First: Oh boy, what a deal breaker. If we can't solve waking up early, why bother, right?
Second: It's a neighborhood school; not a charter, not private.
Third: This is a genuinely-good and well-thought-out act of philanthropy that will make people's lives better.
You can if "not enough money" was the problem in the first place. And for public schools in low income areas of America, that might end up being a big part of the problem.
Sometimes charter schools are there to do exactly what's been described there: create at least one good school. Because the public system is largely underfunded/broken. To defy this impulse because it isn't replicable, is to deny the part the govt plays in creating the broken public schools.
Mostly, charter schools select for the best students by, even if no other filters apply, selecting the students whose parents are engaged enough to select a non-default school.
There are mounds of evidence that “good schools” in the US—whether traditional private, traditional public, public-subsidized private charter, or public charter—are a product of getting the right student population rather than substantive differences between schools.
> Because the public system is largely underfunded/broken.
That's really not the problem.
The problem is that American society is largely broken, and we expect the public schools to perform as if it weren't (or to magically make up for it.)
OTOH, the schools are an easy scapegoat and distraction, and because the problem isn't fundamentally there, there is no risk that changes there will ever relieve the outcome problems enough for it to stop being a useful distraction.
I think a lot of this comes down to the metrics used for gauging good schools. Which are usually test scores, graduation rates, and discipline rates.
Assuming that the test scores measure something worthwile, test scores is always reported as a point in time measurement -- but really a progression would be more informative. What I really want to know is will my kid go up or down or stay the same in test scores if they attend school X, it's not super important what the average score is ; especially since the progression may vary significantly based on the input score.
Graduation rates could be low because of many factors outside of school, or could be high because the standards are low, and are often reported only at the high school level but kids who don't graduate high school were often not well prepared at other levels, etc.
Discipline rates can be meaningful, but if one school doesn't expel anybody because all the children are angels, and one school doesn't expel anybody because they haven't noticed the large numbers of murders during recess, the numbers look the same.
I think any town not named Sunnydale would notice the dwindling class sizes in the latter case.
Sunnydale noticed it, too.
Charter schools do not share that motivation. If they find a teaching method that works better their objective is not to share to but instead use it to capitalize and enrich themselves.
Finally, charter schools are publicly funded. If they are taking tax-payer money the results should absolutely be replicable.
If I am taking the good teachers from the other schools, I am not fixing anything, I am just transferring social capital from someone else kids to mine.
Source (linked in the OP): https://www.ohio.com/akron/news/education/i-promise-school-a...
I'd much prefer the school to have fun morning activities before class (games in the computer lab, for example, bonus points if you can tie that into learning without the kids realising it) while having an official starting time that is late in the day. This covers kids that have to wake up early due to their parents schedule, but lets kids that can sleep, well, sleep. If the days are going to be longer, is there more recess? More downtime? More art and music and otherwise "fun" stuff? These things help with learning. Same for after school, honestly.
A great bonus that is included is support for schoolwork that is missing at home. I'd rather have a no-homework school in lower grades as it makes more sense, but this is the next best thing.
I might also mention that these are 2nd and 3rd graders. I don't know if they are the sorts that are actually susceptible to gang violence outside of what happens around them. They do, however, have the issues poverty brings up, which is what the school seems more geared towards. Food banks, job help, GED help, and free counselors for those that have endured trauma, which comes in many different forms outside of gang violence - poverty is one predictor of having it.
LeBron grew up in Akron. He knows the problems these kids are facing, and he's going out of his way to solve it specifically for them.
That kind of local leadership combined with updating the school day and curriculum for kids with specific problems that are best understood at the local level can't be replicable.
How that is applied to apportionment is an open question. Vouchers always seemed like the best solution to me, but I'm not expert on this subject.
I agree in general that throwing money at a problem by itself is rarely useful. However, I think your statement sets up a false dichotomy. Is the answer to give every school 10 billion dollars? No. Is the answer to fund schools enough that they can give free meals to students and pay teachers enough to stay? Maybe.
It really enforces to me that most people don’t let their lack of knowledge or interest in an area stop them from passing judgements.
In the case of education I do agree more money is needed.
For something like health care, massive reforms are needed.
It’s to make you used to being overworked and have almost no vacation for the rest of your life :-)
These people are professional educators, so maybe we shouldn't assume they don't know what they are doing.
Given this country has immense financial resources, if it turns out that we're just not spending enough to start, it seems like it could be one.
Yes you absolutely can!
Second: Even if this school has good results, it seems unlikely that it will scale well, because it's relying on more money (from outside donors, etc.). You can't throw more money at a problem, then declare you've come up with a general solution.
From Larry Summers talking with Tyler Cowen:
COWEN: And this is K–12.
SUMMERS: Yeah. That’s likely to be the most effective thing that you can do, but that you need to be very careful not to succeed by cannibalization. Many, too many, philanthropists interested in education decide they’re going to set up a charter school. Only their charter school is only going to admit highly motivated kids with highly motivated parents.
Their charter school’s going to pay 20 percent more than the regular schools and cherry-pick the best teachers out of the regular schools. Then they’re going to be really thrilled about how they have better achievement than the regular public schools when it’s clear from the nature of their model, selecting the kids and cherry-picking the teachers, that it is supremely nonreplicable.
I would say impose a replicability constraint on yourself and innovate in the area of education. My general view has been that a lot of the way successful innovation happens is alongside big systems.
(Link: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-larr...)