Posts Tagged ‘blogs’
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
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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
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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
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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
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Friday, December 18th, 2009
I left my editor’s job at the New York Times last week in order to write full-time and start working on a new book. The New York Observer wrote about my departure here and here, Alexander Russo mentioned it here, and there was some additional blog coverage here and here.
Tags: blogs, newspapers, NYT
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Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Readers discussed Whatever It Takes (and fired questions at me) this afternoon as part of the Firedoglake Book Salon. Here’s the transcript.
Tags: blogs, Q&As, websites
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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
This Saturday, November 14, at 5 p.m. Eastern time, I’ll be answering questions from readers of Firedoglake, which describes itself as a “leading progressive blog,” as part of the site’s regular book salon. Please come by and ask questions!
Tags: blogs, Q&As, websites
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Friday, October 2nd, 2009
“Whatever It Takes” is a staff pick at the Virginia Beach Public Library, and it got a nice review on the library’s VBPL Recommends blog:
Paul Tough capably chronicles some of the stories of those who serve and are served by the HCZ. In introducing the reader to parents, staff workers and children, he demonstrates that reality is as powerful as fiction. When we meet teen parents like Victor and Cheryl (and their baby Victor, Jr.) we discover gripping drama, nail-biting suspense, engaging warmth, and sobering tragedy as the family attends Baby College, HCZ’s enormously popular and carefully designed entrance program.
Good nonfiction provides a flexible read. Whatever It Takes delivers a rewarding experience, whether it is read as a biography of a present-day educational crusader, a treatise on the clash between traditional and charter school models for public education, a blueprint for effective early learning programs, or a touching account of human challenge and triumph in urban America.
Tags: blogs, librarians, reviews, Virginia
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Monday, September 28th, 2009
Two magazine articles I wrote were recently published. The first, in GQ, is about Girl Talk, a DJ, and it doesn’t have much to do with “Whatever It Takes.” The second, in the New York Times Magazine, is about Tools of the Mind, and it’s somewhat more related. You can read the article here, and you can read blog posts about it here, here, here, here, here and here.
Tags: blogs, magazines, NYT
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