Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

To improve America’s public schools, we need community-based decision-making, redistributed wealth and better leadership

LeBron James speaks at the opening ceremony for the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, on July 30. The I Promise School is supported by The LeBron James Family Foundation and is run by the Akron Public Schools. Phil Long/AP Photo

LeBron James has partnered with Akron Public Schools in Ohio to open I Promise, a beautiful new $8 million public elementary school in his hometown. James is one of the most prominent athletes in the world and he has repeatedly used this platform to speak out in support of underserved communities and social justice causes.

He explicitly stated that the founding of the school is the greatest achievement of his career — one that also includes multiple NBA championships and individual accolades. James and the school deserve all of the praise that they have received. However, as admirable as James’ philanthropic efforts are, they are not a solution to the problems in public education.

The public praise and excitement over the opening of I Promise are also a testament to the erosion of our society’s collective commitment to public education and public institutions generally. Over the course of the last 30 years, a new bipartisan common sense has emerged about public education. This common sense presumes that corporate reorganization, public-private partnerships, charitable donations and philanthropy can provide what should be a guaranteed public good: public education.

This policy turn promoting privatization, the proliferation of charter schools, school voucher programs, and reforms based on “choice,” has contributed to the social dislocation of black students, black educators, and black neighborhoods — particularly in Ohio. In their study Closed By Choice, researchers found that the growth of privately managed charter schools in Chicago contributed to the mass closure of public schools in black neighborhoods, “education insecurity,” “fiscal stress” on the entire district, and “the widespread denigration of public education.” While James’ school is not a charter school or a private school accepting vouchers, his involvement still suggests that private wealth is necessary to create quality public education.

The personal-origins story that James credits with inspiring the opening of the school really is an indictment of the ravages of racism and capitalism that created prolonged urban crises for African-Americans in cities such as Akron. Families who settled in Akron and other Rust Belt cities for decent-paying jobs in the industrial economy were devastated when these same jobs evaporated with the onset of deindustrialization. James credits teachers, mentors and family with helping him to find his way. However, structural factors beyond personal relationships created the conditions that led James to miss 83 days of school in the fourth grade. His family did not have secure housing, adequate employment, or sufficient public transportation to get him to school. His phenomenal talent as a basketball player provided him with a lane out of these conditions, a lane not available to so many other children.

Black educational organizers have long argued for the very type of  Continue reading: Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

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LeBron bankrolls I Promise School in Ohio

LeBron bankrolls I Promise School in Ohio

LeBron is dishing out assists to a local school district in Ohio

The basketball player opens his I Promise school to widespread applause

Last week President Trump scoffed – albeit indirectly – at basketball icon LeBron James’ intelligence in a tweet, stating, “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!” But it looks like LeBron is the one taking Trump to school.

Last week, LeBron announced the opening of his I Promise School. It is open to 240 low-income, at-risk third- and fourth-grade students in his hometown of Akron, in northeast Ohio. Each year, the school will add grades, expanding to first through eighth grades by 2022.

I Promise is a public-private partnership between the Akron School District and the LeBron James Family Foundation, a unique model that exemplifies LeBron’s exceptional abilities to see the bigger picture in the role education plays in community development.

The new school is open for more days than the traditional school year, provides parents with job placement services, has a food bank on site, gives each kid a free bicycle and helmet, guarantees college tuition for every student who graduates and offers social and emotional support and other wrap-around services, something researchers and practitioners recognize as important. The school accounts for and addresses the structural discrimination that has long hurt black families — and black school districts. In a way, by connecting social assistances to the school, I Promise is providing wrap-around services for the entire district.

Related: Clusters of black science majors offer a map for future investment

Amplifying the school’s offerings so far beyond the curriculum certainly isn’t conventional, but LeBron is deliberately stepping out-of-bounds, and kudos to him for that.

“Everything these kids are going through — the drugs, the violence, the guns, everything they’re going through as kids, I know,” said LeBron, the son of a single parent, during his remarks at the school opening. “For me to be in the position where I have the resources, the finance, the people, the structure and the city around me — why not?”

There have been other celebrities who’ve opened charter schools in the past, such as former basketball player, now sports analyst, Jalen Rose; entertainment mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs; former tennis standout Andre Agassi; and rapper Pitbull, to name a few. Those who see opening a school as a means of giving back, like LeBron, have also leveraged charter school legislation to do so, to the applause of education reformers.

Charters, which are publicly financed but independently managed, give founders the freedom to do more than what a traditional school may provide. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that the launch of I Promise spurred comparisons with the charter and education reform movements, which prize school choice, voucher systems, and competition.

“[T]he fact that this school opened only because of the good graces of a very wealthy, civic-minded athlete underscores the continuing problem with education funding in this country,” wrote education writer Valerie Strauss in her blog for the Washington Post. She gives him props for situating his school within the public school district, as opposed to launching a charter, but argues that this isn’t how civic institutions should be run. “America’s public schools should not have to depend on any wealthy individual or private entity to be sustained or improved.”

Reform advocate and writer Robert Pondisco replied to Strauss’ column with this short-sighted tweet: “As ever, no one asks ‘What about the other kids?’ when white parents move to affluent towns, or pull their kids out of zoned district schools. But it’s a problem when poor black and brown parents want something better — and when someone tries to offer it.”

Related: Disrupting education, the NFL way

It’s clear that LeBron has done his homework. His school offers a considered response to criticisms that have been levied against charter schools — that they impose what outsiders believe black kids need to learn, sidestep structural inequality, reduce the number of experienced black teachers and purposely erode locals’ voting power on school boards.

First, LeBron is a son of Akron. Local communities have learned to be Continue reading: LeBron bankrolls I Promise School in Ohio

Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools

Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools

Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools
The lawmakers asked Attorney General Sessions and the Education Department to hand over records.

Twenty-one Senate Democrats criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday for his decision to rescind guidance memos on affirmative action — which instructed schools how they can legally consider the race of applicants to promote diversity — and pressed him to hand over records on racial discrimination complaints.

“We are deeply concerned your actions will make it more difficult for institutions to open up doors of opportunity to students and communities that have been historically underrepresented or have been left behind,” said a letter to Sessions and Education Sec. Betsy DeVos.

Guidance documents don’t amount to law, but they carry particular weight for education institutions, which rely on the Education Department for billions of dollars in federal grants.

Rescinding the memos in July, along with a swath of other guidance memos, came after the Justice Department has grown increasingly hostile toward affirmative action policies and threats of litigation around a case at Harvard University.

The lawmakers asked for a list of the complaints of discrimination based on race or ethnicity made to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights since January 1, 2016. Further, they asked, “How will the Department advise schools about how to seek diversity in their student body consistent with the Constitution?”

Led by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the lawmakers also pressured Sessions and DeVos’s larger rollback of civil rights enforcement more broadly.

“With almost daily attacks from your Administration on the protections for immigrants, women, children, people of color, people with disabilities, survivors of sexual assault, and LGBTQ students, it is clear there is a coordinated and systematic effort to undermine the law, divide communities, and destabilize American values at every level and in every community,” the senators wrote.

On July 3, Sessions rescinded seven so-called guidance documents that explain how the Continue reading: Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools