Posts Tagged ‘blogs’
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
On September 22, I’ll be giving a lunchtime speech in Portland, Oregon, at an event organized by the Oregon Community Foundation. Details, including how to order tickets, are here. In a blog post on the foundation’s website, Mary Louise McClintock, the foundation’s early-childhood program director, gives some background:
Geoffrey Canada has developed a system of pre-birth-to-college support in Harlem. Author Paul Tough spent five years observing Canada’s process and meeting with the administrators, teachers and students who make up the Harlem Children’s Zone’s “Promise Neighborhood.” The story of how this has played out is astonishing and Tough’s book is a page-turner. Impressed with Geoff Canada’s approach and results so far, the Obama Administration has proposed funding for Promise Neighborhood replication sites around the country.
In my years in the early childhood field, I have seen increased recognition — around the state and in the nation — of the critical role that early childhood development plays in the health and well-being of the child, the adult they become and society as a whole. The Harlem Children’s Zone appears to be one more example of how investments in our youngest children and their families can pay off in later school success.
Tags: blogs, Oregon, speeches
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Two new reviews of “Whatever It Takes,” one from a blog that promotes health in Harlem, the other from an education consultant, who calls the book “a perfect summer read for any educator.”
Tags: blogs, reviews
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
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
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
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
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
Recent blog posts on “Whatever It Takes” from a reference librarian in Perrysburg, Ohio; a student at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock; a Microsoft executive in Seattle; and an early-childhood specialist in Chicago, who posted her reflections on the panel discussion I was a part of at Loyola University Law School in February:
I also think that there are many, many people in non-profits who are tired of business-as-usual, tired of feeling like their work is a drop in the ocean, tired of talking themselves into believing in what they do every day. Some of those people must have been in the audience that night, looking for a thicker strand of hope to pull on.
From what I’ve read, hope is much of what Geoffrey Canada’s concept is riding on now: hope with an almost desperate promise of metrics, if we could all be patient for a while. And many of us are willing to be patient, because we believe as we have believed for years, that he’s making it happen – he’s doing it. He’s doing what we thought should be done all along: comprehensive services, for all stages of childhood, supportive of the family and community as well as the child. This is the silent promise we’ve been imagining, and Canada actually managed to speak the promise out loud.
Tags: Arkansas, blogs, Chicago, Ohio, panels, Seattle, universities
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
From Catalyst Chicago’s Notebook blog, an interesting post about three separate coalitions in the city that may be applying for a Promise Neighborhood planning grant:
Three Chicago neighborhoods – Woodlawn, Logan Square, and Chicago Lawn – are competing for a slice of one President Barack Obama’s more ambitious education-related initiatives: Replication of the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 spots around the country. …
Local organizers know that their budgets won’t be as large as the Harlem Zone’s, which has a $68 million-per-year price tag. Still, their plans are ambitious. The groups are beginning to focus in on specific areas, such as early education, parent involvement and creating a climate for success in the neighborhood’s schools.
Tags: blogs, Chicago, Promise Neighborhoods
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
There is an enlightening new post on the Building Neighborhoods blog, run by United Neighborhood Centers of America, answering (and speculating on) some of the questions left unanswered by the Promise Neighborhood request in President Obama’s new budget:
It is possible that as many as 20 neighborhoods will receive planning grants, but only a fraction of them will be chosen to advance to the implementation phase based on the quality of their plans.
If we assume around 5 neighborhoods receive implementation money in the first year, what does that tell us? If each of these neighborhoods comes up with a 50% local match, that’s $80 million per neighborhood over five years. Assuming a slow ramp-up, that could take you to a program maybe half of HCZ’s size in a few years time — possibly larger with more local money thrown in the pot.
Tags: blogs, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
Monday, January 18th, 2010
From Prevention Action, a British online news publication on children’s health and development, reflections on a recent report from Child Trends on the prospects for Promise Neighborhoods and, specifically, the difficulty of finding the right data to use as benchmarks for success:
Child Trends acknowledges Harlem’s achievement. … The question is whether a neighborhood in Detroit, Denver or Chicago will ever be able to compare its progress to Harlem’s using similar criteria, and whether the experience of all four can be meaningfully combined – or contrasted with the experience of non-Promise neighborhoods who may or not be running initiatives of their own.
Tags: blogs, Promise Neighborhoods, reports
Posted in Book News | No Comments »
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
In the Albany Times-Union, a report on the project there to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone:
A year ago, Common Councilwoman Barbara Smith was daydreaming about a whole community working to give some of its poorest children a chance at college and a better life. She was reading about the Harlem Children’s Zone, the nationally celebrated initiative to reach every child in a 97-block section of New York City and provide them and their families with social, health and educational services from the early years all the way through college.
Now, Smith and a group of parents, educators and concerned citizens, are quickly moving forward with a similar vision for students in the city of Albany. The Children’s Zone has come to Albany at lightning speed, moving from a concept to classroom-level implementation in less than a year.
And in the Hechinger Institute’s “EarlyStories” blog, some thoughts on the Albany news, on Baby College, and on “Whatever It Takes.”
Tags: Baby College, blogs, HCZ, New York state, newspapers, Promise Neighborhoods
Posted in Book News | No Comments »