On Thursday, February 25, at 3:30 p.m., I’ll be speaking at Loyola University in Chicago, along with a panel of local leaders interested in bringing a Promise Neighborhood to Chicago. RSVPs are recommended. Details are here.
Posts Tagged ‘Chicago’
Speech at Loyola
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010Chicago Promise Neighborhoods
Monday, February 8th, 2010From 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.
An update from Chicago
Sunday, December 27th, 2009In today’s Chicago Tribune, a report on the Harlem Children’s Zone and a round-up of local efforts to replicate the project through the federal government’s Promise Neighborhood initiative:
Leaders in at least three Chicago neighborhoods — Woodlawn, Logan Square and Chicago Lawn — plan to apply [for a Promise Neighborhood grant].
Bishop Arthur Brazier, longtime head of The Woodlawn Organization, is working with University of Chicago officials to craft a plan for the neighborhood. The city’s education and crime woes call for a bold, comprehensive strategy, he said.
“You can’t deal with these problems with a $25,000 untested program here, and a $30,000 program over there,” said Brazier, referring to past efforts in Woodlawn. “We’ve been programmed out, and we still have the same problems. We need a communitywide effort that includes the schools, the police, the hospitals, the politicians, the universities all working together.”
Promise Neighborhood Conference
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009This week, the Harlem Children’s Zone presented Changing the Odds: Learning from the Harlem Children’s Zone Model, a conference attended by 1,400 people from around the country who came to New York in delegations to learn more about the Zone and about Promise Neighborhoods. Several officials in the Obama administration spoke at the conference, providing new details about the Promise Neighborhood initiative, including Arne Duncan, the education secretary; Melody Barnes, the director of the president’s Domestic Policy Council; Adolfo Carrion, the special assistant to the president for urban affairs; Heather Higginbottom, the deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council; and Jim Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary of education for innovation and improvement.
In anticipation of the conference, there was local newspaper coverage in San Bernadino, whose conference delegation included Mayor Pat Morris; in Chicago, which sent delegations from three different neighborhoods; in Springfield, Mass., where Geoffrey Canada spoke last week (and I spoke three weeks ago); and in Columbia, South Carolina, where a local group is working on a Zone in the Eau Claire neighborhood.
In Baltimore, a local paper called the Urbanite had a long, detailed article about the various plans in that city for Zone replication projects:
There are at least four Promise Neighborhood proposals in the works: The mayor’s office has been working on one in Park Heights; the nonprofit Living Classrooms is involved with another; and the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins are each pushing proposals as well.
Promise Neighborhood news
Thursday, October 1st, 2009As preparations continue for the Harlem Children Zone’s November conference on replicating the HCZ model, news from New York City and Chicago on plans to apply for President Obama’s proposed Promise Neighborhood program.
According to NY1, Mayor Bloomberg, speaking at a charter-school anniversary in Harlem, announced that his administration is “pushing to use part of President Barack Obama’s ‘Promise Neighborhoods’ funds for the creation of two new Children’s Zones, one in Brooklyn and one in the South Bronx.”
Meanwhile, Catalyst Notebook, a Chicago schools blog, reports that
Three Chicago neighborhoods are taking the first steps toward potential replication of the Harlem Children’s Zone, the highly-praised program that provides education and social support to poor children and families in Central Harlem.
Representatives from social service agencies in Chicago Lawn, Logan Square and Woodlawn will travel to New York City in the coming weeks to attend a multi-day conference and a ‘practitioner’s institute’ for organizations that are interested in launching Promise Neighborhoods, an initiative of the Obama Administration modeled on the Children’s Zone.
Arne Duncan
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009In a new interview in Chicago magazine, Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s secretary of education, takes a stand for replicating the Harlem Children’s Zone:
Q: Have you read Whatever It Takes, the new book about Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone? I bring it up because that project, which tries to catch kids from birth and guide them all the way to college, suggests that it may be necessary in certain communities for the neighborhood school to take on functions that lie traditionally in the realm of social services.
A: Geoff Canada’s a good, good friend of mine. I’m actually meeting with him Monday.Q: Obviously you’re familiar with what he’s doing.
A: Yes. I’m going to create 20 Harlem Children’s Zones around the country. I am.Q: Really? Do you think you’ll face opposition to the federal role expanding in that way?
A: I don’t care. I’m going to fund it.
Signing books in Chicago
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
Signing copies of Whatever It Takes in Chicago in January, after speaking at the Chicago School Policy Luncheon.
Chicago School Policy Luncheon
Thursday, January 15th, 2009Next Wednesday, January 21, I’ll be speaking at a Chicago Schools Policy Luncheon at the Union League Club of Chicago. The web site of one of the sponsors describes the event as:
The third in a three-part series sponsored by Business and Professional People for the Public Interest and Catalyst Chicago, with the Consortium on Chicago School Research. The series title is “Is Great Teaching Enough: The impact of school-community connections on the achievement gap.” Paul Tough, author of “Whatever It Takes” on the Harlem Children’s Zone; Nancy Aardema, Logan Square Neighborhood Association; and Chris Brown, Local Initiatives Support Coalition, will talk about “What It Takes” to build community.
Chicago Public Radio
Thursday, November 6th, 2008Here’s an interview I did last month with Julia McEvoy of Chicago Public Radio, broadcast today on WBEZ’s morning show, “Eight Forty-Eight.” As their web site puts it:
Many Chicago area educators are counting on the president-elect to make schools a top priority in the year ahead. One plan that Barack Obama cites as a model for the rest of the country, is the Harlem Children’s Zone. There, a man named Geoffrey Canada believes that to successfully educate students he must take a holistic approach focusing on the community where they live.
Author Paul Tough has just written a book called Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America. Tough sat down with Chicago Public Radio’s education desk editor Julia McEvoy to talk about what Chicago can learn from the Harlem experiment.
Chicago event
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Signing a book for a young reader, Perspectives/IIT Math & Science Academy, Chicago, October 22, 2008.