first name in the class. My last name isn't "Brown" that's my skin color. That was my first minute in school and I'm only 36 years old not 66 years old.

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

#89

Post by basetop »

thatoneuser wrote: post #83
basetop wrote: post #72

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…

Because if this truly is a success then we want to spread the concept as far as we can as fast as we can. It can receive national attention and not harm those inside if done right.

Agreed. Lets wait to see whether it is truly a success before hyping it. Especially since lebron's school opened in fall of 2018. I say it takes a generation to see if an education system is a sucess, not half a school year. Can we really say a school is a success after a few months?

Besides, I think celebrity and schools aren't what's truly important. Parental employment/financial stability, parental involvement in kids' lives and parental stability ( aka no divorces or single parent family ) are a better solution to kids success in school than a basketball player ( who went straight to the NBA from high school ) and his idea of an ideal school. But maybe I'm just old fashioned in that way.

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

#90

Post by Someone1234 »

sidlls wrote: post #62
dashundchen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of reports of charter schools pushing out low-performing students to get the student population they want. Labeling students with disabilities and claiming they don't have enough services to support them is very common. Unequal punishment leading to expulsion is another. http://gothamist.com/2015/10/30/success_academy_charter.php Another common tactic is to play games with the lottery/application pro…

> Labeling students with disabilities and claiming they don't have enough services to support them is very common. Unequal punishment leading to expulsion is another. This happens at public schools, too. My family recently had a huge tussle with the public school our kids attend because one of our children there was being punished for behavior stemming from his condition (autism). They kept pushing back on our reques…

> They kept pushing back on our requests for resources because of how strapped they are for cash and staff and all that.

May I ask: Are they IEP or 504? Because if they're IEP the school should receive funding to cover his additional needs. If he is 504, have you looked into if he'd be eligible for an IEP?

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