BraceLand

I just finished reading Whatever It Takes, a chronicle by Paul Tough about the Harlem Children’s Zone. My dad grew up on the South Side of Chicago and, because my grandmother gave a crap, he attended Catholic schools instead of the local public schools. If not for that, he probably would not have ended up at Loyola, Rutgers, then Cornell (where he met my mom) and I would not exist. So, since I owe my spot on this planet to the fact that a kid with nothing was given an education, I perk up at talk of inner-city education.

It’s against this background that I watched a segment on 60 Minutes a couple years ago about Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Children’s Zone, and read an article in the New York Times Magazine, which lead me to the book. Canada’s philosophy, developed over decades of working with underprivileged kids in Harlem, is that every child has the ability to learn but that there is only so much a school can do, and the learning process starts well before a child shows up at the kindergarten door. His view is that the main problem with inner-city education is that a school can only do so much if a child hasn’t had access to the same intellectual stimulation and domestic stability that middle-class children regularly receive. He doesn’t think it’s enough to create a few charter schools that can educate the self-selected best in lower-income communities so they can get out of the ghetto. He thinks you need to “contaminate” the community so that positive values of success and education become the norm, not the exception.

In this sense, Canada’s vision is radical; he sees a comprehensive, top-to-bottom solution to the problem. To this end, he starts before the child is even born with parenting classes. He sees the children through from birth to pre-K with a variety of developmental programs until they’re old enough to start at one of the two charter elementary schools that the organization runs (one of the most compelling parts of the book was Canada’s struggle over the decision about whether the organization should be in the charter-school business at all). On top of these educational programs, HCZ sponsors foster-care prevention services to help keep families together; health and immunization programs; tax preparation; among many other social services. The Zone covers 97 blocks and has an annual budget of $68 million.

For those millions, the Zone has achieved a shocking level of success. 98.5 % of the third-graders at the two charter elementary schools are at or above grade level in math. 97.4% of the eighth-graders were at or above grade level in math, which is a remarkable accomplishment given that a couple years ago, when the book was being written, the middle school was on the brink of being closed because of low achievement.

So Canada has achieved the holy grail as far as education policy wonks are concerned—he’s figured out a way to bring inner-city kids up to the same standard as their middle-class counterparts WITHOUT removing those kids from the inner city. But, when asked about this achievement on the This American Life episode about the HCZ, Canada said he’s always surprised at how easy it’s turned out to be. This, of all the amazing things the HCZ has done, was my big takeaway. It turns out that educating poor kids is not that hard, if you’re willing to take the political-ideological crap out of the equation (allergic reactions to spending money on poor black kids on the right, teachers unions on the left).

I guess that’s a big if, but President Obama (demonstrating his refreshing lack of political ideology and reliance on pragmatic solutions to problems) has made plans to replicate the program in twenty cities by the end of his first term. In fact, my home city of Boston is already angling for one of those grants. I’ll be keeping an eye out.