Archive for November, 2008
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
On the Teachers College website, a report on last Monday’s Campaign for Educational Equity symposium:
“My own journalistic investigation into the questions of poverty and education started a little more than five years ago, not far from here, when I first visited [HCZ Founder] Geoffrey Canada,” Paul Tough, an editor at The New York Times Magazine, told an audience at Teachers College’s fourth annual Symposium on Education Equity in November. “By the end of our first conversation, I knew I wanted to write an article about Geoff’s work, and by the time that article came out in The New York Times Magazine in 2004, I knew I wanted to go further and write a book.”
Tough, author of the recently published Whatever It Takes:Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, concluded that “a true solution to the problem of underachievement in inner-city schools is going to require more nurturing families and safer neighborhoods, as well as better teachers and more accountable schools. It’s not only possible to fix both problems at the same time, it’s essential.”
Tags: New York City, speeches
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Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
Today on Edutopia.com, an online magazine, an interview I did with Bernice Yeung on the process of reporting and writing Whatever It Takes. I said things like:
The prekindergarten teachers were just so focused on and conscious of language, on how to get language into every part of the day to expand these kids’ vocabularies, which all this research shows is exactly what the students need the most at that stage.
Tags: interviews, magazines, websites
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Monday, November 17th, 2008
From his blog:
If the same group of highly intelligent and dedicated urban educators shifted their focus to the birth though 5th grade population we could see some significant results. Maybe our input might start matching our output. This isn’t to say that we don’t need highly qualified and passionate teachers working at the secondary level. We obviously do and those kids deserve our best efforts to turn things around. However, recruiting a new group of educators and taking some of the current work force to focus in on the age levels where we can really make a difference and ensure that a gap never starts seems to me as the only way to make a dent in this giant social dilemma.
Tags: blogs, Denver
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Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
Today on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog, notes on “Whatever It Takes,” plus a Q&A with me and Geoffrey Canada.
When I saw this summer that Tough had written a book about Canada, my radar screen lit up like the Fourth of July. And the book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, turns out to be excellent: a well-told distillation of a very complex story, and an admiring but level-headed profile of a remarkable man. Canada’s project, the Harlem Children’s Zone, is an incredibly ambitious attempt to make sure that no child really is left behind in the 97-block neighborhood it serves, working with everyone from expectant parents to hard-to-steer adolescents to foster an entire culture that supports the basic task of educating poor kids and breaking the cycle of generational poverty. As the book shows, the project has had some remarkable successes in its first few years, but they haven’t been uniform or easy.
Tags: blogs, bookstores, Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, Q&As, reviews
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Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Also on Monday, Geoffrey Canada and I will be talking about Whatever It Takes and the Harlem Children’s Zone at an event sponsored by HCZ and the Hue-Man Bookstore. Details above.
Tags: bookstores, Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, New York City, speeches
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
Next Monday, November 17, I’ll be speaking at the Campaign for Educational Equity’s 2008 symposium, at Teachers College in New York City. I’m on at 9:20 a.m. or so, right after Gov. Paterson (on video), answering the question “What Will It Take?”
Tags: New York City, speeches
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
This Saturday, November 15, at 3 p.m., I’ll be a featured speaker at the Teach for America New York City Alumni Summit. I’m on a panel with Marian Wright Edelman and Donna Foote, discussing “The Role of Media in Informing our Public Consciousness.”
Tags: New York City, panels, speeches
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
In the Guardian today, from London, an article about President-elect Obama’s campaign promises, and which ones he may choose to tackle first:
ON the corner of 125th Street and Madison Avenue at the heart of Harlem in New York stands an unusual building. It is the bright, modern, six-storey headquarters of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), a unique community-building project that has transformed the lives of thousands of youngsters from one of America’s most historic – and most downtrodden – black neighbourhoods.
A few blocks away from Harlem landmarks such as the Apollo theatre and Sylvia’s soul food restaurant, the HCZ offers a compelling opportunity to examine one of Obama’s core election pledges.
In a campaign largely filled with blithe generalities, he made a promise that could scarcely have been more specific: “When I’m president, the first part of my plan to combat urban poverty will be to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities across the country,” he said on several occasions. “We will find the money to do this because we can’t afford not to.”
Tags: HCZ, newspapers, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
In today’s Houston Chronicle, Mike Feinberg, one of the founders of the KIPP family of charter schools, offers advice on education policy to President-elect Obama, including this suggestion:
Focus on the early years: Even in this time of economic uncertainty, we need to make critical investments in pre-K and early childhood education.
In his recent book Whatever It Takes, New York Times Magazine editor Paul Tough notes that by age 3, children in low-income communities have been exposed to 20 million fewer words than their more affluent peers. By providing a language-rich learning environment at an early age, schools can offset this gap and give children the tools they need to succeed.
Tags: Houston, KIPP, newspapers, Obama
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
In today’s Jacksonville, Florida, Times-Union, an editorial about the Harlem Children’s Zone, Whatever It Takes and the city’s new “Success Zone”:
Late in the new book describing the Harlem Children’s Zone, Barack Obama is mentioned for the first time.
In July 2007, the future president of the United States gave a speech on urban poverty and held up the Harlem Children’s Zone as a model.
If elected, he would replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities.
Could Jacksonville leap ahead into that select group of cities? All the ingredients are there.
Tags: Florida, HCZ, newspapers, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods
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