LeBron James Opened a School That Was Considered an Experiment. It's Showing Promise.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, philanthropist George Kaiser has invested heavily in Educare, a year-round early learning program, and wraparound services, such as prison-diversion and family-based programs, with the belief that early child development can break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and address the opportunity gap before it widens. The Christian Science Monitor is following three mothers with children enrolled in Educare to show how the experiment in philanthropy is playing out on the ground.

In Oakland, California, parents, many of whom are immigrants, take family literacy classes at their child's elementary school. These programs empower parents to help students with their homework and provide parents with a better understanding of curriculum expectations, such as common core standards.

Small rural schools in New Hampshire achieved some of the state's highest reading scores by leveraging their size to create multi-grade classrooms, provide individualized support to all students, and build long-term student-teacher relationships. In result, these lower-income districts have outperformed expectations by the widest margins in the state.

At East End Community School, teachers and administrators work to combat chronic absenteeism by building a “culture of attendance,” with celebratory ceremonies for students with high attendance, monthly attendance reports for parents, community dinners, students raffles, and individualized, shame-free check-ins for families struggling to get their students to school. The school’s rate of chronic absenteeism has dropped from 25% to 13%.

To help address chronic absenteeism, Project Rebuild works with families to determine the root cause of school absences and connect them to needed resources and services. In the 2022-23 school year, 81 percent of families referred to the nonprofit completed the program, with a total of 61 families participating. Only one percent of families who participate have to be referred again for continued truancy concerns.

High-dosage or high-impact tutoring is done in 45-minute group sessions throughout the school day at Tennessee elementary schools to help students fill gaps left in their learning during the pandemic.

In order to keep track of students and prevent them from dropping out, the Nashville district created “Navigators.” A corps of 5,600 school employees- teachers, lunchroom workers, and bookkeepers, who track students through weekly phone and video calls. The navigators have “completed roughly 220,000 calls to parents and students since school started in August,” each with a caseload of 6 to 12 students. Their conversations have led from everything to helping students complete assignments, to buying groceries, to finding out students are homeless.

Spurred by state changes, an elementary in Tulsa, Oklahoma has transformed its approach to chronic absenteeism, adding frequent positive reinforcements for good attendance and building strong relationships with students to get to the root of attendance issues. “This is a solvable problem as long as people keep in mind," the executive director of Attendance Works said. "The solutions take time to unpack and address what’s keeping kids from coming to school.”

San Francisco's choice-based enrollment process, once heralded as a solution to the city's segregated schools, is now called "a cautionary tale" by most local parents. The system gives preference to residents of neighborhoods with low test scores. Among other issues, such as incomplete transit options, this system fails to account for rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods where affluent residents are increasingly living in historically low test score zones.

Boulder Valley schools are working with Latino parents to create networks of community support, feedback, and insight about the success of Latino children in the district. Parents are working with the school district to make sure stereotypes and racial bias aren't limiting their children from receiving food services and quality education that fit their needs.