Lebron James is arguably the greatest all-around basketball player in the history of the NBA. As a result of this skill set, James has been wildly successful financially, with some of the most lucrative deals in all of the fields a professional athlete and celebrity has access to. James grew up very poor in Akron, Ohio and for most of his career he has played basketball for teams as an amateur and as a professional, based in Ohio. Like many wealthy athletes James gives a lot to charity, and even has his own Labron James Family Foundation that serves his hometown of Akron. In April James announced that he would be opening the I PROMISE school.
In 2015, the evolution of the program brought the promise of a free college education. In a partnership between James' foundation and the University of Akron thousands of full scholarship will be offered to students who complete the I Promise Program. The first class is slated to attend Akron in 2021.
The current plan is to open the I PROMISE School with third and fourth graders in 2018 and then add first and second grade classes the following year. By 2022, the school will be filled with first through eighth graders.
The academic approach will utilize the Akron Public School's curriculum with a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, better known in education circles as STEM. The I PROMISE School will also offer hands-on, problem-based learning while drawing on the foundation's "We Are Family" philosophy to include students and their families in the process.
Education Blogger Curmudgucation points out the passive-aggressive tone being taken by charter school public relations types like Jamie Davies O’Leary over at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an “education” think tank of sorts:
When news broke the other day that LeBron James was starting a school in his home town of Akron, some commentators assumed it was going to be a charter. That’s an understandable mistake, as celebrities and stars of all stripes have gotten in chartering in recent years, from Andre Agassi to P. Diddy to Pitbull and beyond. And why not, given that in most places, the charter model comes with huge advantages for philanthropists wanting to make a difference, among them the freedom from district red tape and teacher union contracts.
LeBron chose to create his school in partnership with the traditional public school district, as a non-charter—likely due to his long-standing relationship with Akron City Schools. There’s no way to know whether he considered the charter route. But if he had, he’d have discovered a challenging charter school terrain suffering from the double whammy of recovering from a long-held poor reputation and inhospitable policies for education entrepreneurs.
Curmudgucation explains O’Leary’s “bemusement”:
O'Leary is the Senior Ohio Policy Analyst for the Fordham Institute (which operates some charter schools in Ohio). O'Leary has also worked for the Ohio Council of Community Schools, one of the longest running charter school authorizers in Ohio, mostly as a communications (PR) person.
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She doesn't mention that charters also have the huge advantage of bringing solid ROI and sheltering taxes, an excellent reason for edu-amateurs to invest some of their money in charters
O’Leary’s back-handed attempt to say charter schools have some kind of unfair bad reputation is particularly hilarious considering that, since 2005 and all the way up to the present, charter schools in Ohio have been nothing but a shitshow—because privatizing schools is mostly beneficial to people who want to make money stealing public education funding, and has never shown itself to actually benefit students over better public school methodology. In fact, O’Leary’s piece is mostly about how tough charter schools have it and how James probably could have gotten a better deal getting into it via privatization.
Best wishes to LeBron in his endeavor, and to his overall partnership in Akron where historical performance data show there is tremendous need. I’m agnostic to school type: if innovation can spring up within traditional public school districts and deliver results for at-risk kids, then more power to them. At the same time, we must remain vigilant against over-regulation and wary of any climate wherein starting up a new charter school is about as likely as making a half-court buzzer beater.
The Ohio charter school group promised Ohioans, like every charter school scam across the nation, that they could create better education for less money and then cry about getting less money. O’Leary, like her other public relations educators, are charlatans with one goal in mind—themselves.
For his part, James is doing what education reform was always supposed to do: coming up with better ways of serving our communities through our public education. Like the AHCA, the concept of “repeal and replace” is more about serving less people while preserving tax breaks for the top percent of our society.
James has always exuded a certain calm thoughtfulness one wishes was shared by more of our elected officials and during the announcement James explained himself in a most perfect way.
The city has done so much for us, I guess this is the least we can do—to continue to give back.
You can watch James’ announcement of this school below (he begins around the 12:20 mark). Well done, sir.