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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

#151

Post by dunstad »

cabaalis wrote: post #93
whatshisface wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also say that it reflects well on our country that a private citizen was able to realize that something needed to be done differently, and then make the change themselves instead of hassling through a decades-long "change the bureaucracy" adventure while competing with seven other equally motivated individuals who also want to change the education system, but in completely different ways...

You have touched on the fundamental divide in American society. Do it yourself because you want it done and since you have the resources or the drive, versus wait for someone else to do it or force everyone else to since you lack the resources or the drive. Even politicians who spend so much time and effort highlighting inequalities in society are able to do so because they had to drive to make themselves to do it. I…

Hard to walk when you're born in concrete shoes, though.

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

#152

Post by codebolt »

azernik wrote: post #141
sudhirj wrote: post #140

They're pretty public about their "secret sauce", which is to offer a pretty neat ladder up Maslow's pyramid, especially for the parents. Any family worried about food / clothes can come into the pantry and take whatever they need. Physiological needs, check. Barbershop available. That's really interesting. Safety needs: see above, with heavy emphasis on dealing with conflict situations. Celebrate coming to school, m…

The inclusion of a barbershop is very much an African-American cultural thing - these are traditional male social gathering places in that society. So this is probably not just providing a haircut, but also some things a bit higher up the Maslow hierarchy like that belonging you mentioned.

As a white male, the barber shop is one thing I always envied African-Americans. Seems nice to have a place where you can always drop by for some loose banter with the local guys.

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

#153

Post by elgenie »

collective-intl wrote: post #128
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 o…

> 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.

This is shoddy reasoning that assumes that each school year is an independent trial. In reality, school years build on each other and usually success in the next year requires familiarity with and competence in the previous year's material, so a more reasonable assumption IMO would be that those kids' next year would if fact be closer to a normal distribution with a mean at the 17.5th percentile.

It's certainly arguable that some of the reason for the school's success is that they're selecting students into classrooms in which they're all 10th-25th percentile which lets the teachers zero out the effect of them having fallen behind without the stigma of being "the dumb class" if they were tracked that way inside another school. But if that's the case, isn't that a rather valuable effect?

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

#154

Post by wsy »

whatshisface wrote: post #66
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.

You could also say that it reflects well on our country that a private citizen was able to realize that something needed to be done differently, and then make the change themselves instead of hassling through a decades-long "change the bureaucracy" adventure while competing with seven other equally motivated individuals who also want to change the education system, but in completely different ways...

It reflects well on the individual taking the initiative and giving the money, it reflects badly on every country where this is needed to give disadvantaged children equal opportunity.

Every rich person in almost every country in the world can spend money to improve education for disadvantaged children. So I fail to see what makes the country looking good here.

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

#155

Post by esalman »

_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…

The system is wired to goad students to fall into debt to sustain a decent living standard. I am transferring school from a fairly low-cost city (Albuquerque, NM) to Atlanta. My own issues are not comparable to these kids, but about 60% of my stipend is potentially going into rent, and more than 20% into fees, so I have started to doubt my decision to continue grad school.

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

#156

Post by pja »

_qbjt wrote: post #138
vvpan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Great question. I can't speak to AVID's practices today (it's been over 10 years... damn I'm old) but for me it created a much-needed structure. Students within the program could take AVID variants of core classes similar to how they might enroll in Honors or AP. The curriculum favored collaborative exercises like group projects and peer review. The idea was to encourage many of the social and professional tools we o…

So it’s trying to create for at-risk students some part of the support networks that other students get from their peers or family?

Makes sense.

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

#157

Post by Chico11Kidlet »

I like that he chose to do this within the public school system instead of through a charter. I also understand and appreciate that the improvement results are gradual. I am always very suspicious of drastic turnarounds in education outcomes. Gradual and continuous improvements are sustainable. Thank you to LeBron James for your support of the community.

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

#158

Post by not-a-duck »

_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…

It seems this small success is indicative of a much larger failure - a failure for the greater educational system to do good to all equally who enter in. The system is rigged.

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

#159

Post by ian0 »

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?

On a personal level, just call down to your local school or your old school and ask how you can help, given your skillset. A tech person in particular has a lot of valuable skills, from evaluating educational platforms to assisting with the builds of organisational tools and processes. Not to mention the ability to tutor or present a class on a specific topic, or organise a visit to your office.

On a society level, encourage continued investment in education. I, like most people, had very strong views on how we should radically improve education, until I started working with schools on a daily basis. Then I realised that it's incredibly complex field where practicalities dominate. I realised that educators actually know far more about their field than I did (as a student/parent) and the best use of the rest of society time was not to get involved in the "How to educate" debate but support the people who understand the topic in whatever ways we can.

On the startup side of things, there are a huge number of ways technology can assist educators. Eg we run a financial platform for 100+ Indonesian schools, basically cleaning up and managing their payments & books. There are lots of "infrastructure" opportunities like this. Digitising internal processes eliminates bureaucracy, saves time and cost that can be then dedicated to education.

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

#160

Post by [deleted] »

nopinsight wrote: post #129
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.

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