This week the Baltimore City Paper reports on Barack Obama, Whatever It Takes, and the movement to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in Baltimore:
Like Obama, Canada worked in urban communities before founding his Children’s Zone. Unlike Obama, he grew up poor and in a violent neighborhood. The problem as he saw it then in New York–and in cities like Baltimore–was that all the various interventions by social programs, schools, recreation centers, little leagues, and the like, was that they were all scattershot, often giving help in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes, through the superhuman effort of a social worker here, a school teacher or coach there, you would have the classic story of the ghetto kid who made good–like Canada himself, who made it to Bowdoin College. Those feel-good stories, however, would never and will never change the communities themselves or the lives of the vast majority of their inhabitants.
Tags: Baltimore, HCZ, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods, reviews
Paul,
I read your book in one sitting. I couldn’t put it down. Thanks for giving such great background on the historical dialogue about poverty and education. Will you or have you done a blog post on what the 20 cities will be (besides Baltimore)? The WSJ article by Mike Spector (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275804805311965.html) makes me wonder how the gov/business/philanthropy funding model will work in today’s economic reality? It seems like it will have to be scaled back tremendously, as Geoffrey is already doing. Thoughts? Thanks.
Hi Claudia. Thanks for your message, and I’m glad you liked the book.
I haven’t written anything yet about which 20 cities the Obama administration might choose for their Promise Neighborhoods, because no one yet has any good idea of what they might do. I think Baltimore is a great candidate, though.
I thought the Wall Street Journal article you mentioned was good, but I think it might have overstated the financial problem at HCZ a bit. I see how you might have got the impression that things were being scaled back tremendously, but in fact I think the cut in the HCZ budget this year was something less than 10 percent, after several years of more than 20 percent annual growth. I expect this will be only a temporary slowdown.
You’re right that it’s a good moment to reconsider the funding mix of an organization like HCZ. Right now private funders pay about 2/3 of the costs; the Obama plan, which calls for a 50/50 split, seems more stable.
Thanks for writing.