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LeBron James Opens STEM-Based School For At-Risk Students In Ohio (sbnation.com)
NBA superstar LeBron James is opening a new school that many are calling a "game changer." It extends the length of a traditional school day and focuses on teaching a STEM curriculum to students who have a higher probability of failing academically or dropping out of school. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a report from SB Nation: LeBron James' I Promise School opened Monday to serve low-income and at-risk students in his hometown, and the public school could be an agent of change in the eastern Ohio city. The institution is the intersection of James' philanthropic Family Foundation and the I Promise Network he helped kickstart. I Promise began as an Akron-based non-profit aimed at boosting achievement for younger students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Now the movement has the means to educate these students year-round. I Promise will feature longer school days, a non-traditional school year, and greater access to the school, its facilities, and its teachers during down time for students. That's a formula aimed at replicating some of the at-home support children may be missing when it comes to schoolwork. The school has also anchored its curriculum in math and science-based teaching, dipping into the STEM -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- curriculum that prepares students for the jobs of the future.
What about fixing the student loan risk?
Honorable, but not quite useful.
If you want to help, build a school for the unusually gifted. Take those out of regular schools where the pace is low and put them together so they can push each other to greatness.
Of those that have a higher probability of failing, only a certain percent are failing because of the school itself. Many will be failing due to the situation at home, or simply because they don't have the mental faculties to comprehend. Those that show up will have a wide variety of different needs (some may be physically handicapped, some may be mentally handicapped, some may need therapy or counseling), and trying to put them all in one place is sure to cause further problems. If it's "low-income" students, putting them all together is sure to cause problems with violence, drugs, and bad behavior.
If you want low-income students to excel, put one or two in classes with mid to high income students so they get inundated with a better culture and attitude instead, that will do far more good.
Best of luck to Mr. Basketball's School for the Most Likely to Fail.
From a network engineer that was once a nerdy trailer park kid living with an alcoholic single father, I can translate for the silicon valley audience: "At-risk" means not me.
"At-risk" and "disadvantaged" means getting as close to illegal sexism and racism as they can manage. Nothing more.
No programs like this have ever been available to me. It was always people of any other color and gender combination. I was explicitly not welcome. Now, none of those at-risk STEM program students work in STEM, and I do.
The state of the world is bitter to accept.
i mean, he's bailed on them twice now. don't get used to anything, because he's just gonna take off.. he ain't ever gonna be around long. just like his daddy.
A strong back is a terrible thing to waste.
"better culture and attitude instead" and racist to boot
There are real reasons your doctor went to one.
If you told me as a kid that I was being sent to a nearly year-long school with longer hours, I would have legitimately killed myself. After 45 hours/week (8 hours in school, 1 to 2 hours of homework per day), Isn't it just plain torture? Work weeks are considered full-time at 40 hours, and there's a reason for that.
So a kid won't learn during the ordinary school day, but becomes a hard-working student in the extra hour or so? Ah, but a 'pro' 'athelete' came up with this. An individual whose parents dosed him with Human Growth Hormone (we do know that's how so many poor 'blacks' get so tall?). And who said slave breeding is a dead science in the USA?
Africa has the answer, and it ain't nice. Boarding schools with a LOT of corporal 'discipline'. But the 'successes' get the hell out of dodge just as soon as they are able, and Africa fails to move forward.
For most learning is a state of mind. For a tiny number of us, just as with 'natural' atheletes, it is born into us.
There is a better way. Dump the VICTORIAN methods of universal 'education' (which was never designed to make the ordinary sheeple kids truly smart in real numbers), and fully exploit new tech to provide learning resources to all- especially in the home where peer pressure is lowest.
Whjat example does it set to Greater Humanity when we allow Israel linked monsters to pay wall access to Human knowledge- research papers and text books priced to the heavens. The same filth that cheer the sniping of unarmed protestors in Gaza claim 'blacks' are 'genetically inferior' for thinking and 'genetically superior' for sports. While this insignificant minority has a stranglehold on the government of the USA, nothing is going to change.
From the article:
How does the I Promise School differ from any other school?
The school will operate with a longer-than-normal school year, with a focus on accelerated learning to bring kids up to speed who otherwise might be lagging. In addition, there is a focus on combating factors outside of the classroom that could cause children to struggle.
Services are available to help students deal from stress related to parents who are struggling to make ends meet. In addition there are activities to prevent the kids from having too much idle time and potentially getting into trouble.
The school also provides services to families, which include job placement assistance for parents and an on-site food bank that will allow parents to pick out foods they can prepare at home.
I suppose we could debate how successful it will be but at least he's stepping up and trying to help. Interestingly he opened the school in his home town, not his new digs in LA. In contrast, I don't recall Michael Jordan doing a damn thing for the underprivileged in Brooklyn (his hometown). Magic Johnson? Well, he opened a bunch of restaurants in East LA but this is a for profit venture.
For the record, I'm not a huge LeBron fan but in this case I think he deserves some credit. He didn't go to college because he was blessed with exceptional sports talent but for the vast, vast majority of these kids there is no sports scholarship in their future. The only way they are getting out of poverty is through education.
lobby Congress and your local state legislatures to stop cutting funding every chance they get. Fight against privatization and protect teachers Unions so good teachers don't get laid off just because their older and their pay's a bit higher. Demand equal funding for public schools. We spend a lot per student if you look at the average but that funding is incredibly disproportionately allocated thanks to how we use property taxes to fund schools.
Education, like heathcare, is a right.
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right? I went to magnet schools when I was a kid for science and tech. It's where I learned to program even though my family was generally too poor to own a computer until the early 90s (single mom, nurse, her income went way up around then).
Those trillions are very well spent. Teaching your most vulnerable math, science and literature means they can think and reason better. You want that, because otherwise they become an easily manipulated and increasingly destitute demographic. Sooner or later they'll find someone to fix the problems they have, like a fascist dictator. That never ends well for the well educated among a population.
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when they're uneducated. By definition most people are average. They can only do so much. You spend money on those because they're a massive population and when they get desperate an uneducated populace will put a dictator in charge to solve their problems. OTOH if you educate them they'll understand that putting a dictator in charge is not the solution and demand real progress. Or you can ignore them until they turn on you and blame you, the intelligentsia, for their problems.
TL;DR: Having a large mass of uneducated people never ends well for the educated.
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Doesn't mean they are not doing well in general. STEM is not the only game in town. STEM is often a dead-end career anyhow unless you are cut out for management. Ageism is rampant. Sure, STEM fields have done well for the last 15 years or so, but there is no guarantee that will continue. There were STEM slumps approximately around 1983, 1992, and 2002. One of them was the worse time ever in my life.
For example, if something sane replaced the stupid/illogical/bloated web "standards", half the dev positions would disappear. I remember how VB/Delphi/PowerBuilder sliced development staff in half from what C++ required. Those products abstracted away low-level grunt work from typical CRUD/GUI apps. The displaced C++'ers lamented on the loss of control over certain details, but bosses/owners accept loss of some control for 1/2 the tech staff cost. (The market was expanding fast enough that C++'ers found other jobs, just not internal generic CRUD.)
The web was not created with typical CRUD in mind and the adding it as an after-thought has made it ugly. A new standard may be CRUD-friendly. Sure, generic CRUD programming is not everything, but a big enough slice of the market to rock IT employment if it changes/shrinks.
Something equivalent could happen again, and BOOM! 2002 all over again. Or should I say, UnBoom. The only thing predictable about the future is that it's unpredictable.
Table-ized A.I.
Don't they mean 'thanks to all the money give to Lebron James' charity? I believe in giving him plenty of credit, but the 'all thanks to' is a bit much.
What can go wrong?
I never would have imagined a post from SB Nation be featured on the front page of Slashdot.
At risk of what? Being African, and therefore having an IQ of 70?
As proved by the fact that 'not very bright' children leave school just as 'not as bright' as when they started. Just as uninterested in learning as they were 11 years before (or however many years they spent in school).
You can't force people to learn anything. School puts children OFF learning. Children will naturally learn whatever they need in life, we have the internet now, and television. Unschooled and home schooled children do better, on average, than schooled children. How is that possible if schools are actually worthwhile? Look at the huge sums spent on schooling, and look at all the misery it causes. Everything I know today, I taught myself, and only then because I wanted to know how to do it, not because I was being forced to do it.
Wow, there's 1 in 90,000,000 who's at least not actively working to murder us all. See, not all oligarchs are evil.
It's a PUBLIC SCHOOL. What does that mean? It means he is using celebrity to capture taxpayer money, take control of the school away from the taxpayers, and do his own brilliant theory of how schools should work. Let's see him fund a PRIVATE school where he doesn't grab taxpayer money for his pet projects.
Perhaps LeBron might set a trend. Either way, he is to be respected.
I disagree with your remark about early STEM being useless. You might want to look up the work of Danica McKellar, and her math books specifically aimed at middle school girls. If you didn't know, she's an actress (Wonder Years, West Wing, etc.) as well as a recognized mathematician. Getting the kids in high school is actually a little late!