Posts Tagged ‘Geoffrey Canada’
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
In the Palm Beach Post, an editorial urging civic leaders to create a Promise Neighborhood in West Palm Beach:
The Obama administration wants to help 20 cities adopt anti-poverty programs modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City. Founder/Director Geoffrey Canada may work with programs in four communities, including one in Florida.
For two years, City Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell has laid the groundwork for that community to be West Palm Beach. Last week, she unveiled the West Palm Beach Family Zone, a nonprofit corporation that has state Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, among its supporters. The kickoff meeting, held at The Palm Beach Post, included Democrats and Republicans, potential donors from Palm Beach and residents of inner-city neighborhoods.
The current approach of independent and at times overlapping programs – a midnight basketball game here, a family counseling session there – has been playing out without success in Palm Beach County’s poorest communities. The Dunbar Village case reveals how low things can go. “We know what works,” Commissioner Mitchell said. “We have seen what works. Anything short of that is unacceptable.”
Tags: Florida, Geoffrey Canada, newspapers, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods
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Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Geoffrey Canada was Stephen Colbert’s guest on the Colbert Report on Monday, talking about reverse racism and President Obama’s recent speech to the NAACP Centennial.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, Obama, TV, video
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Friday, July 17th, 2009
Geoffrey Canada and I will both be speaking in Springfield, Mass., this fall. I’ll be there in October, and he’ll be there in November. According to an article in the Springfield Republican:
On Nov. 4, Geoffrey Canada, president and chief executive officer of the Harlem Children’s Zone, is scheduled to speak about its work in helping at-risk youth through a comprehensive approach to education and poverty eradication. Canada has been recognized by U.S. News and World Report as one of “America’s Best Leaders.” …
Prior to Canada’s appearance, the City Thinks program, in conjunction with the forum series, will sponsor a talk on Oct. 15 at American International College by New York Times reporter Paul Tough, author of “Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America.”
Tough’s lecture will focus on urban education from a macro perspective. City Thinks is a community-wide program, offered in conjunction with the Springfield City Library. It is funded by the American International College honors program and the MacDuffie School.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, Massachusetts, speeches
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Friday, July 17th, 2009
Last week, Geoffrey Canada spoke to the Legislative Black Caucus Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. According to a report in the Kansas City Star:
One of the nation’s most dynamic evangelists for urban education came to Kansas City today to describe how impoverished neighborhoods here can replicate the success he’s had in Harlem.
Geoffrey Canada, founder and director of the nationally recognized Harlem Children’s Zone, told a packed audience in a downtown Marriott ballroom that America has to stop turning its back on children in poor communities.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, Missouri, speeches
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Saturday, July 4th, 2009
- Geoffrey Canada visits the White House.
- Wicked Local Arlington does a stream-of-consciousness transcription of my talk (and a panel discussion) at the MassINC event in Boston.
- PostBourgie, an online “running, semi-orderly conversation about class and politics and media and gender and whatever else we can think of,” chooses Whatever It Takes as its Book of the Month.
- And a professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania reviews Whatever It Takes from the homeschooling perspective.
Tags: blogs, Boston, Geoffrey Canada, Obama, reviews
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Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
More impact from Geoffrey Canada’s recent speech in Minneapolis: The Twin Cities Daily Planet reports that on Saturday, a coalition of local groups announced the launch of the Northside Achievement Zone, inspired by the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone.
The Daily Planet article also points out some differences between the HCZ and the NAZ:
The Harlem Children’s Zone built new programs, beginning with its Baby College™ for parents, all-day intensive preschool, charter schools, and much more. The Harlem Children’s Zone also spent nearly $40 million on its programs in 2006, according to its federal Form 990 return. So far, NAZ’s plans are more directed toward coordinating and communicating about already-existing programs offered by organizations already in the area, rather than on new resources or programs.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, Minnesota, Promise Neighborhoods
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Friday, May 29th, 2009
On Wednesday, Geoffrey Canada spoke to a crowd of 1,000 in Minneapolis about his work in Harlem. MinnPost.com quoted Canada’s speech:
“This is the floor — not the ceiling — of what American kids should get,” Canada said. “Our concept is of a seamless web of supports around young people that goes with them throughout their developmental stages.
“What people mostly have done is create great early-childhood programs, and they don’t do anything after. Or a great after-school program for elementary schools and then they go to lousy middle schools and there’s nothing in the high schools. You’ve got to connect these supports so you can leverage one investment into the next investment. … It takes time. It’s not going to happen in a year or two.”
And Joe Nathan, the director of the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota, asks:
What drew a sustained standing ovation from more 1,000 Minnesotans last week? It was the remarkable efforts of Geoffrey Canada in the Harlem section of New York – and his skilled combination of research-based ideas for improving public education.
Canada has achieved considerable success in Harlem by using suggestions from both major philosophies about ways to significantly improve public education.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, Minnesota
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Sunday, May 17th, 2009
In her commencement address yesterday at the University of California in Merced, Michelle Obama praised the work of Geoffrey Canada:
[O]ne of my heroes, Geoffrey Canada, grew up in the South Bronx. After graduating from Bowdoin and getting his masters at Harvard, he returned to New York City and used his education to ensure that the next generation would have a chance at the same opportunity. Geoffrey’s Harlem Children’s Zone is a nationally recognized program that covers 100 blocks and reaches nearly 10,000 children with a variety of social services to ensure that all kids are prepared to get a good education.
And in an effort to invest in and encourage the future Wendy Kopps, Van Joneses and Geoffrey Canadas, the Obama administration recently launched the Office of Social Innovation at the White House. The President has asked Congress to provide $50 million in seed capital to fund great ideas like the ones I just described. The Office is going to identify the most promising, results-oriented non-profit programs and expand their reach throughout the country.
Tags: California, Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, Obama
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Thursday, May 7th, 2009
In Friday’s New York Times, an op-ed column by David Brooks on the Harlem Children’s Zone and on a new study of the Zone by Harvard economist Roland Fryer:
Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone. They compared students in these schools to students in New York City as a whole and to comparable students who entered the lottery to get into the Harlem Children’s Zone schools, but weren’t selected.
They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. …
To understand the culture in these schools, I’d recommend “Whatever It Takes,” a gripping account of Harlem Children’s Zone by my Times colleague Paul Tough, and “Sweating the Small Stuff,” a superb survey of these sorts of schools by David Whitman.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, newspapers, NYT, Obama, Roland Fryer
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Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
Geoff Canada speaks to ABC News reporter Teddy Davis about the Obama administration’s plans to create Promise Neighborhoods, based on the Harlem Children’s Zone:
An Education Department official working on Promise Neighborhoods for Obama has told me that the federal government will begin taking grant applications in 2010 with the goal of giving out implementation grants in 2011. What should the Obama administration look for in someone who wants to start a Promise Neighborhood?
“There are a couple principles that we think are very important. The first is that the entity that applies ought to have some demonstrated capacity to do a very complex kind of planning. The second is that there has to be the ability to raise private dollars over a sustained period of time because in the end you are doing something that is going to take years to really deliver the kind of results that I think the president wants and you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the capacity to continue to support the federal dollars. The third thing is that the programs have to be committed to data and evaluation. Fourth, there has to be a really committed board or management structure to ensure that the dollars are appropriated and accounted for accurately.”
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods, TV
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