On May 7, I’ll be the guest speaker at a fundraiser in New Haven for All Our Kin, a local non-profit that “trains, supports, and sustains community child care providers to ensure children and families have the foundation they need to succeed in school and life.” There are details of the event here.
Archive for March, 2009
All Our Kin event in New Haven
Saturday, March 28th, 2009Educational Leadership
Saturday, March 28th, 2009Naomi Thiers reviews “Whatever It Takes” in the February issue of Educational Leadership magazine:
Drawing on the five years he spent chronicling the Harlem Children’s Zone, founded by a man named Geoffrey Canada, journalist Paul Tough gives a fascinating and ultimately upbeat description of the “outsized and audacious new endeavor” that Canada designed for a 24-block zone of Harlem.
Baltimore talk on Monday
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009More details here on my talk at the Johns Hopkins School of Education on Monday. Registration is closed, but unclaimed tickets may be available at the door after 6:30 p.m.
At Columbia J-School
Monday, March 23rd, 2009At LynNell Hancock’s Covering Education Seminar at the Columbia University School of Journalism, talking about the experience of reporting at the Promise Academy middle school. Video by Maura Walz.
Canada on Obama
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009Geoffrey Canada on CNN, weighing in on President Obama’s speech on education:
“This president did something I have been waiting for my entire life, have a Democratic president that absolutely touched the third rail of Democratic politics. He said, our schools are failing. We’re going to hold teachers accountable. We’re going to fund education, but we’re going to expect results. And, if you don’t produce results, out you go. This has never happened in a Democratic president before. And I think we’re getting ready for change in America.”
Dispatches audio
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009Audio of my interview with the CBC Radio program “Dispatches” is now posted on the show’s website. Right-click here to download the podcast version (my interview starts at about 30 minutes in, after the story on the cheese bank), or click here and scroll down to listen to the interview alone. The “Dispatches” site summarizes the interview, conducted by host Rick MacInnes-Rae:
What’s the story on this Harlem Children’s Zone that’s captured the imagination of a president?
After all, for the longest time, the corner of 125th and Madison in Harlem was the intersection of poverty and failure.
But these days, for 97 blocks around, you’re in The Zone, a great big social experiment in education and hope.
More than 7,000 kids and their parents are being taught that just because they’re broke or living in public housing, it doesn’t mean they can’t succeed.
The program isn’t just trying to solve problems in education. It’s trying to bust poverty in America, according to journalist Paul Tough.
He’s the author of the new book Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest To Change Harlem And America.
Blog Roundup
Friday, March 6th, 2009On the Flypaper blog, Mike Petrilli comments on Arne Duncan’s recent statements on school vouchers:
“We need to be more ambitious,” Duncan explained. “The goal shouldn’t be to save a handful of children. The goal should be to dramatically change the opportunity structure for entire neighborhoods of kids.”
Wow. On the one hand, that rhetoric is straight out of the Great Society, and in line with the Obama team’s audacious attempt to redefine what’s possible in domestic policymaking. But it’s also a clear reference to Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, which is trying to remake an “entire neighborhood” of kids.
And on The Plank, a New Republic blog, Seyward Darby adds, “It does appear that Harlem Children’s Zone and similar pioneering programs are informing Duncan’s approach to policy.” Darby quotes from the recent Chicago magazine interview with Duncan, in which Duncan promised to undertake and fund a 20-city Harlem Children’s Zone replication project, and concludes:
That’s pretty bold (and encouraging!) talk, particularly in the face of congressional and union opposition to broadening reform efforts that have only been tested on a small scale–like the Harlem Children’s Zone.
Book Cover Archive
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
The Book Cover Archive celebrates the work of Henry Sene Yee, including his artfully designed cover of Whatever It Takes.
A Talk in Baltimore
Thursday, March 5th, 2009On March 30, I’ll be giving a talk at Johns Hopkins University. This announcement has the details:
The School of Education’s Department of Teacher Preparation will sponsor a talk by author Paul Tough, one of America’s foremost writers on poverty, education, and the achievement gap, on Monday, March 30, at 7 p.m.
Marc Steiner, president of the Center for Emerging Media and host of a talk show on WEAA, will lead a question-and-answer session following the presentation.
Philadelphia Forum
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
Attention Philadelphians: Next Monday, March 9, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion about Whatever It Takes sponsored by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The event will be hosted by Hallam Hurt, a neonatologist at CHOP, and will include remarks from Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist whose research appears in the second chapter of the book. Check out the flyer above for more details.