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 Moving
On Up
Nancy Salvato
June 28, 2004 |
Today I read an article by Paul Tough
entitled The Harlem Project. Mr. Tough enlightened me about a man, Geoffrey
Canada, and his plan for achieving educational excellence in the Harlem
Children’s Zone.
Geoffrey Canada came up with the idea for the Harlem Children's Zone in the
mid 90's when he was faced with the problem of large numbers of kids being
waitlisted for Rheedlen Centers’ childcare and education programs. It
occurred to him that, "if all he was doing was picking some kids to save and
letting the rest fail, what was the point?”[1] A better goal would be if he
could come up with a way to make it possible for large numbers of poor,
especially poor black, kids to achieve good reading scores, good grades and
good graduation rates regardless of their intelligence, motivation, or
parenting. I kept reading because it sounded a lot like the philosophy
encompassed in No Child Left Behind.
The result of his epiphany is a project to help the disadvantaged succeed in
school which incorporates both liberal and conservative approaches to
solving education problems. He utilizes the traditional liberal approach of
funding underfinanced public schools, day-care centers, and after-school
programs to help out those segments of the population making inadequate
income to make ends meet. He also addresses the problems that conservatives
see as linked to culture and behavior, such as: inadequate parenting, high
out of wedlock birth rates, and cultural disadvantages present in the homes
of ghetto families. This bipartisan approach stems from his belief that
today’s educational challenges are a combination of both sets of concerns:
the economy works against poor people no matter how motivated and poor
parents need to do a better job child rearing.
Canada's program blankets an entire neighborhood with a combination of
educational, social and medical services which begin at birth for each child
born in the 60 block radius that makes up the "zone” and then follows each
child to college. His program assumes that each child will do better if all
the children around him are doing better. In essence, he is elevating the
circumstances of all the zone’s children. He doesn’t subscribe to the belief
that better wages, a national jobs program, or bigger income tax credits are
the only way to solve the problem of poverty. Instead, he puts his faith in
programs which address the children directly.
Canada's educational philosophy is especially interesting because of its
emphasis on accountability and testing. This idea is the basis of No Child
Left Behind and recognizes that if students do poorly on standardized tests,
schools should lose their financing and teachers should lose their jobs.
Canada’s goal is ''to be able to say that thousands of poor children can
learn at high levels and perform at rates that are the same as middle-class
children if they are given the opportunity to do so.”[2] He makes sure that
the most disadvantaged kids in his program are included in the testing to
prove that his methodology is working.
There are too many programs around that don’t work. Ironically, "the Heinz
Endowments abandoned as a failure a $59 million, five-year program to
provide early-childhood care and education for 7,600 low-income children in
and around Pittsburgh. The program's costs soared, and four years in, when
Heinz pulled the plug, only 680 children were being served.”[3]
There is little conclusive evidence about which programs do work. A
successful outcome of Canada's project would enable policy makers who want
to address the problems of poverty to promote a program that has been
proven. The services provided in his program only cost about $1,400 a year
per student, on top of existing public-school funds.
Canada has branched into establishing charter schools. This is because after
pouring more and more resources into funding in class tutors and after
school reading programs, the scores in Harlem's public schools had barely
budged. He now sees that there is a systemic problem which can’t be solved
by the supplementary services he offered.
However, Canada has opposition for his charter-school plan from the
teachers' union and the educational establishment. Perhaps this is because
the charter schools will use nonunion teachers who will be paid more than
public-school teachers. They will also work longer days and 12 month school
years. Charter schools would also provide him authority to fire ineffective
teachers.
Interestingly, Canada is making the guarantee that NCLB wants to exact from
the public schools; that each child will succeed. There will be no excuses
made for failure. There is also an expectation that the parents will work
with the school. But there is one catch. There is still a waiting list. The
kids who don’t get into the charter schools always have the
union/educational establishment controlled public schools to fall back on.
But the families of the kids whose names are drawn to attend them understand
that they have won the lottery and that they are "moving on up”.
[1,2,3] The Harlem Project
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/magazine/20HARLEM.html?pagewanted=print&position
Nancy Salvato is an educator in Illinois and an independent
contractor for Prism Educational Consulting.
Click here for her complete bio.
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