LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by peteretep » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 2:49 AM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #23

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…

At least in my state charter schools must accept any student that can attend a regular public school, and there's a lottery for everyone. Conversely, there's some charter schools specifically for kids with special needs. There's one in my city specifically for autistic kids.

Notably this is _not_ a charter school, per the article

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

#122

Post by istjohn » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

externalreality wrote: post #88

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…

If I can ask, how do you feel about the program that bussed you across town, overall? Do you feel you benefited on net despite the exposure to the racism, or would you prefer to have stayed in your neighborhood school if you could do it all again?

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

#123

Post by thirdsurf » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 3:09 AM UTC

johnsimer wrote: post #63

ngngngng wrote: post #17

I devote a lot of my time thinking about how to improve education. I love so much of what this school is doing, much of it being things I hadn't considered, since my education had far far different problems than these kids have. Out of everything in the article, what impressed me the most was the roleplaying with the intervention counselor. What an incredible way to help kids learn how to behave and assimilate into s…

I also think a bit about improving education. What are the best things from your thoughts/research someone or society as a whole could do to improve education?

Can we publish open source examples of school architectures?

What about some 'near term science fiction', publishing examples of people-powered schooling that could emerge in places. I want to see how we can use cheap computing resources, peripherals and models of human interaction to help schools create themselves.

Nucleos is a company working on bringing education resources to developing world areas: https://nucleos.com/blog/2017/02/portablecloud-supports-e-le...

I hope to do something with educational software abroad, including it with the 3D printing computer labs I hope to set up. They can make about $50-$100 of surfboard fins a day, using about $10 of filament. I'm linking to my site below, it works now but I've not done much to help with formatting issues. I'm just getting the content out and cleaning it up along the way: https://stormfins.com

PS In case you're wondering, this post motivated me to set up a new account. My last one was sacrosurf, and prior to that it was toddio. This moniker matches the other .com I have, which I plan to use as a "School of Surfing" concept: thirdsurf.com I want to get surf instruction to happen in an easier and more empowering P2P manner, but I'm focusing on completing enough of the stormfins website first. Any support or assistance it welcome. I've got a B.S. in Computer Engineering from '97-'02 at UCSC, and a fun list of prior gigs and projects including helping get https://www.beelinereader.com/ started, and getting T9Space.com's app setup generalized into a browser, helping 100,000s of flip phone internet users have access to the internet like they had a desktop computer to use.

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

#124

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 3:18 AM UTC

krastanov wrote: post #106

ghda wrote: post #103

Segregating students by ability is one of the easy, cheap, sensible ways to improve outcomes that almost certainly works. Taking slower students out and teaching them at their own pace should benefit those taken out and those left behind. Unfortunately, it’s my understanding that this sort of thing winds up politically impossible in most parts of the US, as segregated-by-ability classrooms wind up looking uncomfortab…

On the other hand, Finland is often touted as having a great educational system and they very explicitly do not segregate by ability, rather they try to lift all boats. The problem of "smart kids getting bored or not having opportunities to excel" somehow does not seem to be an issue (I am a bit confused that this is the case).

What happens when you get bad kids that don't care about their grades that distract the good kids and prevent them from learning. Ideally the teacher could bring them all up to the same pace, but at a certain point it's on the parent. In some cases you do need separation. I always enjoyed my GT (gifted and talented, separated classes from 1st grade to 8th) and AP (dual credit college/highschool 9-12th grade) classes more than others because they moved faster and my classmates were well behaved.

The schools weren't fully separated, the GT classes was one designated class (1st-5th was English, 6th-8th Science).

The AP classes were highschool and college credits and you could choose English, Math, and/or Science.

This was in Texas. Though they no longer do GT classes anymore I don't think. Those were my favorite as a kid though.

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

#125

Post by gigatexal » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 3:31 AM UTC

_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…

This is so great! I hope you went back and thanked that English teacher. They don’t get the thanks they deserve most of the time and they sure as hell don’t get the pay they deserve. Teaching is a noble calling and I’m glad someone saw you and took the time to care.

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

#126

Post by krastanov » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 3:42 AM UTC

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #124

krastanov wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, Finland is often touted as having a great educational system and they very explicitly do not segregate by ability, rather they try to lift all boats. The problem of "smart kids getting bored or not having opportunities to excel" somehow does not seem to be an issue (I am a bit confused that this is the case).

What happens when you get bad kids that don't care about their grades that distract the good kids and prevent them from learning. Ideally the teacher could bring them all up to the same pace, but at a certain point it's on the parent. In some cases you do need separation. I always enjoyed my GT (gifted and talented, separated classes from 1st grade to 8th) and AP (dual credit college/highschool 9-12th grade) classes…

Yeah, I feel the same way from my personal experience as a kid, but from what I have read, the "bad kids" thesis you suggested is at least partially fallacious. Again, as an example, Finland seems to disprove it.

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

#127

Post by bluthru » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 3:46 AM UTC

verisimilidude wrote: post #120

thatoneuser wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disad…

> the reality is govt just isn't well suited for the nuance and individual attention/thought different disadvantaged groups require This is a solved problem in other countries. Finland is a good example. Their education system focuses on equality above all: all kids are going to have access to the same educational opportunities, even if equality comes at the cost of quality. As part of this idea, privately funded sch…

>Finland is a good example.

No, you need to control for demographics.

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

#128

Post by collective-intl » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 3:51 AM UTC

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…

I think there is a major flaw which you are getting at.

If you take the students who performed at the 10th-25th percentile in any school in one year, on average they would do better the next year because of reversion to the mean.

The way to understand it is that the population they chose did so poorly on their test last year, it is likely that they did worse than they usually do. They are more likely to have had an off year.

For example, the NYT article mentions the girl who missed 50 days of school the previous year. It's more likely she won't miss so many days this year. That's reversion to the mean.

IMO, that throws all the results into question, as you would expect them to do better already.

In general, there are no panaceas in education. Any school which is claiming really great results pretty much never holds up. We've had decades of these articles with experts trying to figure out how to achieve better educational outcomes, and very few can be isolated. Even Bill Gates tried for a while.

Anyone who studies this stuff seriously will tell you educational outcomes are mostly based on innate talent.

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

#129

Post by nopinsight » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 4:07 AM UTC

nopinsight wrote: post #105

Two major and quite distinctive improvements of the school I noticed from the article: * Improving parental involvement and the parents’ attention to their own education * Utilizing the hidden power of role models: LeBron James and each kid’s parents Students spend significantly more time at home than at school. Parents interact with each kid one-on-one or in a small group. Thus, they can have much more influence tha…

Vietnam’s GDP PPP per capita in 2017 is about $6500; the US’ is about $60000.

This implies that the US as a nation should have resources to support better education if they are deployed well, despite some discount from Baumol’s cost disease.

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

#130

Post by nine_k » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

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.

If one school runs an experiment and it's a success, more schools (most of them state-run) can follow.

If one school runs an experiment and it's a flop, it's a sad but it's limited to one school.

If a government mandates a particular way of schooling, the initial good effect is multiplied faster. But the initial bad effect is multiplied, too.

The fact that the US have a variety of school programs is a boon for the nation at large. They are mostly not great, but that's another problem. (See also e.g. http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html for some good pointers at problems.)