Yesterday, “Whatever It Takes” received its 1,000th rating on Goodreads. Thanks, Edward Truong!
Goodreads
April 13th, 2011Community Forum in Lame Deer
April 9th, 2011On Monday morning, I’ll be giving a speech and sitting on a panel at a community forum in Lame Deer, a small town in eastern Montana, on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. As a post on Indian Country Today explains:
The author will discuss [Geoffrey] Canada’s creation of a cradle-to-college program for children of Harlem, New York. After his talk, Montana residents will talk about what resources worked for them, and everyone will brainstorm how to create an infrastructure that will support youth of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in their career goals.
The forum is being organized by the Boys and Girls Club of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, which last year became one of 21 community groups nationwide that received a Promise Neighborhood planning grant.
There’s more information in this story from the Billings Gazette, including details on how to RSVP.
Another Prince Donation
April 9th, 2011
This week, Prince, the musician, gave $250,000 to the Eau Claire Promise Zone, a group that is trying to emulate the Harlem Children’s Zone in the Eau Claire neighborhood of Columbia, South Carolina. (Its board includes Geoffrey Canada’s brother Daniel.) Prince’s new donation is in addition to the $1 million that he gave to the Harlem Children’s Zone in February.
It is worth noting that Prince’s total contributions to HCZ-like endeavors now stand at $1.25 million, compared to the $10 million that the federal government has spent on Promise Neighborhoods so far.
If you’re moved to compare the two investments, there are two important metrics to keep in mind. The first is raw dollars, and by that measure, the federal government is clearly ahead, having thus far spent eight times as much as Prince. But if you compare promises to follow-through, the story looks different: President Obama promised in 2007 to spend “a few billion dollars a year” on HCZ replications. Which means Obama’s administration is currently spending about 0.2 percent of what he said was the minimum necessary to make the program work. (“I’ll be honest; it can’t be done on the cheap,” he said in the 2007 speech. “But we will find the money to do this, because we can’t afford not to.”)
Prince didn’t promise anything. Which makes his donations look all the more generous, by contrast.
Georgetown/Chavez talk
March 29th, 2011As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to be giving a talk and speaking on a panel this Thursday at Georgetown University, at an event hosted by Georgetown and the Cesar Chavez Schools. I’ll be talking about character education and academic achievement.
There’s now a bit more information on the talk posted here.
More New Yorker reaction
March 29th, 2011Harvard Magazine has a news brief about my article on Nadine Burke, who attended public-health school at Harvard.
And on Twitter, some supportive words about the article from two writers I respect a great deal: Atul Gawande and Sara Corbett.
Meanwhile, I am tweeting, sporadically, here. Come follow me!
Two blog posts
March 23rd, 2011Two blog posts today that connect my New Yorker article with “Whatever It Takes.” One is from John Thompson, a historian, who writes on Huffington Post:
I am hoping that Paul Tough will be the education writer who frees us to engage in frank discussions of the effects of intense concentrations of generational poverty on schools. In his “Whatever It Takes,” Tough told the story of Geoffrey Canada who “believed that he could find the ideal intervention for each age of a child’s life, and then connect those interventions into an unbroken chain of support.” … Tough has done it again in “The Poverty Clinic,” articulating a theory of everything that starts with the neurochemical imbalances created by childhood trauma.
And on his New Republic blog, Jonathan Chait writes,
“Whatever It Takes” explores the Harlem Children’s Zone, which is an ambitious attempt to remake social services by tying together all the social services — education, medicine, parental training, prenatal care. The thesis, in other words, is that all these social ailments are related to each other, and the correct approach of social policy is to address them in tandem. His New Yorker story essentially traces this thesis back to bio-chemical roots, but Tough is really capturing some cutting-edge concepts in social science. The story is also a gripping read, so don’t miss it.
New Yorker story (and radio interview)
March 22nd, 2011Last week I had a story in the New Yorker about Nadine Burke, a pediatrician in San Francisco, and the work she is doing to develop a clinical treatment protocol from the emerging research about childhood trauma and its longterm effects. My reporting about Dr. Burke will become part of my new book, “The Success Equation,” which Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish next year.
The New Yorker story got me booked on “RadioWest,” an hourlong public-affairs show on KUER in Salt Lake City. The host, Doug Fabrizio, asked some great questions, as did the many callers, from Utah and around the country (the show is also broadcast nationwide on Sirius XM). There’s now audio of the whole hour available here.
The article also played a part in this fascinating blog post from Whet Moser, on Chicagomag.com, which manages to tie together my reporting on Dr. Burke with Alex Kotlowitz’s great reporting in the New York Times Magazine on the Ceasefire initiative in Chicago, as well as a handful of other news reports and scientific studies. It’s well worth reading to get some broader context on the question of childhood trauma.
The News from Kenilworth-Parkside
March 22nd, 2011
There was news about the D.C. Promise Neighborhood initiative in two Washington newspapers last week. The Washington City Paper reported on the groundbreaking for a new early-childhood center in the Kenilworth-Parkside neighborhood in D.C.’s Ward 7, adding,
the Educare building, as it’s known, is much more than a school. It’s also the first piece of a federally-funded plan to replicate the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Manhattan, using a model of integrated educational and social services to transform a kid’s whole environment, not just the time they spend in a classroom.
The Washington Post added that the effort was
spearheaded by Irasema Salcido, the charismatic educator who founded the Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy in the community, but its unusual strength lies in the 70 nonprofits, businesses, churches, foundations and resident associations that have signed on. In a refreshing partnership, two traditional public schools, Kenilworth and Neval Thomas elementary schools, have joined the coalition with their charter neighbor.
Next week, I’ll be visiting the Cesar Chavez schools and giving a speech at Georgetown University about character development and student achievement — and how those topics relate to the Promise Neighborhood initiative.
Georgetown/Chavez talk
February 20th, 2011On March 31, I’ll be giving a keynote address as part of an event about “Character Development and Student Achievement” sponsored by Georgetown University and the Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy. (Georgetown and Chavez are working together to create a Promise Neighborhood in D.C.’s Ward 7.) There will be a panel discussion following my talk, with Kaya Henderson, the interim chancellor of the D.C. public schools; Jim Shelton, the official in charge of the education department’s innovation initiatives; Irasema Salcido, the founder of the Chavez schools; and Tim King, the founder of the Urban Prep charter schools in Chicago.
For more information, contact Norma Barfield with the Chavez Schools, at norma.barfield@chavezschools.org.
Promise Neighborhoods in the 2012 budget
February 20th, 2011Despite the grim prospects for Promise Neighborhood funding in 2011, President Obama’s 2012 budget, which he proposed last week, requests $150 million for 2012, considerably less than the original 2011 request, but considerably more than Congress has actually allocated for 2011. As an blog post from the Chronicle of Philanthropy explains:
Promise Neighborhoods awarded $10 million in planning grants to 21 projects around the country in the 2010 fiscal year. Mr. Obama proposed upping the budget to $210-million in fiscal year 2011, with most of the money paying for grants to help nonprofit groups put their projects into effect. However, Congress has not yet adopted a 2011 budget, so spending has been frozen at 2010 levels. Congress did not fully back his 2011 request: a House subcommittee proposed spending only $60-million and a Senate committee only $20-million.
The request leaves many questions unanswered, including these, from the New America Foundation’s Ed Money Watch blog:
The Department of Education awarded $10 million in planning grants late last year. What is the status of those planning grants? Will the recipients of the planning grants receive this new money as well or will there be a new grant competition? If it will be the same grant recipients, will those grant recipients be ready to start implementing their plans in fiscal year 2012?