School officials at the LeBron James-backed "I Promise School" in his hometown of Akron, OH are showing concern after its eighth graders failed a state-wide math exam.
The school which teaches students grades second through eighth previously received $1.4 million from its parent company, The LeBron James Foundation, yet the abundance of resources hasn't led to the institution meeting state benchmarks.
“It is discouraging,” Keith Liechty-Clifford, the district's school improvement czar, noted. “We had said all along this journey was going to be difficult because we’re starting with kids who are two years or more behind.”
School board president Dr. Derrick Hall also remarked on the perplexing results the school has yielded when considering the resources at its disposal. “I believe the pandemic has an impact, but it also has an impact on the non-selected kids as well and the numbers that we’re seeing here would suggest that my non-selected kids who don’t have the same number of resources are actually performing better and I’m just trying to understand why. I think it’s fair to ask that question,” Hall said.
He continued, “When the I Promise School started, one of the things I was excited about was I thought this school could be an incubator where ideas could come out of this school that we could take and then inject into the operations of other buildings throughout the district. That’s why, looking at the data today, I’m so disappointed.”
