Now that charter schools are all the rage among the rich and powerful, we are accustomed to hear about celebrities who underwrite their own charter school, like Andre Agassi (whose namesake charter school in Las Vegas is one of the lowest performing schools in Nevada, Sean “Diddy” Coombs, sponsor of a charter in Harlem, and Pitbull, the misogynistic, foul-mouthed rapper who has his own charter school in Miami and speaks at national charter school conferences.
How refreshing it is to learn about two celebrities who are giving back to the public schools, which enroll the vast majority of children of color and need the help of their friends.
LeBron James and Dr. Dre are superstars in sports and music. They too could have put their name on a charter school. They didn’t.
LeBron James made a gift of $1 million to his alma mater, a Catholic School, St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, to build a new state-of-the-art gymnasium. He is also working with the Akron public schools to provide college scholarships and to open a new school for at-risk students. James has a motto: “I promise…to never forget where I came from.” The new public school for at-risk children is called the “I Promise” school.
Dr. Dre made a gift of $10 million to Compton High School in Compton, California, where he grew up. The gift will be used to build a performing arts center with a 1,200 seat theater and digital media production facilities.
LeBron James and Dr. Dre are giving back.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
LeBron James really is a hero in Ohio. There is no one like him in this state. No one even comes close. I’ve never seen anything like it – how BROAD his appeal seems to be.
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I live directly between where LeBron went to school and now lives. He’s an incredible gift to our city and region. The very essence of decency.
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By the way, Dr. Dre does not have a medical degree. PhD, sociology.
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Awesome.
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LeBron James truly cares about his community and tries to work with other groups to improve the quality of life and provide more opportunity for Akron residents. James works with Habitat for Humanity to renovate homes families in Akron. Neither James nor Dr Dre seek to profit or derive any benefit from their charitable contributions.
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Thank you Dr. Ravitch to post this heartwarming article.
“I promise” school and “to build a performing arts center with a 1,200 seat theater and digital media production facilities” are truly exemplary example to reflect the essence of humanity from human beings who are on the way to belong to a group of conscientious and limitless potential to be called “the” educators. Back2basic
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Dr. Dre’s definitely not a abuser and misogynist (anymore).
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Starting static with Dre? Make way for the A.K.
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A.K. Please explain for those of us self-diagnosed with AIIDS-Acronym Identification Impaired Disorder Syndrome, to be listed in the DSM X.
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AK 47. To be clear, I was quoting a lyric from one of Dr. Dre’s songs.
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Tim, I don’t recall you complaining when the filthy mouth misogynist Pitbull put his name on a charter school and “addressed” a national charter association.
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Another superstar giving back to her local public schools is Grace VanderWaal who, at age 12, won America’s Got Talent, was signed by Columbia Records and hit the national chart position at #9 in the U.S. and #11 in Canada for her EP “Perfectly Imperfect”. Her older sister Oliva (16 now) designed the cover of the EP.
She has also won the Radio Disney Music Awards for Best New Artist and the Teen Choice Awards for Next Big Thing.
After Grace won AGT, she dropped out of 6th grade to be home taught so she was free to travel and perform. Winning AGT came with $1million.
VanderWaal (age 13) has donated funds to help establish an elementary school show choir in the East Ramapo Central School District in 2017.
Grace also is sick of online education and does not recommend it. She’s planning to return to 8th grade and see if she can make it work as Columbia Records gets ready to release her first album and send her on a national tour that’s already sold out.
Go to 5:40 to hear what Grace has to say about on-line schooling and why she wants to return to a real classroom with real teachers and students.
Grade writes her own music, songs, and lyrics, and is very much in charge of how her music is produced.
If you haven’t heard her perform, you might want to see her latest performance when she returned to AGT this month to perform one of her own singles as the winner from 2016. Skip to 1:25 to see and hear her perform her latest single.
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It’s good when people can overcome mistakes they’ve made in the past and support the public good instead of enriching themselves at the public’ expense like Agassi, Gates, and the rest of the charter dons. Good for Dre, billionaire! And now that LeBron has shown his ability to resist the charter forces, I would very much like to see him play one on one against Arne Duncan. Duncan, former Australian League pro basketball player, is so proud of his aggressiveness against musicians and actors and actresses during a celebrity game years ago, I would like to see him get dunked on. Posterized. Faced.
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Schooled.
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We have a winner! That was good, thank you.
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Add Silicon Valley tycoon & philanthropist, Sean Parker, to the list of public school supporters. I learned this while researching Tom Perriello’s Virginia Democratic primary campaign’s false accusation that Mr. Parker was in cahoots with his opponent, Lt. Governor Ralph Northam, to bring charter schools to Virginia.
Although Mr. Parker’s family foundation (one that has been in his family for over 50 years and is now dedicated to supporting non-profit organizations in Lowell, Massachusetts) has made a handful of donations from 2011–2016 to nonprofit charter schools in Lowell for things such as a new playground or computer lab (not to change national or state ed policy), the vast majority of Mr. Parker’s donations have been made to public schools.
For example, in 2015, the year the Perriello campaign linked to, Mr. Parker donated $50K to a non-profit charter school for a playground, $25 K to a Catholic school to help fund a new building, $15K to Boston University, and $137K to the public schools of Lowell.
I don’t believe that anyone begrudges a playground or computer lab for the children of a nonprofit charter school.
Instead, Mr. Parker deserved to be commended by the Perriello campaign for his generous contributions to the public schools of Lowell, Massachusetts.
Also, few people are aware that it was Mr. Parker who helped push Terri McAuliffe and Dr. Ralph Northam over the finish line with an astounding $700,000 donation ($500,000 to McAuliffe and $200,000 to Dr. Northam) in late Oct. 2013. The two Democratic candidates were low on cash and in a tight election just a few weeks away against a couple of arch conservatives. The Republucan gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, would have signed all of the charter schools & voucher legislation that Governor McAuliffe has vetoed these past 4 years. We have Mr. Parker to thank for saving Virginia public schools from this disasterous outcome. As I understand it, Mr. Parker grew up in Northern Virginia and cared enough to quietly donate this vast sum.
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As it turns out, according to Wikipedia, Mr. Parker is a product of Virginia’s public schools. Apparently he learned computer coding while in high school, winning a state computer science fair, & making $80K by his senior year. He convinced his parents that he skip college so he could become an entrepreneur. Looks like his public school education & life plan all turned out for the best!
Wikipedia:
“Parker attended Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia for two years before transferring to Chantilly High School in 1996 for his junior and senior years.[15] While there, Parker wrote a letter to the school administration and persuaded them to count the time he spent coding in the computer lab as a foreign language class.[15] As a result, towards the end of Parker’s senior year at Chantilly, he was mostly writing code and starting companies.[15] He graduated in 1998. While still in high school, he interned for Mark Pincus (the CEO of Zynga) at Pincus’s Washington D.C. startup FreeLoader.[16] He won the Virginia state computer science fair for developing a Web crawler, and was recruited by the C.I.A.[4] By his senior year of high school, Parker was earning more than $80,000 a year through various projects, enough to convince his parents to allow him to skip college and pursue a career as an entrepreneur.[4]”
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Not good:
I wouldn’t be surprised if the post-NCLB reforms have contributed to this.
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Thank you ponderosa for this illustration.
Wouldn’t you think that the parental effort is the crucial key to help children succeeding?
However, in the long term, I am sure that racial profile and educational policy cannot affect the parental guidance in this information age. Younger generations will reflect their humanity, kindness and intelligence from their parental background of education and belief and their own choice of living lifestyle. Back2basic
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