Archive for April, 2010
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
In the current issue of Good Magazine, there’s an article about the Promise Neighborhood initiative, including this point/counterpoint on the importance of leadership:
Taking something that works in one place and transplanting it to another is made more complicated when the original has a charismatic, strong leader, with raging success at bringing in philanthropic and corporate donations, and a board of trustees representing some of the most influential businessmen and financiers in the country. “One of the real challenges for Promise Neighborhoods is that we can’t clone Geoffrey Canada,” said Michael Rebell, a professor of law and education at Teachers College.
But Paul Tough, the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, who has written about Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone since 2004, has a different perspective. “It does not require a cult of personality,” he says. “It does not require a charismatic leader.” Tough envisions the model looking “different in different cities. In some it might be based mostly in the local government; in others it might be built around a non-profit or a church.”
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, magazines, Promise Neighborhoods
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Sunday, April 25th, 2010
From this morning’s Times-Union, a story about the first graduating class of the Baby Institute, a new program run by the Albany Family Education Alliance and modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Baby College:
The mothers and fathers who received their diplomas at Giffen Elementary School in the city’s South End ran the gamut of race, age and education. They were all recruited from agencies that serve the poorest neighborhoods of the city. Some mothers have one or two children, others recently gave birth, and others are pregnant with their first child.
The idea is to provide parents “with the tools and techniques to become the first teachers of their children,” said Common Council member Barbara Smith, an alliance member who helped spearhead the baby program. She attended every session at the school, which ran from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. The participants had to have children no older than 3.
Tags: Baby College, HCZ, New York state, newspapers
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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
I’ll be giving a number of speeches over the next month, including talks at:
- a conference on a “multicultural/multiracial future” this Sunday at my church: Middle Collegiate Church, in New York City
- a fundraising luncheon for Mainspring Schools in Austin on April 29.
- education conferences organized by my publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, next month in Atlanta and New Orleans.
- an event on May 16 at the Holton Career and Resource Center in Durham, N.C., organized by the East Durham Children’s Initiative.
- a school-readiness symposium in Baltimore on May 18, organized by Ready at Five.
Tags: Baltimore, Georgia, New Orleans, New York City, North Carolina, speeches, Texas
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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
According to a report in the Guardian, the Harlem Children’s Zone has become an issue in the British election, with both the Conservative and Labour candidate claiming a connection:
Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, helped inform the Tories’ education policy. Canada has, according to the Tories, eradicated the educational attainment gap between ethnic groups so that all but a handful of school leavers go to college. Labour has also turned to Harlem for its idea of one-to-one tuition. But the Conservatives say that they embody the Harlem ideas because they will allow parents and groups to set up schools along the lines of US charter schools.
Tags: Britain, HCZ, newspapers
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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
- The book is now available as an audiobook from Audible.com, read by an actor named Ax Norman. It’s 10 hours and 22 minutes long. All for just $7.49!
- Sheena Wright, president and CEO of Abyssinian Development Corporation, told USA Today that “Whatever It Takes” was the last book she gave as a gift, saying, “I wanted people to understand the context for Abyssinian Development Corp.’s work in education and the history of education as a social justice movement. It deftly captures the philosophy of education embraced in a community like Harlem.”
- Plus blog posts on the book from a student at Brigham Young University and a student training to become a teacher near Washington, D.C. (writing for a web site co-founded by Dick Cheney’s former chief policy adviser!).
Tags: audiobooks, blogs, newspapers, Utah
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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
From the Savannah Morning News, a report on Mayor Otis Johnson’s effort to construct a “cradle-to-college” youth program in Savannah:
The effort, lead by Youth Futures and the mayor, has been the subject of planning sessions by local groups and agency leaders for a year. The unnamed local program, patterned after the successful Harlem Children’s Zone, has identified the local Rotary clubs for the first piece of 6 months to kindergarten and is seeking community help to complete the process.
Planners have pledged to pursue the effort locally with or without the Promise Neighborhood designation.
“We are not trying to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone here in Savannah, only the success,’’ Chisolm said.
Tags: Georgia, HCZ, newspapers, Promise Neighborhoods
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Saturday, April 10th, 2010
From Early Ed Watch, the early-education-policy blog run by the New America Foundation, an interesting analysis of the Obama Administration’s Promise Neighborhood initiative:
Though the FY11 budget request specifies that Promise Neighborhoods should serve kids from birth to college, it remains to be seen how much emphasis each Promise Neighborhood will put on early childhood programs, such as those like Baby College and Harlem Gems. If and when Promise Neighborhoods are eventually built, we will be keeping a close eye on whether early childhood maintains its central role in this “birth to 18” pipeline.
Tags: blogs, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods
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Sunday, April 4th, 2010
From the Chicago Defender, news of an ambitious effort to bring Promise Neighborhood funding to the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood. The Woodlawn Children’s Promise Zone is a collaboration between Bishop Arthur Brazier [above] and Prof. Charles Payne and others at the University of Chicago. As the paper reports:
More than one year ago, the pastor emeritus of Apostolic Church of God, Bishop Arthur Brazier began working with schools in his area and quickly became concerned with how little the community was doing to improve the academic standards in the schools.
He learned about the Harlem Children’s Zone and paid a visit to the organization that focuses on the three academic levels of a child’s life — Baby College, Promise Academy and College Success Office – within a 96-square block area in Harlem, N.Y.
Brazier then drew from HCZ’s model and convened a coalition of community leaders, educators and parents to develop a plan to improve Woodlawn’s 10,000 children’s lives from birth through college years and beyond. The Woodlawn Children’s Promise Zone was born, he said.
Tags: Chicago, newspapers, Promise Neighborhoods
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Sunday, April 4th, 2010
From the Providence Journal, an article about the Providence Children’s Initiative, a group that wants to bring a Promise Neighborhood to the city:
“Providence isn’t Harlem, but we are trying to adopt some of the components” of the larger program to address local needs, said [Family Service program director Swan] Capris. “For example, we’re working with the Providence School Department to implement the program, and we’re targeting neighborhoods where there is a high percentage of people living below the federal poverty level — not just minority students and their families. It’s for anyone who is in the selected neighborhood who is below the poverty level.”
Family Service started working on the initiative a year ago. A committee made up of nonprofit organizations, government agencies and other groups meets weekly, but officials have yet to target a neighborhood for help. “We’re still in the early planning stages,” Capris said.
Tags: newspapers, Promise Neighborhoods, Rhode Island
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Sunday, April 4th, 2010
From the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., a story about efforts to bring a Promise Neighborhood to that city:
The Charleston Promise Neighborhood would include Charleston’s East Side and Neck Area and extend into North Charleston, and its goal is to make that area indistinguishable from the rest of the county by breaking the cycle of poverty and improving education. The roughly 3,000 children who live in the zone and attend Sanders-Clyde, James Simons, Mary Ford and Chicora elementary schools would be the primary beneficiaries of its services and programs, which would begin at birth.
Tags: newspapers, Promise Neighborhoods, South Carolina
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