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LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

528 points by throwaway5752 8y ago

danso 8y ago
Related HN thread from 8 months ago (602 upvotes/463 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661995
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  Sure, but it's nice to see the premise borne out by the early data: The students’ scores reflect their performance on the Measures of Academic Progress assessment, a nationally recognized test administered by NWEA, an evaluation association. In reading, where both classes had scored in the lowest, or first, percentile, third graders moved to the ninth percentile, and fourth graders to the 16th. In math, third graders jumped from the lowest percentile to the 18th, while fourth graders moved from the second percentile to the 30th. 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.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
This illustrates that parents are the key component in childhood education. A worse than average teacher who teaches kids with involved parents will outperform the best teacher with uninvolved parents. In addition, LeBron James has a huge amount of credibility built up with the students. I would guess that many of the students feel some sort of connection to him, and do not want to disappoint him.
- dpflan 8y ago
  Indeed, schooling includes the influence of the parents, not pushing for helicopter parents, but engaged and supportive.
- matt4077 8y ago
  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.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    Money are not needed for parents to be engaged though.
    - InitialLastName 8y ago
      Parents who don't need to work two jobs to support their children are necessary though.
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        Sure but that applies to any school and a lot more situations bo?
    - p1necone 8y ago
      At an individual level, no. At an aggregate, long term, country wide level, yes. At least good governance and planning and money distribution, possibly not actually more money.
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        That applies to a lot of things in life not just this so that feels like reaching imo. Sure parents need to be stable not the least financially but they need that to be good parents, good spouses, citizens etc.
        ketzo 8y ago
        But I think the point is that it's really incredibly hard to do any of those things unless you have financial stability; at the very least, it's a hell of a lot easier when you do.
- michaelgiba 8y ago
  Great point
shhehebehdh 8y ago
I didn’t see anything about this in the article, so I ask here in the hopes that someone more knowledgeable can comment: how are they controlling for selection bias? Is there any way to select into or out of this school, or is it purely the standard districting system? Even if it’s the latter in many other places it’s still possible to move into the area. Do we know to what extent that has been happening? Edit: Oops, I was tricked by an advert. The article continued to say that the students were admitted by lottery. The only question I’m immediately left with then is whether they had to enter the lottery, or whether it was automatic? And was their admission contingent on their parents’ willingness to participate in these extra classes? https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/ https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-t...
- eyeinthepyramid 8y ago
  From the article: "I Promise students were among those identified by the district as performing in the 10th to 25th percentile on their second-grade assessments. They were then admitted through a lottery."
  - patrickyeon 8y ago
    Because I wasn't sure which end of the bell curve this was referring to, "10th to 25th percentile" in this article means students significantly below the median, not above it.
  - OscarCunningham 8y ago
    There will be some amount of regression to the mean then. It would be best to compare these kids to the students who "lost" the lottery rather to all students.
- icelancer 8y ago
  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 individuals and also costs the taxpayers a substantial sum; LeBron does not cover 100% of the costs, or even a majority of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Promise_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Promise_School
tabtab 8y ago
Good, his ball team isn't. ;-)
ngngngng 8y ago
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 society. I think that role playing everyday situations should be a part of every students education.
- johnsimer 8y ago
  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?
  - thirdsurf 8y ago
    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-learning-in-zimbabwe 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 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/ 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.
exabrial 8y ago
Amazing to see a privately funded school do so well, especially one that targets at risk children. I hope the lessons learned here inspire more private investment in education.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  It’s mostly public, plus some private extras
- dhritzkiv 8y ago
  Or that it brings attention to neglected demographics and inspires greater demand and political will for improved public funding and resource allocation. Privately funded white knighting should not be the answer.
- tracker1 8y ago
  It's more of a hybrid... It's publicly funded, per student similar to other schools in the area, but additional funding from James' foundation. Of course general school funding should probably be split with a bit more towards the lowest 20-25% on performance and the top 10-15% imho. I wish more communities were more involved. I've often thought it would be great if every parent were able to participate in one day of class a month how much that could improve things overall.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tracker1 8y ago
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.
- singhrac 8y ago
  I read this regularly to get that :) https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-week-in-good-news https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-week-in-good-news
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Looks like it stalled back in January.. :-(
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      That's like something out of The Onion. "Newspaper's 'good news' section shuts down, cites lack of good news"
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  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.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
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.
- jonknee 8y ago
  > 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.
  - xienze 8y ago
    >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.
    - jonknee 8y ago
      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.
luckydata 8y ago
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.
- suddenstutter 8y ago
  Seriously, its crazy how easily people are shocked by common sense being put to work.
_lessthan0 8y ago
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.
- spraak 8y ago
  The predominant attitude is cynical
  - _lessthan0 8y ago
    I think we are on the same page
- warent 8y ago
  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.
- Retra 8y ago
  Maybe our own emotions aren't the subject of importance here?
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  I think you could lead by example and post your own uplifting commentary, and that would be more effective.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  Can you link to the comments you think are so terrible? Most people seem supportive.
mindfulplay 8y ago
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.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  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...
  - iscrewyou 8y ago
    Definitely. This is a glass is quarter full type of situation.
  - cabaalis 8y ago
    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. If their manner of achieving things is for good or ill is up for debate, but there is no arguing that they are where they are because they chose to go for it. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step...
    - dunstad 8y ago
      Hard to walk when you're born in concrete shoes, though.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    999 out of 1000 private citizens are forced to do exactly that. It's to LeBron's credit that he recognized and properly used his influence and fame to achieve this, but he is in a rare position.
SpaceManNabs 8y ago
Of course it was going to be a success. Most other approaches that approached intergenerational poverty via the three pronged approach of better child care, housing, and economic opportunity has work to great success. The school doesn't try to solve all 3 at once, but the approach to child care makes the other much easier to manage for parents.
- fillskills 8y ago
  Wonder if such a 3 pronged approach can be applied to integration of immigrants.
  - azernik 8y ago
    Worked pretty well in early Israel. Generally it's an interesting study model, in that it saw and continues to see absorption of (Jewish) immigrants as a national mission, not just an unwelcome burden. It includes what's essentially a full-time salary to study Hebrew for 6 months, subsidized housing for a year, subsidized daycare, job counseling, and assorted miscellaneous benefits. Not always sufficiently funded, but the basic model is endorsed.
  - luckylion 8y ago
    Depends on what you're trying to achieve, I suppose. Most Western European countries don't know any intergenerational poverty similar to US-levels (housing and basic needs are always taken care of by the state, education + health care is free), but still ended up with parallel societies for some immigrant groups.
- azernik 8y ago
  Also includes some direct economic benefits for parents - e.g. the food/clothes pantry mentioned, where parents can have basic needs taken care of without payment.
supernintendo 8y ago
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/ https://www.avid.org/
- vvpan 8y ago
  AVID has information on their website but in your own words could you describe how it helped you? Very curious.
  - supernintendo 8y ago
    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 often take for granted (collective problem solving, resource management, etc.) to at-risk students. We also had regular one-on-ones with instructors within the program who would track our academic performance and help guide us along the way. Finally, higher education was a major focus of the program and took the form of anything from SAT prep sessions to projects where we would have to research colleges and universities we planned to apply to as part of the assignment.
basetop 8y ago
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-black-students.html 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?
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  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.
  - basetop 8y ago
    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.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  > 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. It is a normal public school that is getting additional funding, and funding for specific additional programs (e.g. parental outreach, after school program). Worst case scenario the funding dries up and it returns to being a completely normal public school with normal levels of public funding.
somethoughts 8y ago
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_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_Education_Found... [2] https://svefoundation.org/get-involved/events/annual-dinner/ https://svefoundation.org/get-involved/events/annual-dinner/
- jrumbut 8y ago
  This is not a charter school or private school, it is a public school that received additional money on top of its usual funding from Lebron James.
  - somethoughts 8y ago
    Thanks - missed that - I guess I must have skimmed the article too fast. In that case, this is a great example of a very full featured supplemental program versus the replacement program.
externalreality 8y ago
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 "<my first name> 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.
- istjohn 8y ago
  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?
  - externalreality 8y ago
    istjohn, I deeply appreciate your question. I've been sitting here for over an hour trying to answer so I'll just answer simply. Yes, I would rather have gone to a school in my neighborhood. I would have rather been around other African American and LatinX students than to have learned what it is to be neglected and to feel inferior @ 4.5 years old. No question. Please don't use my response as an argument in support of segregation. That would be purely evil and disgusting.
    - istjohn 8y ago
      Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm sorry you had to go through that. I believe the racial segregation in our country is an enormous injustice that gets short shrift in public conversation. It's so pervasive in our society that we don't even see it anymore. It's role in education is particularly pernicious. I live in Columbus, Ohio, which like many northern cities has an underfunded, poorly performing, mostly black and brown school district in its core flanked all around by well-funded, high-performing, mostly white school districts. My son's elementary school last year had 82% students of color and two miles away in another school district was a public elementary with 9% students of color. I did some research to understand how things came to be like this in my city, and of course, it’s the typical story of white flight after Brown v. Board of Education. But what surprised me, a white person, was the historical and continuing ambivalence in the local black community with bussing as a solution to racial inequality in education. And I’ve seen that ambivalence expressed elsewhere, too. I was told that prior to Brown v. Board there were excellent all-black public schools. Then Brown v. Board triggered white flight, which drained all the resources from the city core, and eventually even middle class black families who could afford to, got out. The answer is not bussing, not integration, I was told by one thought-leader in the local black community, but quality, well-funded community schools. I struggle to accept that answer because I know the data shows that minority students benefit hugely when their schools are not segregated. Yet I understand why sending kids to schools that aren’t in their community and where they may not be welcome is problematic. I wonder if the ideal solution isn’t a bussing program that is just as likely to bus a white kid to a black school as a black kid to a white school. But the program would need to be robust enough to prevent or adapt to white flight. Or maybe we should focus our energy on residential economic and racial segregation which, if solved, would also solve the educational segregation issue. I don’t know. In any case, I’d love to hear any thoughts you might have.
ghda 8y ago
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 uncomfortably like segregated-by-race classrooms.
- krastanov 8y ago
  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).
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
    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.
    - krastanov 8y ago
      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.
nopinsight 8y ago
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 than teachers on the kid’s attitude, motivation, and habits regarding education. If we look at a broader picture, most countries that do well in PISA, an international assessment of academic skills for school students, strongly value education at every level of society starting from parents and family. This includes Vietnam, a relatively poor country which, at rank 22, does better than quite a few Western European ones. The US, at rank 31, should study this school and expand on good lessons learned from the experiment. [1] PISA results map http://factsmaps.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-math-science-reading/ http://factsmaps.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of...
- nopinsight 8y ago
  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.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
randomacct3847 8y ago
Isn’t it obvious that funding public schools with local property taxes is what has created this messed up system where your zip code has a disproportionate impact on the quality of your education?
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  Just about every single state has state-level funding for schools that acts to even out those disparities. Worse yet, spending (per pupil) on its own turns out to not be a very good predictor of quality of education. It doesn't even seem to be a great predictor if you control for parents' SES, from what I can see for various school districts in Boston's suburbs. Put another way, a number of quite distressed school districts spend more than various "good" school districts, with much worse results. DC public schools are a poster child here, but not the only example by any means. So it's not just a matter of funding levels at all.
sudhirj 8y ago
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, make sure it's always a safe place, extra hours and days to keep them off the streets. Belonging and love: everyone in the school are the "chosen ones", they have a tribe, the teachers are on their side, the parents are involved and accountable. If you handle the first three levels for a person, hitting self esteem, accomplishment (at a personal level, need not be state's best or world's best) can come much easier, even with average quality of teaching. They're also making the parents baseline role models (they clean, clothed, putting food on the table and looking into their own self improvement) and plastering the environment with a topline role model LeBron James (if he can do it you could at least try as hard as he did).
- azernik 8y ago
  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.
  - codebolt 8y ago
    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.
    - mac01021 8y ago
      Last year I walked into a McDonald's at 8am and a bunch of old white guys seemed to be using the place as just such a venue.
      - 8y ago
Halluxfboy009 8y ago
Let's list every inner city school across America (is there such a list?), list the "promise picks" that can be funded in them, and then have a place benefactors can sign up.
Chico11Kidlet 8y ago
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.
mac01021 8y ago
> Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent. Really? You had to switch to percentages instead of saying she missed 36 days a year instead of 50?
Calashle0202 8y ago
Look at the resources it takes, to lift even a small number of children out of failure. Instead of building a wall, we should be building more bridges to success..
socrates1998 8y ago
It's great to see this. The only issue I have is how replicable this formula is. I think you can apply a couple of programs and concepts on a large scale to whole communities, but this is a very expensive school with a lot of resources behind it, not to mention a very powerful celebrity endorser who has a lot to lose if this school fails. There is a small private school that just opened up in my area (about 4 years old). It has a powerful businessman who is the founder. Class sizes are less than 10 kids with two teachers per class. That's about a 5:1 ratio, most public schools would kill for anything better close to 10:1 with most academic classes are 20-30 students for one teacher. This small private school also has a lot of amenities, like a ton of tech for the students. While this is a great school, it's just a place for elites to educate their students. I applaud everyone in this private school and Lebron's school. I hope we can use some of their ideas and programs to a larger scale.

528 points by throwaway5752 8y ago

Related HN thread from 8 months ago (602 upvotes/463 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661995

throwaway5752 8y ago
Sure, but it's nice to see the premise borne out by the early data: The students’ scores reflect their performance on the Measures of Academic Progress assessment, a nationally recognized test administered by NWEA, an evaluation association. In reading, where both classes had scored in the lowest, or first, percentile, third graders moved to the ninth percentile, and fourth graders to the 16th. In math, third graders jumped from the lowest percentile to the 18th, while fourth graders moved from the second percentile to the 30th. 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.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

This illustrates that parents are the key component in childhood education. A worse than average teacher who teaches kids with involved parents will outperform the best teacher with uninvolved parents. In addition, LeBron James has a huge amount of credibility built up with the students. I would guess that many of the students feel some sort of connection to him, and do not want to disappoint him.

dpflan 8y ago
Indeed, schooling includes the influence of the parents, not pushing for helicopter parents, but engaged and supportive.
matt4077 8y ago
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.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  Money are not needed for parents to be engaged though.
  - InitialLastName 8y ago
    Parents who don't need to work two jobs to support their children are necessary though.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      Sure but that applies to any school and a lot more situations bo?
  - p1necone 8y ago
    At an individual level, no. At an aggregate, long term, country wide level, yes. At least good governance and planning and money distribution, possibly not actually more money.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      That applies to a lot of things in life not just this so that feels like reaching imo. Sure parents need to be stable not the least financially but they need that to be good parents, good spouses, citizens etc.
      - ketzo 8y ago
        But I think the point is that it's really incredibly hard to do any of those things unless you have financial stability; at the very least, it's a hell of a lot easier when you do.
michaelgiba 8y ago
Great point

shhehebehdh 8y ago

I didn’t see anything about this in the article, so I ask here in the hopes that someone more knowledgeable can comment: how are they controlling for selection bias? Is there any way to select into or out of this school, or is it purely the standard districting system? Even if it’s the latter in many other places it’s still possible to move into the area. Do we know to what extent that has been happening? Edit: Oops, I was tricked by an advert. The article continued to say that the students were admitted by lottery. The only question I’m immediately left with then is whether they had to enter the lottery, or whether it was automatic? And was their admission contingent on their parents’ willingness to participate in these extra classes? https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/ https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-t...

eyeinthepyramid 8y ago
From the article: "I Promise students were among those identified by the district as performing in the 10th to 25th percentile on their second-grade assessments. They were then admitted through a lottery."
- patrickyeon 8y ago
  Because I wasn't sure which end of the bell curve this was referring to, "10th to 25th percentile" in this article means students significantly below the median, not above it.
- OscarCunningham 8y ago
  There will be some amount of regression to the mean then. It would be best to compare these kids to the students who "lost" the lottery rather to all students.
icelancer 8y ago
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 individuals and also costs the taxpayers a substantial sum; LeBron does not cover 100% of the costs, or even a majority of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Promise_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Promise_School

tabtab 8y ago

Good, his ball team isn't. ;-)

ngngngng 8y ago

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 society. I think that role playing everyday situations should be a part of every students education.

johnsimer 8y ago
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?
- thirdsurf 8y ago
  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-learning-in-zimbabwe 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 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/ 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.

exabrial 8y ago

Amazing to see a privately funded school do so well, especially one that targets at risk children. I hope the lessons learned here inspire more private investment in education.

b_tterc_p 8y ago
It’s mostly public, plus some private extras
dhritzkiv 8y ago
Or that it brings attention to neglected demographics and inspires greater demand and political will for improved public funding and resource allocation. Privately funded white knighting should not be the answer.
tracker1 8y ago
It's more of a hybrid... It's publicly funded, per student similar to other schools in the area, but additional funding from James' foundation. Of course general school funding should probably be split with a bit more towards the lowest 20-25% on performance and the top 10-15% imho. I wish more communities were more involved. I've often thought it would be great if every parent were able to participate in one day of class a month how much that could improve things overall.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tracker1 8y ago

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.

singhrac 8y ago
I read this regularly to get that :) https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-week-in-good-news https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-week-in-good-news
- tracker1 8y ago
  Looks like it stalled back in January.. :-(
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    That's like something out of The Onion. "Newspaper's 'good news' section shuts down, cites lack of good news"
stevenwoo 8y ago
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.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

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.

jonknee 8y ago
> 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.
- xienze 8y ago
  >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.
  - jonknee 8y ago
    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.

luckydata 8y ago

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.

suddenstutter 8y ago
Seriously, its crazy how easily people are shocked by common sense being put to work.

_lessthan0 8y ago

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.

spraak 8y ago
The predominant attitude is cynical
- _lessthan0 8y ago
  I think we are on the same page
warent 8y ago
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.
Retra 8y ago
Maybe our own emotions aren't the subject of importance here?
throwaway5752 8y ago
I think you could lead by example and post your own uplifting commentary, and that would be more effective.
tomhoward 8y ago
Can you link to the comments you think are so terrible? Most people seem supportive.

mindfulplay 8y ago

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.

whatshisface 8y ago
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...
- iscrewyou 8y ago
  Definitely. This is a glass is quarter full type of situation.
- cabaalis 8y ago
  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. If their manner of achieving things is for good or ill is up for debate, but there is no arguing that they are where they are because they chose to go for it. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step...
  - dunstad 8y ago
    Hard to walk when you're born in concrete shoes, though.
- philwelch 8y ago
  999 out of 1000 private citizens are forced to do exactly that. It's to LeBron's credit that he recognized and properly used his influence and fame to achieve this, but he is in a rare position.

SpaceManNabs 8y ago

Of course it was going to be a success. Most other approaches that approached intergenerational poverty via the three pronged approach of better child care, housing, and economic opportunity has work to great success. The school doesn't try to solve all 3 at once, but the approach to child care makes the other much easier to manage for parents.

fillskills 8y ago
Wonder if such a 3 pronged approach can be applied to integration of immigrants.
- azernik 8y ago
  Worked pretty well in early Israel. Generally it's an interesting study model, in that it saw and continues to see absorption of (Jewish) immigrants as a national mission, not just an unwelcome burden. It includes what's essentially a full-time salary to study Hebrew for 6 months, subsidized housing for a year, subsidized daycare, job counseling, and assorted miscellaneous benefits. Not always sufficiently funded, but the basic model is endorsed.
- luckylion 8y ago
  Depends on what you're trying to achieve, I suppose. Most Western European countries don't know any intergenerational poverty similar to US-levels (housing and basic needs are always taken care of by the state, education + health care is free), but still ended up with parallel societies for some immigrant groups.
azernik 8y ago
Also includes some direct economic benefits for parents - e.g. the food/clothes pantry mentioned, where parents can have basic needs taken care of without payment.

supernintendo 8y ago

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/ https://www.avid.org/

vvpan 8y ago
AVID has information on their website but in your own words could you describe how it helped you? Very curious.
- supernintendo 8y ago
  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 often take for granted (collective problem solving, resource management, etc.) to at-risk students. We also had regular one-on-ones with instructors within the program who would track our academic performance and help guide us along the way. Finally, higher education was a major focus of the program and took the form of anything from SAT prep sessions to projects where we would have to research colleges and universities we planned to apply to as part of the assignment.

basetop 8y ago

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-black-students.html 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?

thatoneuser 8y ago
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.
- basetop 8y ago
  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.
Someone1234 8y ago
> 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. It is a normal public school that is getting additional funding, and funding for specific additional programs (e.g. parental outreach, after school program). Worst case scenario the funding dries up and it returns to being a completely normal public school with normal levels of public funding.

somethoughts 8y ago

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_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_Education_Found... [2] https://svefoundation.org/get-involved/events/annual-dinner/ https://svefoundation.org/get-involved/events/annual-dinner/

jrumbut 8y ago
This is not a charter school or private school, it is a public school that received additional money on top of its usual funding from Lebron James.
- somethoughts 8y ago
  Thanks - missed that - I guess I must have skimmed the article too fast. In that case, this is a great example of a very full featured supplemental program versus the replacement program.

externalreality 8y ago

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 "<my first name> 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.

istjohn 8y ago
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?
- externalreality 8y ago
  istjohn, I deeply appreciate your question. I've been sitting here for over an hour trying to answer so I'll just answer simply. Yes, I would rather have gone to a school in my neighborhood. I would have rather been around other African American and LatinX students than to have learned what it is to be neglected and to feel inferior @ 4.5 years old. No question. Please don't use my response as an argument in support of segregation. That would be purely evil and disgusting.
  - istjohn 8y ago
    Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm sorry you had to go through that. I believe the racial segregation in our country is an enormous injustice that gets short shrift in public conversation. It's so pervasive in our society that we don't even see it anymore. It's role in education is particularly pernicious. I live in Columbus, Ohio, which like many northern cities has an underfunded, poorly performing, mostly black and brown school district in its core flanked all around by well-funded, high-performing, mostly white school districts. My son's elementary school last year had 82% students of color and two miles away in another school district was a public elementary with 9% students of color. I did some research to understand how things came to be like this in my city, and of course, it’s the typical story of white flight after Brown v. Board of Education. But what surprised me, a white person, was the historical and continuing ambivalence in the local black community with bussing as a solution to racial inequality in education. And I’ve seen that ambivalence expressed elsewhere, too. I was told that prior to Brown v. Board there were excellent all-black public schools. Then Brown v. Board triggered white flight, which drained all the resources from the city core, and eventually even middle class black families who could afford to, got out. The answer is not bussing, not integration, I was told by one thought-leader in the local black community, but quality, well-funded community schools. I struggle to accept that answer because I know the data shows that minority students benefit hugely when their schools are not segregated. Yet I understand why sending kids to schools that aren’t in their community and where they may not be welcome is problematic. I wonder if the ideal solution isn’t a bussing program that is just as likely to bus a white kid to a black school as a black kid to a white school. But the program would need to be robust enough to prevent or adapt to white flight. Or maybe we should focus our energy on residential economic and racial segregation which, if solved, would also solve the educational segregation issue. I don’t know. In any case, I’d love to hear any thoughts you might have.

ghda 8y ago

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 uncomfortably like segregated-by-race classrooms.

krastanov 8y ago
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).
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
  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.
  - krastanov 8y ago
    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.

nopinsight 8y ago

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 than teachers on the kid’s attitude, motivation, and habits regarding education. If we look at a broader picture, most countries that do well in PISA, an international assessment of academic skills for school students, strongly value education at every level of society starting from parents and family. This includes Vietnam, a relatively poor country which, at rank 22, does better than quite a few Western European ones. The US, at rank 31, should study this school and expand on good lessons learned from the experiment. [1] PISA results map http://factsmaps.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-math-science-reading/ http://factsmaps.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of...

nopinsight 8y ago
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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

randomacct3847 8y ago

Isn’t it obvious that funding public schools with local property taxes is what has created this messed up system where your zip code has a disproportionate impact on the quality of your education?

bzbarsky 8y ago
Just about every single state has state-level funding for schools that acts to even out those disparities. Worse yet, spending (per pupil) on its own turns out to not be a very good predictor of quality of education. It doesn't even seem to be a great predictor if you control for parents' SES, from what I can see for various school districts in Boston's suburbs. Put another way, a number of quite distressed school districts spend more than various "good" school districts, with much worse results. DC public schools are a poster child here, but not the only example by any means. So it's not just a matter of funding levels at all.

sudhirj 8y ago

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, make sure it's always a safe place, extra hours and days to keep them off the streets. Belonging and love: everyone in the school are the "chosen ones", they have a tribe, the teachers are on their side, the parents are involved and accountable. If you handle the first three levels for a person, hitting self esteem, accomplishment (at a personal level, need not be state's best or world's best) can come much easier, even with average quality of teaching. They're also making the parents baseline role models (they clean, clothed, putting food on the table and looking into their own self improvement) and plastering the environment with a topline role model LeBron James (if he can do it you could at least try as hard as he did).

azernik 8y ago
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.
- codebolt 8y ago
  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.
  - mac01021 8y ago
    Last year I walked into a McDonald's at 8am and a bunch of old white guys seemed to be using the place as just such a venue.
    - 8y ago

Halluxfboy009 8y ago

Let's list every inner city school across America (is there such a list?), list the "promise picks" that can be funded in them, and then have a place benefactors can sign up.

Chico11Kidlet 8y ago

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.

mac01021 8y ago

> Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent. Really? You had to switch to percentages instead of saying she missed 36 days a year instead of 50?

Calashle0202 8y ago

Look at the resources it takes, to lift even a small number of children out of failure. Instead of building a wall, we should be building more bridges to success..

socrates1998 8y ago

It's great to see this. The only issue I have is how replicable this formula is. I think you can apply a couple of programs and concepts on a large scale to whole communities, but this is a very expensive school with a lot of resources behind it, not to mention a very powerful celebrity endorser who has a lot to lose if this school fails. There is a small private school that just opened up in my area (about 4 years old). It has a powerful businessman who is the founder. Class sizes are less than 10 kids with two teachers per class. That's about a 5:1 ratio, most public schools would kill for anything better close to 10:1 with most academic classes are 20-30 students for one teacher. This small private school also has a lot of amenities, like a ton of tech for the students. While this is a great school, it's just a place for elites to educate their students. I applaud everyone in this private school and Lebron's school. I hope we can use some of their ideas and programs to a larger scale.