This morning I was a guest on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC in New York, along with Helen Zelon, the author of a new report in City Limits magazine taking a skeptical view of the Obama Administration’s plans to bring the Harlem Children’s Zone model to other cities. (The report isn’t online yet, but it should be posted on the City Limits web site soon.) There is audio, along with comments from listeners, on the WNYC web site, here.
Brian Lehrer show
February 8th, 2010Center for American Progress Report
February 8th, 2010The Center for American Progress has analyzed President Obama’s education budget for 2011 in great detail. The center’s analysts had this to say about the budget’s community initiatives:
The president also proposes to support community schools under a reformed CCLC program. The Center for American Progress discussed the benefits of school-based services offered by community schools in a recent report. In addition, the proposed $210 million in funding for Promise Neighborhoods will allow for the replication of the highly successful Harlem’s Children’s Zone in communities across the country. The president is right to prioritize funding for school-level reforms that facilitate access to important social and health services for students and families.
Canada in Charlotte
February 8th, 2010Geoffrey Canada will be giving a speech next month in Charlotte, N.C. According to this article in the Charlotte Observer,
He’ll find a well-versed audience. Dozens of leaders from Charlotte-area agencies, charities, schools, advocacy groups and businesses have attended “book club” discussions focusing on a book about Canada. His creation, the Harlem Children’s Zone, provides education for expectant parents, preschool, health care, charter schools and tutoring for families in a 100-block poverty-stricken area of New York City.
Foundation for the Carolinas President Michael Marsicano was among the first group to read “Whatever It Takes” and talk about how the ideas might translate to Charlotte.
Chicago Promise Neighborhoods
February 8th, 2010From Catalyst Chicago’s Notebook blog, an interesting post about three separate coalitions in the city that may be applying for a Promise Neighborhood planning grant:
Three Chicago neighborhoods – Woodlawn, Logan Square, and Chicago Lawn – are competing for a slice of one President Barack Obama’s more ambitious education-related initiatives: Replication of the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 spots around the country. …
Local organizers know that their budgets won’t be as large as the Harlem Zone’s, which has a $68 million-per-year price tag. Still, their plans are ambitious. The groups are beginning to focus in on specific areas, such as early education, parent involvement and creating a climate for success in the neighborhood’s schools.
Baltimore audio
February 8th, 2010The Baltimore Community Radio Coalition has posted audio of my talk last month at the Bolton Street Synagogue, organized by the Greater Homewood Interfaith Alliance. You can listen to the talk and the Q&A, along with the closing benediction, here.
Tea Leaves
February 3rd, 2010There is an enlightening new post on the Building Neighborhoods blog, run by United Neighborhood Centers of America, answering (and speculating on) some of the questions left unanswered by the Promise Neighborhood request in President Obama’s new budget:
It is possible that as many as 20 neighborhoods will receive planning grants, but only a fraction of them will be chosen to advance to the implementation phase based on the quality of their plans.
If we assume around 5 neighborhoods receive implementation money in the first year, what does that tell us? If each of these neighborhoods comes up with a 50% local match, that’s $80 million per neighborhood over five years. Assuming a slow ramp-up, that could take you to a program maybe half of HCZ’s size in a few years time — possibly larger with more local money thrown in the pot.
$210 Million
February 2nd, 2010The federal education department issued a press release yesterday explaining President Obama’s 2011 budget request. Here’s the budget proposal for the Promise Neighborhoods program, which received $10 million in the 2010 budget:
$210 million for Promise Neighborhoods, a new competitive grant program modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone that combines comprehensive social services with school improvements in order to transform whole neighborhoods.
News from Sulphur Springs
February 1st, 2010In today’s St. Petersburg Times, an article about a program to revitalize the Sulphur Springs neighborhood in Tampa, inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone:
Beginning in 1997, the Harlem Children’s Zone followed [the] strategy of pouring every resource into a single, 24-block neighborhood. Within a decade, its charter school students were outscoring peers across New York State on standardized tests, and 90 percent of high schoolers in after-school programs were making it to college.
Until recently, such a plan might have seemed unrealistic for Sulphur Springs. It’s a place with more renters than owners, a median income of just $10,500, and Tampa’s highest concentration of children. Foreclosed and abandoned homes mar the landscape, and police mount extra patrols. By 2008, its elementary school was on a short list of the state’s most troubled schools.
But sometimes, when you slip down far enough, you get a fresh start.
More from Somerville
January 29th, 2010From the Tufts Daily, more news on the plans to bring a program based on the Harlem Children’s Zone to the Mystic housing project in Somerville, Mass. (I posted a link to the original announcement of the project back in December.)
The program is styled after the Harlem Children’s Zone project pioneered by Geoffrey Canada. Cochran noted, however, that though the goals and strategies of the two projects are similar, there are a couple of notable differences.
“Only about 30 percent of the families speak English as a first language,” he said. “The cultural diversity in the Mystic Housing Development is one of its unique characteristics.”
[Update: The story in the Tufts Daily seems to have disappeared from their web site. So the link above is no longer good. Sorry.]
Update from Austin
January 29th, 2010In today’s Austin Chronicle, an update on efforts to bring a Promise Neighborhood to that city (where I’ll be speaking in April):
Two proposals are being drafted in Travis County, both focusing on East Austin. One, backed by the Sooch Foundation and the Webber Family Foundation, brings together representatives of the city of Austin and AISD, as well as local nonprofits such as dropout prevention experts Communities in Schools, youth services provider LifeWorks, and affordable housing advocates Foundation Communities. Their focus is on the St. John/Coronado Hills neighborhood planning area between I-35, Highway 290, and Highway 183, potentially using AISD’s Reagan High “vertical team” – from elementary through high school – as the project backbone. Education nonprofit Southwest Key Programs is working on its own proposal for the Govalle and Johnston Terrace neighborhoods. This would build on its existing East Austin Children’s Promise program and use resources like Southwest Key’s East Austin Family Center and its charter school, the East Austin College Prep Academy.