I am excited about this approach and I think LeBron's organization has put a lot of though and work with experts on this project.
- This school is a true public school and not a charter school. In Ohio a lot of charter schools can have some degree of selection in their students and kick out families which don't meet the requirements which leads to more at-risk students left to the public schools. This school is making a point of taking at-risk students.
- Longer school days, 3 meals, and a longer school year helps students stay focused. Unfortunately the home environment for a lot of kids makes it so hard for these kids to be able to focus at school. In my wife's elementary school classes some kids show up with just a hamburger bun for breakfast. Others fall asleep immediately at school since they live with 5+ siblings and there are literally no available beds at home. I am not trying to blame the parents in all the cases either, a lot of the time there are single parents just trying to get by and make ends meet and don't know what more they can do.
- Focussing on the teachers will also help. Teachers and unions have been vilified by Governor Kasich but they are not the main problem at all (it is the tragic home environments) with ridiculous review systems and standards, but then there is little support in challenging districts like in Akron/Cleveland. It is a lot easier to work in the suburbs where the kids would progress and learn even without teachers, so that is where everyone wants to go since a good rating is automatic. I think this problem occurs in just about every field where metrics dominate the review system (medicine, call centers, QA, etc). The turnover for teachers at local charter schools is terrible and only seems to attract early-career teachers who couldn't get a job at a public school.
- This doesn't seem to be a short term flashy project but has been years in the making. None of the features here are gimmicky, but just like many things in life it takes a lot of hard work!
- Adding the goal of college education shows a path forward which a lot of students don't think is possible.
I am super excited to be from Akron and I hope this model proves successful!
> Longer school days, 3 meals, and a longer school year helps students stay focused.
The middle one is absolutely true, the other two I really doubt e.g. in Finland or Germany, schoolday starts around 9AM and ends around 2PM, yielding 3h30 to 4h studies a day accounting for breaks, 5 days/week, with little homework (maybe 5h/week total). Afternoon is usually dedicated to clubs.
>The middle one is absolutely true, the other two I really doubt e.g. in Finland or Germany, schoolday starts around 9AM and ends around 2PM, yielding 3h30 to 4h studies a day accounting for breaks, 5 days/week, with little homework (maybe 5h/week total). Afternoon is usually dedicated to clubs.
In the context of at-risk kids, I think the idea is to maximize the amount of time the kids get to spend away from their toxic and stressful home environments.
I am a bit skeptical of the overall "minimize idle time" idea, though. They seem to be on board with giving the kids enough free time to do independent study and stuff, but whether that's any good will depend on how it's implemented.
And research consistently shows that teenagers perform better if you start school later in the day than 7am. E.g., http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192636502086633... "shifted the school start timefrom 7:15 a. m. to 8:40 a. m. This article examines that change, finding significant benefits such as improved attendance and enrollment rates, less sleeping in class, and less student-reported depression."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1540200070126380... "Students at the late-starting school reported waking up over 1 hr later on school mornings and obtaining 50 min more sleep each night, less sleepiness, and fewer tardies than students at the early school."
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.3.3.62 "Results show that starting the school day 50 minutes later has a significant positive effect on student achievement, which is roughly equivalent to raising teacher quality by one standard deviation."
Longer school days help parents hold down full time jobs. A longer school year eliminates the need for babysitters or camps in the 10-12wk summer break, and also provides continuity of curriculum. Food is pretty easy and many schools are providing at least two meals already. A good number have things like backpack programs[1], also, to send food home (either in the evening or more commonly for the weekend).
A school that starts at 9am is unheard of in Germany. The standard time is 7:45am or 8:00am.
Also Ganztagsschulen (all-day schools) are getting very common (more than 60% and rising, see https://www.ganztagsschulen.org/de/19001.php). Kids stay there at until 4pm or so.
I don't know why you mention Germany in the first place, it's education system isn't top notch compared to Scandinavian schools.
For kids with unstable home environments, I think it's valuable to give them more time at school. Hopefully, the extra time includes ample opportunities for arts, sports, clubs, and other "non-academic" pursuits.
I believe it also depends on the environment around the school. In a third-world country, I'd probably prefer being safely indoors at school and in contact with friends, with free time if needed, than in a sketchy area without being able to see many friends. In a rich European country, there's enough public infrastructure (public transport, libraries, parks, etc.) that I'd probably prefer to be outside.
You absolutely cannot compare Northern Europe with inner-city black America. Different worlds, different values, different histories, different attitudes, different challenges. No model fits all, especially in education, but these two realities are so dramatically different that they don’t really belong in the same sentence.
My working theory is, it is context dependent if longer school days, and terms are better or worse.
For example: With Children that have a rich home environment, plenty of interactions that stimulate them, keeping them at school longer may hamper development.
On the flip side you have an environment where this is not the case. Examples include socio-economic factors like parents/care givers working long hours.
I recently did research into this exact problem in South Africa. What are the factors that impact on education in communities that have socio-economic challenges?
The challenges are numerous and as this article says. The environment around the children just makes it extremely difficult for them to break out of the cycle of poverty.
These factors include:
being hungry,
crime,
lack of sanitation-this is a problem in South Africa they get sick more often then their counterparts in other areas.This results in them missing more school which puts them behind.,
Parents working long hours, travelling distances to get to work
Lack of resources in schools or support
There really is a multitude of problems each impacting the other creating a self perpetuating cycle of poverty.
Out of the research into the problems I developed a concept for a social enterprise that could solve some of these problems.
Trying to identify some funding sources as traditional vc will not be suitable. Maybe impact investors?
If the above sounds interesting, you are keen to explore leveraging education for social change or exploring alternative educational models mail me. Email is in profile
If the kids we're coming from stable, supportive home environments where learning can take place outside the classroom, you might be right. But those aren't the target students for the program; IMO the student's from rough home lives will almost assuredly benefit from this model.
I think the point is that school is safer and provides better nourishment than the students own home, considering the low-poverty and crime-ridden areas some - or even many - of the students live at.
Both those countries are also very prosperous and innovative. It seems the people or culture are what makes them do so well not the amount of school hours.
For all we know parents in those countries are far more supportive of their children. And may also be intelligent enough to assist their children with the homework. By intelligent I mean they are able to teach their children well I don't mean to be able to understand what a six year-old is learning (if not there is a far bigger problem!).
The longer school day and it's structure are, per the article, designed to provide compensation for at-home support that is deficient in the target population; done right—e.g., so it doesn't just look like normal classroom time stretched longer—this may well be the best available mitigation for the social problem it is addressing.
Longer school days might help kids with stressful home environment but it also poses risk to bonding b/w kids and parents especially for parents who are able to provide and are working towards holistic(moral, etc.) development of their kids. Longer school days should be optional with extra curricular activities to fill the later part of the day.
your example doesn't contradict the idea of having a longer school day or school year. as others have said, kids who lack a nurturing home environment can benefit from a nurturing environment at school (if that's what it truly is).
for example, school could open at 6am for parents who work early, but not start until 9am. the intermediary time could be nap time, unstuctured play, or guided exploration (gardening, science experiments, even animal husbandry in rural areas). between structured classroom time, they could have more breaks for more naps, play or exploration. school could end later so parents can pick them up after work, and have shorter and more frequent vacations so kids don't forget so much in-between.
you could even have morning or evening joint learning times, where parents join in to learn how to teach and encourage their kids (such programs seem to help break the cycle of poverty).
> a longer school year helps students stay focused
My kids (4th and 7th) attend a school with a year-round schedule, and we (kids and parents) love it:
* They are less stressed because there is more breaks throughout the year. Teachers seem less stressed, too, because they don't have to pack so much in.
* They retain more in the summer.
* Outside of academics: it's really nice to have the option to take longer vacations outside of spring break and summer break.
I'd love to see more schools move to it... 3 months off in summer seems very antiquated in hindsight.
Growing up in Upstate NY, I always assumed part of it was also due to the fact that breaks during the winter basically translate to hours spent cooped-up inside, watching TV or playing on the computer.
I know that the 3-month summer break stems from historical harvest/planting schedules... but when there's 20 inches of snow outside and the wind chill is -10 F, I'll take 3 months of summer vacay over 6 weeks of summer and 6 weeks of winter breaks any day.
In contrast I'm very happy with long Summer holidays at present. It gives us chance to spend extended periods together as a family and to help our children to follow their own educational goals rather than those dictated by central government. We're planning electronics, modern language learning, weir building, insect hunting, camping, outdoor pursuits, ... none of which they do in school here.
One nice thing about 3 month summer is the ability to get a temporary job. When I was in high school I worked every summer as a landscaper/food service/lifeguard/etc. and gained lots of experience/money I otherwise wouldn't have gotten. With year round school that doesn't seem possible.
Others fall asleep immediately at school since they live with 5+ siblings and there are literally no available beds at home. I am not trying to blame the parents in all the cases either
At some point, though, personal responsibility has to come into play. Having 5+ children when you have no resources... this is the true elephant in the room. It seems talking about it gets labels thrown around. I guess it's a conversation we can't have right now, though.
Who's responsibility? Not the child's. This school is about helping the children who weren't given a say in the matter of their upbringing and existence.
> Having 5+ children when you have no resources...
Isn't that surprising; globally, number of children goes down with both prosperity and, even controlling for prosperity, strength of social safety nets (a common explanation for the latter being that with no or weak public safety net, your children are your old-age social safety net.)
The US has been proudly dismantling it's social safety net since the 1990s, and it already was notoriously weak for the developed world. Simultaneously, access to birth control and abortion is also under perennial assault, and even where access is maintained, well-funded shame campaigns are directed against both.
Strangely, the people backing all of those efforts are also the ones that complain the most about poor people having too many kids. And do so under the banner of “personal responsibility”, without any hint of intentional irony.
> At some point, though, personal responsibility has to come into play.
It actually doesn't. Everyone is a responsible as they're capable of being, given their genetics and their environment. If you're a very responsible person it's because you were fortunate to have your particular genetics and/or environment.
Some people are born into terrible environments but have the genetic luck to be highly responsible. Some people are born into great environments but have the genetic misfortune to be highly irresponsible.
No one chooses to be responsible or irresponsible.
The onus is on the genetically/environmentally lucky people to help the unlucky ones. There's absolutely no shame in being unlucky and no pride in being lucky. There isn't much the lucky people can do to improve genetics (yet) but there's a lot that can be done to improve environments.
how do you see people not taking personal responsibility in this regard? at an individual, or a population level?
you seem to assume a lot about people "having 5+ children when you have no resources". even the idea of "no resources" has a number of in-built assumptions. what are they? do you work with populations of people like this? do you personally know people in this situation? are they truly hopeless?
certainly we can have an adult conversation, but don't beat around the bush. start the conversation with an earnest and reasoned argument, rather than an inscrutable lament.
Along with "out-of-wedlock" births people also get divorced and/or die. I know two families where death is what caused a parent to become single. Life changes quickly (I grew up with a single mom, she got divorced because my dad developed a severe mental illness). Judging families by personal responsibility should really only be done on a case-by-case basis.
Of course personal responsibility comes into play. But what do you want to do about it? The child already exists and we can't go back in time, so no preventing that. Do we give the child the best opportunity it can get, or somehow use it to punish the parents for their decision making?
You're getting downvoted, and maybe most of that is a sentiment of "we have to deal with the problem at hand", which is absolutely the only thing an outsider can do, but you're not wrong.
My wife works in a low income school, largest and poorest in the area (a relatively large city.) Pumping more money in does not help. More after school problems does not help much. As far as academic achievement is concerned, these kids are completely stuck because they have what we would consider terrible situations at home.
Sometimes the parents just don't care, sometimes they just don't have the time (multiple jobs). More often than not there is only one parent at home. There's only so much a teacher/school can do if the parent is picking up the ball when the kid gets home.
It's not all about personal responsibility. Something to also consider is that the psychology of poverty also drives bad decisions [1]. Turns out the financial pressures that drive people to make bad decisions are also some of the pressures the I promise school is trying to alleviate.
Of course, the parent could have also been very responsible. Maybe they were married with a nice income. Fast forward 10 years and their spouse has died or went to prison and they lost their nice job and now have to work multiple lower paying jobs. There are a multitude of circumstances that could put you in a position that you didn't foresee.
"At some point, though, personal responsibility has to come into play."
Only if you're looking to blame something so you can feel smugly superior to them. If you're looking to actually provide services or improve conditions, that's not something worth talking about, because it doesn't change conditions now.
EDIT: And especially not when we're talking about Ohio, which is one of the states looking to outright ban abortion.
> I am not trying to blame the parents in all the cases either, a lot of the time there are single parents just trying to get by and make ends meet and don't know what more they can do.
If there is a household with one parent, 5+ children, and not enough beds for them, the problem has occurred long before. One cannot blame the parent for "that day", but certainly the adult bears some responsibility for creating such a household. Having 5 kids without planning for beds, or income, or stability, is a decision SOMEONE made. It doesn't just "happen" like weather. There is human responsibility here.
In my view, "I Promise" is making up for those mistakes. Its a good thing, but let's be clear about why it's valuable.
Why should we be clear about that? You know it is just turtles all the way down right? The goal here is to break a _cycle_ which this school is hopefully going to do by focusing constructively on what works to help these kids be better parents themselves one day. Beyond deepening our understanding of helping these kids I'd actually argue scrutinizing the parents has only negative utility and should be avoided at all costs (unless vilifying poor/uneducated parents feels useful to you as an end unto itself).
Life is full of much more complicated scenarios. A friend of mine recently passed away from cancer. Her 2 kids will now go live with someone else, who already have kids of their own, and are now taking on a very significant financial burden that they could not have planned for. How would you view this family that suddenly has more kids than they can afford?
Some things actually do just "happen", like weather.
The problem with pinning responsibility on that parent is, the original decision that led to this situation may predate the parent. Maybe they were raised by a single mom with many siblings and not enough resources too. Maybe they live somewhere deeply conservative where contraception isn't taught about. To act like the parent is wholly responsible is unrealistic and naive.
Ohio (where this school is) lacks quality sex education and access to abortion. Ohio law doesn't require teaching at all about contraception. Ohio law allows parents to block their kids from having an abortion. Ohio law doesn't require teaching students about consent.
So there is a huge swath of people in Ohio schools who are totally uneducated about sex. Certainly SOME of the blame should go to the decision of the Ohio legislature to withhold information about birth control from students.
> Its a good thing, but let's be clear about why it's valuable.
It's valuable because the American Right has been making a sustained and successful attack on the integrity, stability, and viability of poor families for at least three decades (and other powerful forces, whose modern incarnation is also part of the American Right, has been doing so to families of color, who are disproportionately poor, since America was colonized.)
It is true that addressing that cause is useful in thinking about more complete, comprehensive long-term solutions.
Isn't it possible that "income, or stability" experienced a sudden drastic change at some point after birthing the 5th kid? It is conceivable that the parent did not have full control over that change.
This is such a privileged view point... And I don't even like that word. But really, the idea that someone shouldn't have kids unless they have their entire life planned? Unless they have a stable (jobs | spouses | families | friends | environment | culture) that can be relied on? Not everyone has that opportunity. And it sounds very much like victim blaming to then tell them that they should be denied having kids because their life isn't perfectly stable. And let's be very, brutally honest: It's not like stable households don't also occasionally produce broken children. Incidence rate is dropped, but decidedly not zero.
I mean, hell, I have an extremely stable job at an extremely stable company. And I still fear losing my job, and the effect that would have on my family!
Ok let's be clear about that. Now what? There _is_ a household with one parent and 5+ children. Unless you have a time machine you can't undo that. What do you do about that household? Telling the parents that they made bad decisions actually doesn't do much to help the children. How do you help the children?
Right, and the best way to fix that problem is by taking away easy access to contraceptives and eliminating sexual education from schools. And while we're at it let's overturn Roe vs. Wade.
If we just pray a little harder, people will stop having kids! Teenagers will stop having sex! Condoms will stop breaking!
From what I read it seems he's focusing on the pain points or barriers to learning from the perspective of the underprivileged from whence LeBron came. If you have someone that lived this giving him deep insight to the real issues AND he's a good person AND he has power to change, that is a fabulous formula for success. I hope this works out. Too many times you have people meaning well that have not actually experienced the life of the subjects being helped and you end up with wrong-fit solutions. We can all understand this as coders when we build something thinking this is how users will use it and then find out no, that's not the case.
I'm not convinced this 'diversity of thought' (aka direct domain expertise) is actually as useful as people love to claim these days. It's an extremely popular narrative that gets pushed with very little questioning or measuring of its utility.
a) is it really accurate that a smart person can't legitimately learn and be sensitive to life experiences from others or b) why can't they hire people to advise them while still managing the project themselves?
This sounds like a solvable problem by promoting being sympathetic and deferential, rather than replacing people outright from the process simply because they aren't 'from' that group. It's just as likely the people with the life experience don't have the other skills for managing or running a project as well.
Everyone is acting like this project is already a success when it has just launched...Id wait a couple years before calling LeBron a hero.
Bill Gates for example, does extensive research with many experts in the field trying to pinpoint actual barriers or issues that real people experience prior to coming up with problem and solution scenarios. My statement takes nothing away from that, rather, it is a good starting point to have this inside knowledge at the core to tackle real world issues effectively.
>>> Everyone is acting like this project is already a success when it has just launched...Id wait a couple years before calling LeBron a hero.
Although I agree with your general point, I don't see the problem with praising people that is trying hard at changing the lives of others for the better.
look at zuck’s $100M to the new jersey school system. just lob money over the wall, hoping for results with absolutely no understanding of how to have sustainable impact.
why the skepticism and negativity around this arguably good deed? he is stepping in to help people. what’s the issue here? why the downplay of the initiative?
This "normal public school" line is bizarre to me. Yes, it's a part of the school district. But it accepts specific students and has its own expanded curriculum.
No doubt! I definitely don't mean to denigrate the project at all, it's an incredibly philanthropic move by LeBron and he deserves every ounce of the praise he's been getting.
I just see a lot of people using the "public school" line as a cudgel to bash charter schools, but charter schools are exactly the mechanism to accomplish something like this for people who aren't revered/rich enough to exercise the kind of influence over their hometown that LeBron did to get them to agree to incorporate novel facilities and practices directly into their district.
In my state the magnet schools work exactly the opposite. They put magnet programs in underperforming schools in the hopes that bringing in a bunch of high achievers will be a rising tide or something.
I have no idea what the effectiveness is in my state, whether success is contagious to underperforming students or not. Either way it will be interesting to see how this inverted philosophy of magnet schools performs in comparison.
Magnets were developed to alleviate segregation through social engineering. Underprivilege and at-risk tends to go hand in hand with these circumstances. In states where this was less of an issue they may have been adopted as a way to have an "elite" public school but that isn't their typical application.
wow, the linked related article about NYC school segregation was depressing: https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools...
especially the part about charters having two times during the year when low-performing students are forced out into the public school: one in October after per-student funding is allocated to the school, allowing them to grab the funding while pushing a now-unfunded student onto the public school, and again in Spring right before standardized testing, when they can weed out the ones who did poorly on prep tests. Seems like the city/state should step in and disallow this practice.
the lie perpetuated through the decades that segregation was a Southern thing may never really truly come to light as people really are shy on learning things they don't want to believe. the laws to stop it were written to block any attempts to desegregate Northern schools, or more to the point NYC
In related news, RAND just finished its study of the Gates Foundation's "Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative".
RAND found that "With minor exceptions, by 2014–2015, student achievement, access to effective teaching, and dropout rates were not dramatically better than they were for similar sites that did not participate".
It's refreshing to see a holistic approach to helping at-risk students, instead of assuming that teachers are the most important component. Good nutrition, safe transport to school, and support for parents all seem like ideas that should be more experimented with.
It's great to see superstars like LeBron doing something like this. Say what you want about him as a player but you cant knock him as a philanthropist.
I'm not a fan boy or anything but he's a rather remarkable person. To take advantage of the biological attributes he was given and work insanely hard to maximize them from a young age. All while not being distracted by all the other things that could lead to squandering his natural talents. And then not relying just on those but enhancing them through dedication and discipline.
Then you throw in all the pressure he had as a youth to be the next big thing and then going to the NBA and succeeding immediately in terms of personal ability.
Yes, he had that PR blunder when he left Cleveland but he had good reason to - he just took bad advice and went about it wrong. But he proved his point and then came back home and helped win a championship for his hometown team.
All this while remaining super charismatic, not falling into bad habits or getting involved in scandals. Being a good father and marrying his high school sweetheart whom he has 3 children with.
Doing things for the community that aren't vapid or short term PR grabs. But really trying to make a difference.
All the while coming from a very disadvantaged place economically and without his father around.
He's by all accounts a savvy and smart businessman and hasn't blown it like so many people with rags to riches stories. He has kept his good friends around and integrated them into his businesses in ways that make sense. He appears to show true loyalty to those that were with him before he became what he is today.
He's well spoken and thoughtful on top of it all.
I don't follow his sport much but he is a person who appears to just be exceptional in many ways. He just seems so genuine and without the veneer that other stars really suffer from. Granted he has a massive PR team and marketing team but it would have been so easy to have a slip-up. It would have been easy to make bad business decisions and it would have been easy to find new "friends" and women and all the other things that are short term. But he has a goal larger than being an NBA star and he's stuck with it.
I agree. To have someone like LeBron as the face of the NBA is fantastic. As a sports fan I hate the guy (Thank god he moved to the western conference) but as a human, I think he is an incredible role model and force for good in this country.
Compare from the article: "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."
With John Taylor Gatto (NYS Teacher of the year and also schooling critic) https://www.johntaylorgatto.com/uncategorized/two-social-rev...
"Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."
I've never heard of John Taylor Gatto before, but I just read the article you link, and it's a brutal takedown of public schools. One that I connect with.
Readit News
- This school is a true public school and not a charter school. In Ohio a lot of charter schools can have some degree of selection in their students and kick out families which don't meet the requirements which leads to more at-risk students left to the public schools. This school is making a point of taking at-risk students.
- Longer school days, 3 meals, and a longer school year helps students stay focused. Unfortunately the home environment for a lot of kids makes it so hard for these kids to be able to focus at school. In my wife's elementary school classes some kids show up with just a hamburger bun for breakfast. Others fall asleep immediately at school since they live with 5+ siblings and there are literally no available beds at home. I am not trying to blame the parents in all the cases either, a lot of the time there are single parents just trying to get by and make ends meet and don't know what more they can do.
- Focussing on the teachers will also help. Teachers and unions have been vilified by Governor Kasich but they are not the main problem at all (it is the tragic home environments) with ridiculous review systems and standards, but then there is little support in challenging districts like in Akron/Cleveland. It is a lot easier to work in the suburbs where the kids would progress and learn even without teachers, so that is where everyone wants to go since a good rating is automatic. I think this problem occurs in just about every field where metrics dominate the review system (medicine, call centers, QA, etc). The turnover for teachers at local charter schools is terrible and only seems to attract early-career teachers who couldn't get a job at a public school.
- This doesn't seem to be a short term flashy project but has been years in the making. None of the features here are gimmicky, but just like many things in life it takes a lot of hard work!
- Adding the goal of college education shows a path forward which a lot of students don't think is possible.
I am super excited to be from Akron and I hope this model proves successful!
The middle one is absolutely true, the other two I really doubt e.g. in Finland or Germany, schoolday starts around 9AM and ends around 2PM, yielding 3h30 to 4h studies a day accounting for breaks, 5 days/week, with little homework (maybe 5h/week total). Afternoon is usually dedicated to clubs.
In the context of at-risk kids, I think the idea is to maximize the amount of time the kids get to spend away from their toxic and stressful home environments.
I am a bit skeptical of the overall "minimize idle time" idea, though. They seem to be on board with giving the kids enough free time to do independent study and stuff, but whether that's any good will depend on how it's implemented.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1540200070126380... "Students at the late-starting school reported waking up over 1 hr later on school mornings and obtaining 50 min more sleep each night, less sleepiness, and fewer tardies than students at the early school."
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.3.3.62 "Results show that starting the school day 50 minutes later has a significant positive effect on student achievement, which is roughly equivalent to raising teacher quality by one standard deviation."
[1] http://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/hunger-relief-program...
Also Ganztagsschulen (all-day schools) are getting very common (more than 60% and rising, see https://www.ganztagsschulen.org/de/19001.php). Kids stay there at until 4pm or so.
I don't know why you mention Germany in the first place, it's education system isn't top notch compared to Scandinavian schools.
For example: With Children that have a rich home environment, plenty of interactions that stimulate them, keeping them at school longer may hamper development.
On the flip side you have an environment where this is not the case. Examples include socio-economic factors like parents/care givers working long hours.
I recently did research into this exact problem in South Africa. What are the factors that impact on education in communities that have socio-economic challenges?
The challenges are numerous and as this article says. The environment around the children just makes it extremely difficult for them to break out of the cycle of poverty.
These factors include:
being hungry,
crime,
lack of sanitation-this is a problem in South Africa they get sick more often then their counterparts in other areas.This results in them missing more school which puts them behind.,
Parents working long hours, travelling distances to get to work
Lack of resources in schools or support
There really is a multitude of problems each impacting the other creating a self perpetuating cycle of poverty.
Out of the research into the problems I developed a concept for a social enterprise that could solve some of these problems.
Trying to identify some funding sources as traditional vc will not be suitable. Maybe impact investors?
If the above sounds interesting, you are keen to explore leveraging education for social change or exploring alternative educational models mail me. Email is in profile
Both those countries are also very prosperous and innovative. It seems the people or culture are what makes them do so well not the amount of school hours.
For all we know parents in those countries are far more supportive of their children. And may also be intelligent enough to assist their children with the homework. By intelligent I mean they are able to teach their children well I don't mean to be able to understand what a six year-old is learning (if not there is a far bigger problem!).
Where does an inner city African American kid go after school if both parents (or single parent) are working? Who pays for that?
In countries with adequate social services, this is less of an issue.
Of course, people haven't yet gotten the idea that we should try to accomplish sufficient learning with minimum classroom time.
for example, school could open at 6am for parents who work early, but not start until 9am. the intermediary time could be nap time, unstuctured play, or guided exploration (gardening, science experiments, even animal husbandry in rural areas). between structured classroom time, they could have more breaks for more naps, play or exploration. school could end later so parents can pick them up after work, and have shorter and more frequent vacations so kids don't forget so much in-between.
you could even have morning or evening joint learning times, where parents join in to learn how to teach and encourage their kids (such programs seem to help break the cycle of poverty).
My kids (4th and 7th) attend a school with a year-round schedule, and we (kids and parents) love it:
* They are less stressed because there is more breaks throughout the year. Teachers seem less stressed, too, because they don't have to pack so much in.
* They retain more in the summer.
* Outside of academics: it's really nice to have the option to take longer vacations outside of spring break and summer break.
I'd love to see more schools move to it... 3 months off in summer seems very antiquated in hindsight.
But what about those of us who need the extra hands to help with the harvest!?
I know that the 3-month summer break stems from historical harvest/planting schedules... but when there's 20 inches of snow outside and the wind chill is -10 F, I'll take 3 months of summer vacay over 6 weeks of summer and 6 weeks of winter breaks any day.
At some point, though, personal responsibility has to come into play. Having 5+ children when you have no resources... this is the true elephant in the room. It seems talking about it gets labels thrown around. I guess it's a conversation we can't have right now, though.
What, besides providing extra resources to underpriveleged children so they are not punished for their parents mistakes, can be done?
Are you suggesting we make their parents "pay" somehow? Or a program to prevent the parents from having 5+ kids when they don't have the resources?
Isn't that surprising; globally, number of children goes down with both prosperity and, even controlling for prosperity, strength of social safety nets (a common explanation for the latter being that with no or weak public safety net, your children are your old-age social safety net.)
The US has been proudly dismantling it's social safety net since the 1990s, and it already was notoriously weak for the developed world. Simultaneously, access to birth control and abortion is also under perennial assault, and even where access is maintained, well-funded shame campaigns are directed against both.
Strangely, the people backing all of those efforts are also the ones that complain the most about poor people having too many kids. And do so under the banner of “personal responsibility”, without any hint of intentional irony.
It actually doesn't. Everyone is a responsible as they're capable of being, given their genetics and their environment. If you're a very responsible person it's because you were fortunate to have your particular genetics and/or environment.
Some people are born into terrible environments but have the genetic luck to be highly responsible. Some people are born into great environments but have the genetic misfortune to be highly irresponsible.
No one chooses to be responsible or irresponsible.
The onus is on the genetically/environmentally lucky people to help the unlucky ones. There's absolutely no shame in being unlucky and no pride in being lucky. There isn't much the lucky people can do to improve genetics (yet) but there's a lot that can be done to improve environments.
you seem to assume a lot about people "having 5+ children when you have no resources". even the idea of "no resources" has a number of in-built assumptions. what are they? do you work with populations of people like this? do you personally know people in this situation? are they truly hopeless?
certainly we can have an adult conversation, but don't beat around the bush. start the conversation with an earnest and reasoned argument, rather than an inscrutable lament.
My wife works in a low income school, largest and poorest in the area (a relatively large city.) Pumping more money in does not help. More after school problems does not help much. As far as academic achievement is concerned, these kids are completely stuck because they have what we would consider terrible situations at home.
Sometimes the parents just don't care, sometimes they just don't have the time (multiple jobs). More often than not there is only one parent at home. There's only so much a teacher/school can do if the parent is picking up the ball when the kid gets home.
[1]: http://review.chicagobooth.edu/behavioral-science/2018/artic...
What makes you say that's an actual problem that has a significant impact on American education?
Only if you're looking to blame something so you can feel smugly superior to them. If you're looking to actually provide services or improve conditions, that's not something worth talking about, because it doesn't change conditions now.
EDIT: And especially not when we're talking about Ohio, which is one of the states looking to outright ban abortion.
Dead Comment
If there is a household with one parent, 5+ children, and not enough beds for them, the problem has occurred long before. One cannot blame the parent for "that day", but certainly the adult bears some responsibility for creating such a household. Having 5 kids without planning for beds, or income, or stability, is a decision SOMEONE made. It doesn't just "happen" like weather. There is human responsibility here.
In my view, "I Promise" is making up for those mistakes. Its a good thing, but let's be clear about why it's valuable.
Some things actually do just "happen", like weather.
Ohio (where this school is) lacks quality sex education and access to abortion. Ohio law doesn't require teaching at all about contraception. Ohio law allows parents to block their kids from having an abortion. Ohio law doesn't require teaching students about consent.
So there is a huge swath of people in Ohio schools who are totally uneducated about sex. Certainly SOME of the blame should go to the decision of the Ohio legislature to withhold information about birth control from students.
It's valuable because the American Right has been making a sustained and successful attack on the integrity, stability, and viability of poor families for at least three decades (and other powerful forces, whose modern incarnation is also part of the American Right, has been doing so to families of color, who are disproportionately poor, since America was colonized.)
It is true that addressing that cause is useful in thinking about more complete, comprehensive long-term solutions.
I mean, hell, I have an extremely stable job at an extremely stable company. And I still fear losing my job, and the effect that would have on my family!
If we just pray a little harder, people will stop having kids! Teenagers will stop having sex! Condoms will stop breaking!
Yes, perhaps the husband/wife that was the single/primary earner in the family happened to die and thus the family found itself in hard times.
a) is it really accurate that a smart person can't legitimately learn and be sensitive to life experiences from others or b) why can't they hire people to advise them while still managing the project themselves?
This sounds like a solvable problem by promoting being sympathetic and deferential, rather than replacing people outright from the process simply because they aren't 'from' that group. It's just as likely the people with the life experience don't have the other skills for managing or running a project as well.
Everyone is acting like this project is already a success when it has just launched...Id wait a couple years before calling LeBron a hero.
Although I agree with your general point, I don't see the problem with praising people that is trying hard at changing the lives of others for the better.
There's are a lot of subtleties that lived experience can reveal. Even the smartest person might miss some knock-on effect, etc.
> b) why can't they hire people to advise them while still managing the project themselves?
So, you're saying... diversity of thought might be useful?
It's a magnet school.
I just see a lot of people using the "public school" line as a cudgel to bash charter schools, but charter schools are exactly the mechanism to accomplish something like this for people who aren't revered/rich enough to exercise the kind of influence over their hometown that LeBron did to get them to agree to incorporate novel facilities and practices directly into their district.
I have no idea what the effectiveness is in my state, whether success is contagious to underperforming students or not. Either way it will be interesting to see how this inverted philosophy of magnet schools performs in comparison.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-school-desegre...
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools...
RAND found that "With minor exceptions, by 2014–2015, student achievement, access to effective teaching, and dropout rates were not dramatically better than they were for similar sites that did not participate".
It's refreshing to see a holistic approach to helping at-risk students, instead of assuming that teachers are the most important component. Good nutrition, safe transport to school, and support for parents all seem like ideas that should be more experimented with.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2242.html
Then you throw in all the pressure he had as a youth to be the next big thing and then going to the NBA and succeeding immediately in terms of personal ability.
Yes, he had that PR blunder when he left Cleveland but he had good reason to - he just took bad advice and went about it wrong. But he proved his point and then came back home and helped win a championship for his hometown team.
All this while remaining super charismatic, not falling into bad habits or getting involved in scandals. Being a good father and marrying his high school sweetheart whom he has 3 children with.
Doing things for the community that aren't vapid or short term PR grabs. But really trying to make a difference.
All the while coming from a very disadvantaged place economically and without his father around.
He's by all accounts a savvy and smart businessman and hasn't blown it like so many people with rags to riches stories. He has kept his good friends around and integrated them into his businesses in ways that make sense. He appears to show true loyalty to those that were with him before he became what he is today.
He's well spoken and thoughtful on top of it all.
I don't follow his sport much but he is a person who appears to just be exceptional in many ways. He just seems so genuine and without the veneer that other stars really suffer from. Granted he has a massive PR team and marketing team but it would have been so easy to have a slip-up. It would have been easy to make bad business decisions and it would have been easy to find new "friends" and women and all the other things that are short term. But he has a goal larger than being an NBA star and he's stuck with it.
With John Taylor Gatto (NYS Teacher of the year and also schooling critic) https://www.johntaylorgatto.com/uncategorized/two-social-rev... "Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."