Last September, the American Prospect published a review by David Kirp of “Whatever It Takes.” It’s now online. Kirp writes:
Can Canada make good on his guarantee that Promise Academy, and the additional academies on HCZ’s drawing boards, will rewrite the failure script for Harlem’s children? For starters, will it improve the lives of the 100 kindergarteners and 100 sixth-graders who enrolled in 2004? Tough, an editor at The New York Times Magazine, tells this story with the what-happens-next pacing of a good mystery and the richness of a fine ethnography, weaving together in lapidary prose the strands of a complex narrative.