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Posted: Thursday, January 7, 2010 6:45 am
Jehron Bryant watches at chess expert Garry Kasparov at a Harlem Children's Zone event.
Harlem Children’s Zone
Although saving children, one at a time, may be a noble goal, Geoffrey Canada believes in casting a wider net.
For a dozen years, the visionary educator and architect of the Harlem Children's Zone has been developing a system of family social support and educational innovations to show how it's possible to dramatically change the trajectory of an entire generation of poor and minority children in a 97-square-block area of New York City.
In his 2008 book about Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone, "Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America," author Paul Tough quotes Canada saying, "For me, the big question in America is: Are we going to try to make America a true meritocracy? Or will we forever have a class of people who essentially won't be able to compete, because the game is fixed against them?"
On Jan. 12, Canada will be in Madison as the keynote speaker for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's annual Wisconsin Promise Conference at Monona Terrace Convention Center.
Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone have been the subject of numerous national news stories in print, on radio and on television. His remarkable accomplishments in Harlem - where third-graders are scoring 100 percent at or above grade level on state-administered math tests and 94 percent at or above grade level in reading - are drawing enthusiastic attention from business leaders, educators and policymakers across the country, including Wisconsin.
Canada readily admits it hasn't been easy. His ambitious project that begins working with poor kids and their parents virtually from infancy has taken some wrong turns along the way, creating dustups with teachers and administrators who think he pushes too hard or overemphasizes test scores.
In fact, as Tough's book points out, even the Harlem Children's Zone had trouble signficantly changing the culture among middle schoolers who entered Canada's Promise Academy as sixth-graders with fixed ideas about how hard they'd be able or willing to work. But his vast experiment in what combination of factors is necessary to actually change the lives of poor children has caught the attention of everyone from President Barack Obama to school officials in virtually every urban district with a sizable achievement gap between white and minority students.
Locally, those concerned with the dismal statistics coming out of Milwaukee's public schools have an especially keen interest in Canada's approach. A recent national test that sampled the achievement levels of schoolchildren in 17 urban areas in America showed that Milwaukee ranked near the bottom of the pack on math scores for fourth-graders; in fact, students in just four other U.S. cities did worse than in Milwaukee. Among eighth-graders, only students in Detroit did worse. Milwaukee schools have an enormous achievement gap between black and white students, and graduation rates lag 20 points behind the state as a whole. Nearly 80 percent of the city's public school students are poor.
"We invited Geoffrey Canada to speak here about a year ago because we were very interested in his work in Harlem and what lessons he might have for us in Wisconsin and, particularly, for Milwaukee," says John Johnson, a spokesman for the Department of Public Instruction, in a recent interview.
Gubernatorial candidate and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is an enthusiastic Geoffrey Canada fan and is intrigued by the notion of developing children's zones in Milwaukee.
"I saw the New York Times Magazine story about the Harlem Children's Zone and I read Paul Tough's book," he says in a phone interview. "I was very interested in how these ideas could be applied to Milwaukee."
Barrett notes that last year, he and Gov. Jim Doyle, along with state Superintendent Tony Evers, established a Milwaukee Public Schools Innovation and Improvement Advisory Council to provide oversight, advice and support for Milwaukee Public Schools.
That committee recently completed a report, analyzing Milwaukee's readiness to compete for President Barack Obama's national school reform initiative, Race to the Top, which pledges more than $4 billion to schools ready to take on reform efforts.
The committee's recommendations include establishing children's zones in Milwaukee, similar to those Canada developed in Harlem.
The report's executive summary calls for initially establishing these zones in Milwaukee neighborhoods where there are struggling schools, and eventually establishing a citywide Milwaukee Children's Zone. These zones would provide comprehensive, systemic help for children and their families in the areas of academics, housing, nutrition, health care and other key social supports.
Barrett says Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently told him he believes that mayoral control of the Milwaukee Public Schools could be helpful in developing a children's zone system there.
"He said specifically that the biggest benefit in mayoral control is the ability to align and coordinate the various services necessary to help a large number of kids," Barrett notes. "That would include things like public housing, public safety, health and medical services, and, of course, education."
Whether Barrett, or the next mayor of Milwaukee, will be given that kind of control is uncertain. Turning over responsibility for Milwaukee's schools to the mayor's office is definitely on the wish list for the Race to the Top initiative coming out of the governor's office, but there's been little enthusiasm from the Legislature and active resistance from some Milwaukee School Board members, some Milwaukee legislators, other local officials and the teachers union.
How to pay for a children's zone program in Milwaukee is also likely to be an issue.
In Harlem, Canada has had both public and private backing for his efforts, including large-scale funding from philanthropists and business backers with deep pockets.
There are no estimates so far of what it would cost to replicate Canada's model in Milwaukee, but Barrett cautions that no matter how promising the children's zones may be, "adequate, sustainable funding will be key." Milwaukee schools already get more than $500 million in state aid every year. Barrett also notes that if children's zones prove successful in Milwaukee, there might be a place for them in other urban Wisconsin districts where there are significant achievement gaps, including Madison, Racine and Beloit.
There's no doubt that the failures of the state's largest school district, as well as the general malaise of Milwaukee's economy, have a chilling effect on the economic welfare of the entire state. Improving the grim status quo is needed, many believe, to improve future economic prospects for Wisconsin. But for people like Canada, it's also a moral issue. Whether those impulses, both lofty and practical, will be sufficient to overcome natural resistance to an ambitious new program remains to be seen.
Canada's approach has been bold, and has charted new territory. From the beginning, his goal has been to develop a programatic, standardized approach to helping children succeed that can be broadly applied and replicated anywhere in America where a culture of poverty holds children back.
"We're not interested in saving a hundred kids. Even 300 kids," Canada explained in Paul Tough's book. "Even a thousand kids to me is not going to do it. We want to be able to talk about how you save kids by the tens of thousands, because that's how we're losing them. We're losing kids by the tens of thousands."
What Canada has done in Harlem, and what other cities, including Milwaukee, are contemplating doing with their own children's zones, is a large-scale effort that literally changes the way poor children grow up.
In Harlem, Canada's effort has focused on changing the way families raise their children - more emphasis on conversation between children and adults and less on physical punishment, for instance. There's a wide range of services, from parenting advice at Baby College, to help with housing or substance abuse or domestic violence.
In the Children's Zone, Canada has transformed the way schools operate by lengthening the school day and school year so students don't fall behind at home, or during the summer. In addition, there is an insistence on highly motivated, effective teachers and administrators, plus strict accountability when it comes to student learning and test performance.
According to Canada, it's possible to reshape the very nature of impoverished neighborhoods when there's an expectation for excellence in education, beginning with preschool and continuing every step of the way. By making a commitment to getting all kids prepared for college or post-high school training, the future holds good jobs, not unemployment or a revolving door between risky behavior and prison.
Real change is only possible, Canada says, when all students, not just a few lucky exceptions, are given the tools to excel. Although he acknowledges that students benefit enormously from a good support system at home, he also believes an effective educational system can be flexible and comprehensive enough to compensate for a poor home life.
Canada sometimes describes his system as a "conveyor belt," beginning in infancy and continuing through preschool, elementary, middle and high school. The promise he has made to parents and students in Harlem is that the conveyor doesn't stop until their young people are competing successfully against their middle-class peers, prepared for college or other post-graduate successes.
"There's just no way that in good conscience we can allow poverty to remain the dividing line between success and failure in this country, where if you're born poor in a community like this one, you stay poor," Canada told Tough. "We have to even that out. We have to give these kids a chance."
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Posted in Local_schools on Thursday, January 7, 2010 6:45 am Updated: 3:23 pm. Geoffrey Canada, Harlem
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