The “I Promise School” sponsored by LeBron James as part of the Akron public school system is the most innovative school in America. Its focus is on developing healthy children, whose dreams are big and whose education equips them to make a life for themselves. It accepts only children with low test scores. It’s goal is to help children overcome trauma. Its philosophy is informed by LeBron James’ experiences as a child growing up in dire circumstances.
Contrast this school, where children are surrounded by love and caring, with the harsh and punitive “no excuses” charter schools. Read this article and answer the question: Which is better? Love or Fear? Charter advocates should learn about this school and learn from its example.
The greatest of all innovations: a school in which love and kindness are built in as policy.
This article by Eddie Kim goes into detail. I am not posting the whole article. I urge you to read it. It is inspiring.
It begins:
An eight-year-old LeBron James sometimes didn’t attend school because there was no one who could give him a ride. He sometimes skipped class outright, instead playing video games by himself at the ramshackle one-bedroom home in Akron, Ohio, owned by a friend of his mom, who would disappear during the day. Other times, Gloria James and her son were simply too entangled in the task of securing a place to sleep and food to eat that night. “We’ll just skip today,” they’d tell each other. Then another day would rise and fall, and another, with no attendance in class.
Ultimately, James skipped nearly 100 days of school as a fourth grader in Akron. He had moved a dozen times in the three-year span between age five and eight, with Gloria struggling on welfare and relying on a network of friends to give them shelter when the rent ran dry. He didn’t play sports. He barely had friends. He lagged on basic reading, writing and math skills.
What got James back in school was the stabilizing force of Bruce Kelker, the Pee Wee football coach at James’ elementary school who first discovered his athletic talent. Kelker offered to house James, with Gloria (who could live with a friend) welcome at any time to see her son. Toward the end of 1993, Kelker and his live-in girlfriend decided to move, but another youth football coach at the school, “Big” Frank Walker, extended his suburban Akron home to James.
James credits both families for steadying his life and getting him back in school, and the saga between fourth and fifth grades has become one of the superstar’s favorite allegories. But more than just a motivational tale, James has taken his experience and molded it into a philosophy on what it takes to keep poor and stressed-out kids on the right track.
That philosophy now exists in physical form with the I Promise School, a new campus that opened a month ago as part of the Akron Public Schools system. It debuted with 240 third- and fourth-graders who are struggling academically and largely from underprivileged families. The school will grow to include first through eighth grades by fall 2022, but the fundamental features of the program are already in place.
School days are longer, running from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., as is the school year (from July through May) in order to take pressure off working parents. Students receive free breakfast, lunch and snacks. There’s a new grading system in place for the kids, as well as “support circle” sessions each day to help students learn how to calm their emotions and talk through challenges. Parents, too, are given more feedback at school (in individualized meetings with advisors) and also offered help in the form of housing and job-placement services, GED classes and a food bank — all things that James’ mother, Gloria, could have benefitted from too…
This is where Nicole Hassan and a squad of veteran Akron Public Schools staffers stepped in, organizing half a dozen “design teams” last year to hash out every ambition they could bake into the DNA of I Promise School. The teams spent months debating features that today form a public school unlike any other in the country. It’s supported in part by the LeBron James Family Foundation — it’s pledged $2 million a year to support the school’s growth — but otherwise funded by taxpayers as part of the Akron system. It’s an experiment in what a public institution can do to help kids in the most crucial aspect of their development into adulthood. “The hope is that this can become a model for more schools across the country in urban centers where young students need the most hope,” Hassan says….
The biggest point is with it being public is that it’s something that can carry over across the country. Our mission is to be a nationally recognized model for urban education. The common idea is that it’s easier to do a charter school, or it’s easier to do private because you don’t have to work within the confines of a public school system. But then those schools are only available to certain students, whereas every community has a public school. I want the elements of I Promise to be the norm for our district and spread across the nation so that in Chicago, in Detroit and in other areas where students have a lot of trauma, they’re utilizing these practices as well.
Of course, one of the things we’d love to see is that other communities help support such a school. A lot of our contributions have been from community partners beyond LeBron’s foundation. It’s important that LeBron’s a part of it, but he definitely couldn’t do it alone, and I think other communities could generate the same contribution. Honestly, if we believe that education is the way to create generational change and improve a community, then communities need to start supporting the school system in a real way.
Of course, LeBron James deserves a place on the honor roll. So does the Akron public school system, which thought through the whole child, loving-kindness policies of this innovative school.
Thanks to reader Christine Langhoff for bringing this article to my attention.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can we please not use the word “innovative” to describe treating children like human beings? It’s not innovative at all. In fact, it’s expected at affluent schools.
The true innovation in our times is to treat children—esp poor children—like human beings instead of budding criminals
This is beautiful.
Very glad to see this option being offered to families with low income. The Community Schools/shared facilities movement has been doing this kind of thing for many years. It’s great that a wealthy, prominent person wants to help support this.
http://www.communityschools.org/
I think the I promise school is not about shared facilities but about expanding social and educational services with the school serving as the physical location of these. Cincinnati has several schools with so-called “wrap around” services availble to children and families, but nothing so comprehensively planned.
I think that you are ignoring the fact that public schools have become sites of co-location by charter schools. The “shared/facilities” concept of this era (context matters) means that the charters are free-riders. Why? Most have put little or no money into the public school facilities they occupy and some also assume they should have priority in all matters of scheduling and use.
Please read the account here.
https://cloakinginequity.com/2018/10/03/is-the-co-location-of-charters-inside-neighborhood-schools-a-problem/
Laura, for more than 40 years, some public schools have been sharing space with social service agencies to improve services for families and students, Yes, having worked with Cincinnati Public Schools , I agree that there are some schools there doing this, very well.
The National Governors Association 1985 report that I helped write endorsed this idea.
I wrote about this idea in a 1983 book called Free to Teach. Our Center also did 2 booklets about this community school/shared facilities approach. Here’s a link to the 2007 copy of the booklet that describes how public schools are sharing space with various agencies.
Click to access saneschools.pdf
As to the idea of schools sharing space – long before there were charters, there were schools within schools (district options). These sometimes worked out well, sometimes district educators resisted sharing space with a 2nd or third school. In the late 1980’s, Al Shanker wrote about the experience of educators in some schools within schools.
He, imho accurately explained that educators trying to create schools within schools “could look forward to insecurity, obscurity and outright hostility.”
Some public school educators are great collaborators. Some are not.
But I think part of what this article is about is the value of schools and social service agencies collaborating to help families. I completely agree with that.
Joe,
Surprised you have time to comment today since you are also doing an event with voucher-loving Howard Fuller about the “well-funded attack” on charter schools.
Who is all that funding coming from to oppose privatization? Readers of this blog? The fabulously not-wealthy Network for Public Education?
Who can match the Waltons? Bill Gates? John Arnold? Reed Hastings? Eli Broad? Michael Bloomberg? Betsy DeVos? The Koch brothers? The federal government, which just handed out $399 million to charters?
The unions? Surely, you jest.
My guesstimate is that charters pick up $1 Billion a year in external funding. $400 Million from the feds; $200 Million from the Waltons alone. Then there are all those other billionaires.
That’s what I call “we’ll funded.”
Please let me know where the funding is for the fight against privatization so I can get some for NPE.
Were you joking or lying?
Having sent our children to urban district public schools open to all, and having served as an urban public school PTA president, serving as campaign manager for two successful Democrat mayor campaigns in St. Paul, and working with legislators and governors in more than 30 states, I’ve learned that lots of money is being spent on various sides of the charter issue.
Resistance to charters has been led by a variety of local, state and national groups. They include local, state and national school board, school administrator, and union groups. In many cases, these groups have used dues money from members and tax funds allocated to school districts to hire lobbyists who oppose chartering.
IN some cases, education groups have helped fund other groups that have criticized charters.
In some places, advocates for low income youngsters and families with some form of disability have been allies of charters. In some cases, they have oppose chartering.
Some foundations have funded college faculty who actively oppose chartering.
As Diane notes, some major foundations have helped fund various individuals and organizations that support chartering or support some schools that are chartered.
All of this is perfectly legal.
For what it’s worth, the organization I direct has received $ to work with district and charter public schools. For example, we’ve received funds from several foundations to help district & chartered Public schools in Minneapolis Paul metro area increase the number of students from low income families participating in various forms of dual high school/college credit programs. We received dollars from the Mn Dept of Education to run a leadership academy that brought together district and charter educators.
BTW, yes, good for LeBron James for supporting a public school rather than a charter, but what happens if he changes his mind or dies or something? Just because this is a public school doesn’t mean it doesn’t suffer from many of the same problems as other educational ventures supported by wealthy non-educators. Public schools need public funding to be spent in accordance with the wishes of the community under the direction of an elected school board in conjunction with teachers and other experienced educational professionals.
As a public school, it has a better chance of surviving than as a charter school.
There’s really no saying what will improve its chances of survival as the school is envisioned. The district giveth and the district taketh away. Central Park East survived for quite a while until it was reeled back in. Regardless of you feel about charters, if CPE had one, it could have survived.
No charter is forever. They open and close like day lilies.
Alternative (district) school educators all over the country found in the 1970’s and 1980’s that when school boards and supts changed, sometimes their schools were closed. In fact, some of terrific charters are run by people with district experience, who were deeply frustrated by how badly they were treated by school districts.
That’s also why some teacher union leaders have helped start charters – frustration with the district bureaucracy.
I agree that public schools need public funding. And American needs a real progressive tax rate that is as high as it was during Eisenhower. And we need universal healthcare where at birth every person gets their health insurance card and free healthcare for life.
I am old enough to remember when it looked like American might have universal healthcare in the 1970s when Ted Kennedy was pushing it and again in the 1990s when there seemed to be public support until the right wing’s expensive and successful propaganda effort about “death panels”. And in 2010 we got a very second rate Obamacare which I wish was better. But as imperfect as Obamacare is — and it is very imperfect — I’m not sure another 40 years of nothing is any better. And the public reaction when Republicans wanted to end it has convinced me that having something that gets people used to thinking differently about a government run health insurance program is far more likely to lead to improvements than what we had from 1970 until 2010 — nothing.
That’s all to say that if public school advocates are going to wait around until the public suddenly gives them lots more money to create these programs, it is going to a long wait. But if LeBron’s school gets the public supporting schools with lots of appropriate services that is not based on drumming out kids to get good results or cherry picking the highest performing students to attend, hopefully that will change the public’s perception of what public schools can do.
Trump wrote an article ((Correction, someone wrote an article for Trump) that appeared in a mass market paper today claiming that health care for all was a terrible idea because it would make America into a socialist country.
“…health care for all was a terrible idea because it would make America into a socialist country.”
And that would be a bad thing because…?
And, said Trump, that’s why we can’t health care for all. Don’t ask me to explain the meandering thoughts of a man who was paid $200,000 a year by his father when he was three years old.
That’s a good one, Diane!
Glad I had just finished my hot chocolate (my special recipe) before reading it because otherwise I would have had to clean up my laptop-“to explain the meandering thoughts of a man who was paid $200K/year when he was three years old”. Laughed out loud on that one!
This sounds like the type of school that will help elevate at-risk students through wrap around supports. I hope they use multiple measures to evaluate students and that they do not fall into the test score trap. I hope they look at student retention, graduation rates and plans after high school. These factors are far more real and important than a standardized test score.
There are many good public schools that are already getting positive results with lower income students. Public schools should start collecting this type of data to spread the news about effective community public schools. While public schools cannot promise college scholarships to students, I know there are guidance counselors, administrators and teachers across this country that work tirelessly to help poor students apply for any and all resources to fund college or other post high school programs.
Of course, this is to be applauded. LeBron James has a heart of gold and has been giving back. Money to extend hours. Love and caring poured into this school. The big question for all schools-charter and traditional public – how much of this is replicable without all the supports? Every child deserves this type of schooling and that should not be a surprise. However, the funding arrangements (city school districts coupled with financially strapped cities and the poor will of everybody with failed levies) will keep our poor children in pitiful learning experiences,. Diane, You, Linda Darling-Hammond and many others have pinpointed the biggest issue with our schools -equity.
The one thing our states refuse to support is love. Punishment is cheaper.
Recognizing that states vary, here in Minnesota we have a state funding formula that provides substantially more for public schools that enroll high percentages of low income and limited English speaking students. I think this should be the approach everywhere.
Joe Nathan You provided a link:
“Here’s a link to the 2007 copy of the booklet that describes how public schools are sharing space with various agencies.”
I looked at the book 2007 book , and especially Clark Montessori in Cincinnati. This has always been a public school occupying public school buildings paid for tax payers, It has never been located in a social service agency.
We agree, Laura. There are examples of some schools that share space with social service agencies and some that are small schools which do not do this.
In CIncy, Withrow HS was an example of a building that housed two smaller schools. it also was an example of a school that provided space for social service agency staff. It was terrific. Not sure if they are still doing this.
I believe that there is some really great work being done in already integrated schools due to the fact that funding is more equitable. When there is a mix of socio-economic levels in a school, there is not only a positive peer effect, the schools can pay to reach out to poor students and families. Frankly, middle class students require fewer supports so many districts can divert a lot of time and energy to helping at-risk students. In many poor, urban schools the needs can be overwhelming and the resources are few. The way in which we fund public schools is unfair to poor students.
If I may make an addition to your thought, RT: “In many poor, urban AND RURAL schools the needs can be overwhelming and the resources are few.”
Many times we country bumpkins are left out of these types of discussions.
LeBron, I hope, is smart and strong enough to not let his idea / public school get HIGH-JACKED by the deformers.
James story shows what one or a very few people can do to change lives. AND he remembers and gives back.
This is not the same but is reminiscent of what I found about the Indian colleges some years ago. No money, few facilities et al but I LOVED their academic programs. I felt what they were trying to do was what real education is all about.
Dr. Ravitch posted above about love. THAT is what it is all about. AND love put into action by concern for the individual, NOT the love of money.
I was greeted by a comment from a conversation to which I could not respond. The conversation:
Him: “Lebron is the dumbest human being alive.”
Me: at least he gives his money to a public school.
Him: they did not want it. It cost too much for the taxpayers
Where does this line of conversation originate?
Breitbart, Alex Jones, ALEC, National Review, the GOP to name a few.
I assumed those to be the sources with the likely addition of Fox. I do not have time, of course, to chase down the fact of how many people in Akron opposed the school (since they are people, I am sure some supported and some opposed).
This is the problem associated with widespread distribution of false statements that are based on insufficient collections of facts. Just one disgruntled person can lead the interviewer and writer of a news story to claim objectivity. Real research takes so much time that it runs into the modern need for production. If your story so well researched but follows another that was hastily researched but hit the news first, your story becomes less important.
Thus the manipulation of news is able to be accomplished simply by referring to whatever report you want to. Opposition can be dispatched with a simple reference to opposing views as “fake” or “biased” without paying attention to the details of the matter.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The greatest of all innovations: a school in which love and kindness are built in as policy.
I know that folks here are very concerned about racially segregated schools even when that segregation is the result of minority citizens choosing the school. What about the kind of segregation at this school, where no students who are at or above grade level will be allowed by the district to enroll in the school? Is this kind of segregation allowable, or perhaps even laudable in public schools? I am inclined to think that it is as it might appear that Rawl’s difference principal applies here, but given the general condemnation of tracking by folks here, I wonder if I am once again in a tiny minority among the long time commentators here.
The picture in the article shows a racial mix. The district is majority-minority.
Do you ever make comments that are not intellectual one-upmanship?
Did your mother teach you to be pleasant in company?
Great questions. It’s one thing to open a school with great ideas and substantial support. It’s another thing to carry great ideas out well.
But there are examples, both district & charter of similar schools (though not with an extra $2 million a year) I wish them the best, and think it’s an approach that should be tried.
Rawls’ Difference Principal appears to have been hijacked by those who seek to justify the “voodoo” economics of “trickle down” economics. From my readings Rawls was concerned mainly with justice and equity, not necessarily for those most advantaged in society, but for those least advantaged.
So it seems that perhaps some sort of distinguishing (tracking?) the needs and desires of those who are most disadvantaged is necessary to help ensure that those needs and desires can be met.
I might argue otherwise in the tracking of students in the sense that if we understand the fundamental purpose* of public education as delineated in states’ constitutions then we can allocate resources so that each individual student’s needs and desires are accommodated and provided for. Were we to see to it that such a situation obtained we would be doing justice with our public schools.
*The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.” Ch. 1-“The Purpose of Public Education” in “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education”.
Duane,
I agree about the difference principle. I was thinking that segregating students into schools by academic performance might well work out to the advantage of the students that are below grade level because they could access a curriculum and services designed around their needs.
TE, From my readings it’s been shown that heterogeneous classes benefit all the students, much more so than homogeneous classes. The way one accomplishes that is to have services available from K on up so that so many students don’t “get left behind”. I’ve seen heterogeneous classes, without grading of students, with the proper amount of trained adults work quite well K-5. After that the same number of qualified adults for the students 6-8 but with a form of grades but still more geared to a narrative assessment of the student, led by the student in conjunction with said adults at parent teacher conferences. Now, the district is supposed to be one of the best in Missouri, even before all the standardized testing ranking and sorting. I haven’t been there since the brunt of the obscene focus on testing has taken hold but I still imagine that they provide those services.
The main problem with segregating students by supposed academic performance are numerous. The main problem in my mind being how the students internalize their placement. Hell, I have a friend, my age-63 that for years thought he was stupid because he was placed in the slow group in grade school. Now this gentleman has his own quite successful financial planning business, undergrad in horticulture and it only became apparent to him that he wasn’t “stupid” about halfway through his MBA when he was 35 or so. That is a damning characteristic of segregated homogeneous schooling. The children internalize what the authorities say about them. And my buddy is not the only older person who has such a schooling horror experience. I’ve had others tell me similar stories.
This country has more than enough wealth and resources to provide all the services needed by all students. We don’t have the political will due to too many who have a twisted sense of libertarianism and neo-conservatism/liberalism wherein “I, me, mine and then some more for me and mine and to hell with all those others who are sucking my air and taking resources that I should be directed towards me and mine” is the dominant way of thinking for far too many.
Duene,
You might what to consider what economists call the second best solution. Even though you think that our society can provide all the services necessary for all students at all schools, surely you agree that our society has shown no willingness to do that. Given that society will not do it, might not the best result be to segregate students by academic ability like LeBron’s school is designed to do? That way the cost of the specialized teachers and services that these students require can be spread over the highest number of students.
It would be helpful if you could come up with some references about the superiority of heterogeneous classes over homogeneous classes. My first thought is that it is fare more likely to be true for ULA classes than mathematics classes, largely do to the way that mathematics classes are taught.
A dentist (RIP) whose daughter married the eldest son of one of my best friends has, like many, a bar in the basement had a flourescent tube sign made for the name of his bar: The Second Sucks Bar.
I cannot agree with large scale homogeneous groupings of students. It is wrong in so many ways. To hell with “efficiency” in the teaching and learning process if that means education on the cheap through homogeneous groupings, whether those groups are the “gifted” or learners who take a bit longer to learn. Homogeneous groupings lead to a very segregated society as we had in prior to IDEA, Brown vs Board etc. . . .
No, don’t want to go back to that. (Even though vestiges of that segregation are still visible, especially because of the standards and testing malpractice regime.)
And too tired right now to search for such studies. I’ve seen heterogeneous classes work first hand in a top notch district. I don’t need those studies to verify what I know from my own observations. And I assisted at times in the classes, coached the kids in sports and did Scouts with them from K up through 8. I saw the benefits for all students with my own eyes.
Good lord, ELA not ULA. Not sure where that came from.
Duane: your description of “tracking” mirrors your experience in high school. Those of us who have attempted to teach students who made it through the system functionally illiterate understand that teaching those who have trouble with the basic concepts or skills necessary to proceed through the material know these students have different needs. Meeting these needs in a class where more advanced expectations are required is an impossibility that is not often admitted. For example, the requirement that all 9th graders take Algebra I hurts kids who are not ready more than it hurts kids who are.
We ought to track if teachers say they want it. They are he ones who know.
Roy,
Remediation. I have no problem with remediation if necessary. It should be available and as you say the teachers in conjunction with the counselors (if there are any) and the parents should be the ones determining what remediation is needed. How a student can go through schooling and the teachers and counselors not know that she/he needs help is beyond me.
Who are the ones in charge of the school? The administrators. Where the hell are they in not knowing about each and every student under their charge. Anything less than knowing where each student is academically is just plain wrong. I know of no administrator who ever did know, mainly because they just follow along with what has always occurred which hasn’t included a focus on the students in the fashion described. They will say they don’t have time to do so, that their plate is already full. Horse manure, change priorities!
In more than one instance in the business sector I took over for someone who “couldn’t get the job done” often citing an overload of work and in a couple of months was doing the job properly and actually I started to get bored. Well, in my mind, those before me had focused on the wrong things, didn’t understand the fundamental job that needed to be done and made a ton of extra work for themselves. And I’ve seen the exact same thing with adminimals.
And they never gave me a chance in the public schools (mainly because I didn’t kiss ass in the interviewing process) to show them how and what really needed to be done.
Many of the current problems with the teaching and learning process are due to adminimals focusing on the wrong things-Ackhoff’s ol “doing the wrong thing righter” routine.