[Welcome Paul Tough, and Host Andrea Batista Schlesinger - bev]
“Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s quest to change Harlem and America” is an important book. I think so not because his favorable portrait of the Harlem’s Children Zone provides the answers, but because it inspires so many questions: about the nature of urban poverty, the capacity and means by which public institutions can break cycles of systemic inequality, and how a community can transform. Tough doesn’t answer all of these questions—and some he leaves uninvestigated, such as the tension between learning and performing well on exams—but his moving account of Geoffrey Canada’s project to change the lives of the children of Harlem should be read by anyone who wants to think critically about how poverty, culture and education intersect.
Tough chronicles Canada’s attempts to change his traditional social service agency that can help only a few kids a time through “superheroic” efforts into one that would look comprehensively at the problem of poverty in Harlem and try to rewrite the script. The Harlem’s Children Zone would create a conveyer belt that takes advantage of the best data out there. Instead of starting in high school, HCZ would start in the womb with its Baby College. Instead of focusing on middle-school children at risk, HCZ would offer intensive pre-kindergarten. Those children would move into HCZ’s elementary school, and then middle school. HCZ would focus on families and try to teach Harlem’s low-income parents the skills to create the environments for their children that come as a matter of course in middle-class families.
Tough synthesizes the research on the importance of early interventions to make clear that the achievement gap can be reversed in the early years; if it isn’t, it likely won’t ever be. This commitment to making a difference in the early years is, in my mind, enough of a reason to look to the Harlem Children’s Zone as a model. Geoffrey Canada is a visionary, and Tough tells this story well. Canada’s own life story is compelling and he seems acutely aware of the limitations and contradictions even in his own work. His analysis is informed and his commitment is inspiring. He isn’t just a speech-maker. He is an institution-builder. Tough also writes about Canada’s partners in the Harlem’s Children Zone: very wealthy businessmen who are committed to results. But the author doesn’t fully investigate the impact of such relationships, nor how HCZ would never truly be replicated without them.
The book inspired in me contradictory emotions. I felt inspired, teary at points, by the stories told and by the commitment to early childhood interventions. As someone who wrote a book, however, on the decreasing value of inquiry in our culture, and the ways in which the obsession with standardized exams prevents young people from developing critical thinking skills necessary to their participation in our economy and in our democracy, I felt frustrated by Canada’s emphasis on test scores. There was so much more I wanted Tough to explore, like: at what cost comes this test preparation? The children
would be good test takers, yes, but would they have the skills to think critically and creatively? Is high achieving the same thing as intelligent? Was the need to perform well on the tests correlated to the skills that HCZ believes children should possess, or about “protecting the brand,” as one of Canada’s board members suggests?
On the cover of the paperback version of the book is a quote from Ira Glass: “This book changed my understanding of poverty in America in the most surprising way. It made me feel hopeful.” Despite all the questions I have for Paul Tough, I did, too.
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Paul, Welcome to the Lake.
Andrea, Thank you for Hosting this Book Salon.
Welcome to Firedoglake – glad you could join us!
Paul. As I write in my intro, I was inspired by this book, though I did find myself with many questions for both you and Geoffrey Canada. Before we get into those, however, I wanted to ask you this: many of the readers of Firedoglake are progressive politically – many are activists who take their politics seriously. Why do you think they should read the book? What do you think they have to gain from doing so?
Thanks, I’m glad to be here, and I’m looking forward to the discussion.
Good afternoon Paul and welcome to FDL. Andrea welcome back!
Paul I have not had an opportunity to read your book but one question just jumps out at me. Do you think Mr Canada’s work was overall helped or hurt by the Welfare Reform efforts of the ’90s?
Note: I worked for a contractor in NYC in the late ’90s/early Y2K providing technical support to HRA and ACS in building Child CAre systems that would pay for child care in (presumably) many of the families that would be covered in this.
Hi Andrea. Thanks for hosting, and thanks for your question.
I hope that my book feels relevant to progressive activists for the simple reason that it takes on an issue that has always been central to the progressive cause: poverty, specifically urban poverty. I think what Geoffrey Canada and some of the other people I write about in the book are trying to do is lay out a whole new way of confronting poverty — a comprehensive method that has the potential to really change things in neighborhoods that have been stuck in poverty for generations.
To me, that’s an important progressive cause.
Hi dakine01. Good question, but I don’t think I have a good answer. Welfare reform rarely came up in my conversations with Geoffrey Canada or the families in Harlem taking part in his programs.
I couldn’t agree more. And in fact, I find myself wishing on a regular basis that progressives as a community were more involved in the nitty gritty of the ways in which urban poverty, and outdated paradigms, manifest. I hope that progressives read your book – even if only to understand how critically important it is that we think about early childhood education, and we confront some of the ugly business at this nexus with culture that must be done if we are going to create change.
Did you find it difficult to write about the challenges around parenting and the inadequate parenting skills that you observed, and that Canada tries to tackle?
Paul – can you tell the visitors here about what is special about the Harlem Children’s Zone? What differentiates it from so many other efforts to address poor communities? What makes it so compelling that President OBama wants to create 20 such “Promise Zones” throughout the country?
Thanks for the response. I’m not sure when Mr Canada’s work began but it sounds like he is focusing on what is rather than what might have been.
Lemonade from the lemons if you will.
One of the themes in the story you tell is about Canada’s focus on improving the test scores of the children in the Harlem Children Zone’s middle school. Everyone in the education business recognizes just how difficult middle schools are, and so to decide to tackle these grades was heroic in and of itself. You mention the resistance of the founding principal of the middle school to this focus on standardized tests. While at the end of the book, the ending is happy in that the students do achieve higher on the exams, I felt myself wondering why this was considered a victory. The non-stop drilling, etc. must have had some costs to the students. How did you feel about this emphasis on the exams? And, were you able to talk to the founding principal in more depth about why she resisted?
It was tricky in some ways, sure. Clearly, being a middle-class white person writing about parenting practices in poor African American families comes with some risks. I wanted to make sure I didn’t fall prey to any easy stereotypes, and I tried to both report and write with as much sensitivity as I could.
The process was made much easier by the fact that Geoffrey Canada addressed the subject of parenting so openly and directly (and wisely, I think). And in the end, my chapter on Baby College, the program where Geoff and his staff directly try to influence parenting practices, was my favorite one to report and write. The parents and staff at Baby College made me feel enormously welcome during the weeks I spent there, and the parents, especially, were candid and thoughtful about their struggles to rethink some of their preconceptions.
Why do you think Geoffrey Canada is a visionary? Was there anything you learned about him through the process of writing this book that surprised you?
I found the Baby College chapter to be my favorite one to read. I found myself wondering why Baby Colleges weren’t the norm throughout cities. Did Canada offer any thoughts about why such interventions–despite the abundance of evidence in its favor–aren’t more widespread?
You write about how the Harlem Children’s Zone is supported by a Board of Directors who have enormous personal resources and a commitment to creating real and measurable change. As the head of a non-profit, I can tell you honestly that this fact inspired much jealousy on my part! Do you think that the active involvement of these board members affected how Canada approached his task?
Andrea, how will your work with young people intersect with Mr. Canada’s efforts? Do you see more Democrats coming out of this type of system?
Sure. The Harlem Children’s Zone is a non-profit organization that is trying to serve every child in a 97-block neighborhood in central Harlem. The focus is education, because that is seen as the best tool for disadvantaged children there to escape poverty. But the services provided are educational, social and medical. They start at birth and go through college. The idea is to provide poor kids in the neighborhood with all the advantages and supports that middle-class and upper-middle-class kids in other neighborhoods in the city take for granted.
And that’s really what makes it different — rather than address one problem in a child’s life, or a couple of years during their childhood, the HCZ tries to take on everything at once.
And I think that’s why Obama found it so compelling. Well, that plus the promising results they’ve started to produce. There’s a great video here that shows Obama’s speech in 2007 explaining his plan to replicate the HCZ model.
I’m still reading the book, and it definitely gives me mixed feelings. The late Senator Paul Simon had a similar emphasis on education throughout his career in the House and Senate, and yet the only programs for which the “whatever it takes” line would work were military programs. The best approach to reducing abortion, Simon said often, was to improve education and through anti-poverty programs. Instead, we got the Hyde Amendment and the culture wars.
I’m one of those who has seen great programs run into the ground by the institutional barriers created by racism and entrenched interests, and I’ve seen many variations on the lottery scene that opens the book. “You get X, and you don’t” is a prescription guaranteed to induce mixed feelings.
But even so, dreaming big is the only way to find big answers.
I know you ask this question at the close of the book but, do you think it is possible to replicate HCZ without a Geoffrey Canada at the helm?
Dear Andrea, did I hear about the baby college on NPR’s This American Life”? If so, this program works and thoroughly rejects the idea of broken families and, instead fosters a loving an caring role for parents, and in turn communities and the institutions that exist in the communities.
Paul, what surprised you most in writing the book? Something you learned about Canada? About Harlem? About NYC? About resistance to change?
I first heard about Geoffrey Canada in a piece on public radio. Throughout the piece I kept thinking “Yes, that’s it!” because of his emphasis on starting early.
Anyway, thanks to both of you for coming here to be with us.
It is clear that HCZ wants every child in Harlem to have the capacity to change the direction of their own lives. Do you think they also want children to view themselves as change agents within their community? There are HCZ programs that help adults to organize by starting tenant associations, etc. But what about for young people?
(Warning: As you may know I have a personal obsession with this topic, which I wrote about in my book, The Death of Why.)
Yes, it’s talking about this program.
The NPR site has the episode here for anyone who wants to listen to it.
How much do you think Canada’s approach was shaped by his earlier research into violence?
I had mixed feelings about the emphasis on exams. In the middle school, especially, it did seem to be stressing some kids (and teachers) out way too much. I think there probably was a better, calmer way to go about things. (Though I’m glad it wasn’t my job to figure out what that better way might be.) But I sympathize with Geoff Canada’s overall point — that for too long, teachers and administrators and school officials in Harlem and other low-income communities haven’t been held accountable for the consistently low achievement rates of the students there. And that allowing a sixth grade student to go on to seventh grade without adequately teaching him or her to read and do math on a sixth-grade level was setting that child up for a lifetime of failure.
In the middle school, especially in those first couple of years, the teachers and administrators were fighting such an uphill battle. The kids came into the school way behind grade level, and the staff had a mandate to catch them all up quickly. That’s really hard to do, especially in a brand-new school. So I think things were going to be stressful there no matter what.
In the elementary school, which I wrote about in chapter 9, I felt that tests were put in a much better context. They were still very important, and no one was willing to accept a child’s failure. But because the school got the kids earlier on, in kindergarten or before, the staff was able to teach them more holistically, prepare them to ace the tests but also to learn about the world in a multifaceted way.
In answer to your second question — I did talk to that principal quite a bit, and tried to reflect her feelings, which I thought were quite valid, in chapter 6.
I know from living in Los Angeles, we have a horrible problem with public school overcrowding, at all levels and charter schools cant be created fast enough to help kids who want to learn in specific tracks like science, math and the arts.
What are the public schools like in Harlem in terms of overcrowding, student teacher ratio, etc? Is there a charter schools program?
Throughout the book you refer to the KIPP Academy, and although you don’t get into it, the charter school model. One of the critiques of the charter school model is that, while many say that they are able to get better resources for the dollar, in fact they actually operate on a daily basis with significantly more resources than their public school counterparts. HCZ itself is a hugely expensive undertaking. To what extent, then, can the lessons of HCZ and charters truly be exported?
Peterr, thanks for posting that link. In the summer of 2008, I went back to Baby College with a producer from This American Life, and we put together that piece. It was a great experience, and I was glad to get a chance to meet a whole new crew of Baby College parents.
I agree with this for what it’s worth. I have numerous cousins who are teachers around the country and I think every one is reaching increasing levels of frustration due to having to “teach to the test” and in some school districts, the teachers AND parents are in rebellion.
Paul, How many classes have gone through the Baby College now, what is the second phase, how is this beginning built on?
I’m glad you liked that chapter, Andrea, thanks. I often had the same feeling — why aren’t there Baby Colleges all over the place? I’m quite hopeful these days, though, about the spread of the HCZ model. This week, HCZ hosted a conference in New York attended by 1400 educators and community leaders from around the country, all interested in bringing the model in some form to their communities. So this feels like a pretty promising moment.
I think the board members played a big role. Financially, obviously, they made a big difference; without their contributions, the organization would never have been able to grow as quickly as it did. But I think Geoff also took from them the idea to build a much more corporate structure than most nonprofits have. It’s a top-down organization, with very clear lines of authority and accountability. For the most part, I think that structure has had a positive effect on their work.
I do! It’s another reason why I’m optimistic about the Obama administration’s Promise Neighborhood plan: I think that support will make it easier for replications to succeed even without Geoff leading the way.
Peterr, there were a lot of surprises, to be honest. I worked on the book for more than five years, so I had plenty of opportunities to be surprised.
I think probably my biggest surprise was how engaged most of the parents in Harlem were, and how eager they were to find a way to propel their kids to a greater level of success than they had experienced themselves. In Baby College, especially, I was surprised by how often the parents were open to information about new and different methods of child-rearing.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised — after all, every parent wants their child to succeed — but I did expect more resistance.
Yes, for sure. Geoff’s goal is to change Harlem as a neighborhood as much as to change the lives of the individual children living there. The kids he’s educating are, in fact, his primary change agents.
rats. I can’t stay~ I loved the This Americans Life on this and am very interested. I will be back later to read…..what gave me hope was that simply looking- really looking and thinking and talking and then acting could really effect change.
I hope this model can be exported to other cities, Detroit, Chicago, and yes Los Angeles!
Some of the things Geoffrey Canada suggests sound like Motherhood and Apple Pie — i.e., who could possibly be against X? — and when someone opposes it nevertheless, it can be mindblowing. Any negative surprises?
Let me press that point further. Children achieving academically will hopefully change the cycle of poverty in Harlem, create that “contagion” that Canada so eloquently phrases. But that doesn’t mean that those children view themselves as actors in their local democracy, prepared to change the structures that inhibit progress. I hope I’m not being too vague — I guess the basics of what I’m talking about are, do you think HCZ is preparing children to be engaged citizens?
Have you found that the parents are more engaged in their community and work because of their reading more, picking up confidence and learning new things?
Thanks Paul & Peterr! How can we get a larger audience for this very important work?
Good question, xebecs. I think the work Geoff Canada wrote about in “Fist Stick Knife Gun,” when he was just trying to keep kids safe and alive (often unsuccessfully) was critical in forming his ideas about changing Harlem.
But as I wrote at the beginning of chapter 2, it really wasn’t until the violence in Harlem receded in the mid-90s that he was able to turn his attention to the many other problems kids faced there. Maybe kids weren’t being murdered in the same numbers, but they were still on a path to failure. That realization was really what pushed him toward creating the Harlem Children’s Zone.
So in some ways, this is a very different era for Geoff and his thinking.
Paul, did you find, in your research, that parents are surprised by their capacity for loving their children, and hopes and dreams for them suddenly intersect with opportunities to make real their dreams?
I think overcrowding and student/teacher ratios are less of a problem in New York than in many other big-city school systems. That doesn’t mean the schools in Harlem are great, though.
There are an increasing number of charter schools in Harlem — in fact, I think there are more charter schools there per capita than in any other neighborhood in the city.
Are these programs getting support from other community organizations? I could imagine, for example, a local theater group that could put on performances just for the participants — children and parents. Special outings at the zoo — that sort of thing?
I have mixed feelings about the critique you’re referring to. I think you’re right that some charters are well-funded. But in my experience, most of them aren’t, and in many states they get less money per student from the state than traditional public schools do. I’ve visited a lot of charters where the staff was just barely able to make ends meet.
But you’re right that HCZ is well-funded. It’s expensive raising kids to succeed, whether in middle-class neighborhoods or poor neighborhoods! Again, this is one of the reasons I’m eager to see how the Promise Neighborhoods plan develops. My hope is that it will help provide the necessary funding to bring successful programs like this to lots of communities.
Lisa,
I noticed that Paul Tough does not address your question about overcrowding. Class size in Geoffrey Canada’s schools do not exceed 25 students. Charter schools in NYC are limited to a class size of 25. Real public schools do not have a limit. My daughter’s middle school class size was 37 or 38 depending upon the year. Her high school classes contained 30 students. I saw first hand the damage caused by large class size.
Looking at the entire family is a wonderful program. A public school setting cannot replicate that program because it’s job is too teach. If public schools had the resources that Canada has, then they or some other public agency could model the program.
Geoffrey Canada is a union busting zealot. He supports Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein’s destruction of the public school system in New York City. I am the parent of a public school student. Bloomberg and Klein refuse to address overcrowding outside of charter schools. Students are overtested. Test scores go up at the cost of learning. It is not a pretty picture.
Are things better in Harlem? Yes. Privatizing public education is not the answer, but it is the only one Canada advocates.
The Baby College class I wrote about was the 21st “cycle,” as they call it. I think they’re now up to about the 32nd cycle. They usually do four or five nine-week cycles each year. (In between, they’re going door-to-door recruiting parents for the next cycle.)
The second phase of what Geoff Canada calls the “conveyor belt,” which is meant to guide kids from Baby College through actual college, is the Three-year-old Journey. It’s a more intensive parenting program for parents of 3-year-olds, mostly Baby College graduates. After that, kids go into the Harlem Gems pre-kindergarten, at age 4. And from there they graduate right into the Promise Academy charter school, which runs from kindergarten through 12th grade.
I’m not sure. The school does stress citizenship and civic involvement, but not necessarily more than any other school. I hope they’re preparing the kids to be engaged citizens nonetheless.
How do you respond here, Paul? In the book, you write that Canada studiously avoided being involved in electoral politics, not even noticing that Senator Obama had based an entire campaign platform on the expansion of HCZ! But Canada was involved in electoral politics during this mayoral election. By full disclosure, I was too – I served as a policy adviser to Mayor Bloomberg’s re-election effort. Why do you think he took this uncharacteristic step?
I think parents changed in all sorts of ways through Baby College. It wasn’t true of every parent, certainly, but some used the program as a springboard to continue their education, to pursue a new job, even to get married. (There was a marriage proposal at the graduation ceremony for cycle 21.)
You’re right. During the period I was writing about HCZ, Geoff was careful to remain nonpartisan, but in 2008 and 2009 he became an advocate for two candidates: Barack Obama for president and Mike Bloomberg for mayor.
I think the easiest explanation for why he did that was that he believed that each one of them could and would improve things for the kids in his programs in Harlem. He thinks that Bloomberg’s policies have greatly improved the education that poor kids in the city are receiving.
Weirdly in Los Angeles, the continuation school (high schools for kids who flunk out, have discplinary problems) are better than the trad public school–smaller class sizes give kids more individual attention.
Paul – I’m going to resurrect one of the arguments that you write about in the book. Do you think that structural change in the labor market are necessary to fully realize the change that Canada seeks for Harlem?
Well, the book makes a perfect stocking stuffer…
Lisa, that’s interesting, I hadn’t heard that. Which continuation schools are you talking about?
Good idea! I know there are some collaborations going on like the ones you describe, but I think there’s always room for more.
What are the other policy implications of the Harlem’s Children Zone, besides replicating it wholesale?
Lee, one of the things I hope comes out of Obama’s Promise Neighborhood plan is some replication models that center around traditional public schools rather than charter schools. I think it would be great if a HCZ-like program could be built around a traditional public school. If there’s a particular school here in the city that you think could be a promising nucleus, you should consider collaborating with the school to apply for a Promise Neighborhood grant to make that happen.
What led you to report on the Harlem’s Children Zone in the first place for the New York Times magazine? Have you always be interested in urban education?
Andrea, no I don’t. I’m certainly not opposed to structural change in the labor market. But the premise of the HCZ model is that by giving kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods the kind of educational and social supports they need, you can help lead them to success in school and in life even if their parents are not able to succeed in the job market.
If we wait for the labor market to be restructured before trying to improve the lives of kids in Harlem, I’m worried we’ll be waiting a long while.
Is HCZ working on the issue of college affordability for the young people who have emerged from its pipeline? Whenever you quote Canada as setting up college the expectation for every young person, I couldn’t help wondering if such a thing would be challenging despite the academic achievements of the HCZ graduates.
Well, granted, I only know about a few–the Malibu area one and Palos Verde, so it may be that there are fewer students who end up there!
A few of my friends who are sub teachers though have taught at other continuations say even though the kids are tougher, it’s easier to handle classes because they are smaller.
I wish there were ways to provide kids wiht smaller classes and more individualized attention–I was asst teaching for a while and we had almost 40 kids in an elementary class. Some were bussed in from Nickerson Gardens, a housing project, while others lived in the predominently white neighborhood. None of the kids got the attention they needed, discipline was pretty weak…
Good question. I think different people would (and do) take different policy lessons away from the example of HCZ. Some see it as proof that only charters can succeed with poor kids; others see it as proof of the importance of universal pre-K.
I came away from my reporting with two basic beliefs, both of which have policy implications. The first is that kids from poor families and poor neighborhoods can absolutely succeed in school and in life, to the same high levels as middle-class and upper-middle-class kids.
The second is that accomplishing that is often incredibly difficult, and takes an enormous amount of hard work and resources from the child, his family, his school, and other community and governmental organizations — from us, the public.
Disadvantaged kids in Harlem can succeed, in other words, but in many cases they can’t succeed without our help.
What’s next for you in terms of your investigations and reporting? Can you give us a sneak preview on your next Times Magazine article and/or book? We promise we won’t tell anyone.
No, I really only got interested in the topic of urban education as a result of reporting on the Harlem Children’s Zone. My reporting on HCZ started in a pretty innocuous way. I read a couple of references in the paper to the Zone and its work, and in the summer of 2003, I called up Geoff Canada and asked if I could come up and interview him. Little did I know that that would be the beginning of a five-year reporting project.
You know, the concluding scene of the students of HCZ schools watching the Obama inauguration left me in tears, I’ll admit it. And then I was reminded of the fuss about President Obama’s address to students on the first day of school. As you remember, some extremists charged that the President wanted to spread socialist propaganda to their children. Others simply that he was overreaching in challenging students to think about ways to support the change he wanted to bring to the country. But one protest stuck out in mind: “Keep the government out of my schools.” This is obviously very silly, as the system itself is public. Do you think that this confusion/conflict about the role of government in our lives is related to the lack of will, heretofore, to engage in the kind of bold steps that Canada is taking?
They’re beginning to, yes. So far the HCZ staff has been pretty successful at getting grants and loans and scholarships for the students they help get into college. But that may become more of a challenge as the numbers increase.
Here’s a silly question that I’m sure Canada would laugh at: can you see a political career for him?
I’m not sure yet, actually. I’m thinking about a second book, and I’m continuing to do a lot of reporting in this field, but I’m still trying to fit it all together into a book-sized idea.
(Thanks for the offer of confidentiality, though.)
Well, I think we’re confused about the role of government for a whole lot of reasons!
I actually think that the vision that both Geoffrey Canada and Barack Obama have laid out, of a public/private/philanthropic partnership to take on the problems of urban poverty, is quite interesting, and it could potentially change some people’s thinking about what government can and can’t do.
I have to say, when I was watching him this week address this conference of 1,400 people, the thought did cross my mind…
As we come to the end of this Book Salon,
Paul, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book.
Andrea, Thank you again for Hosting this great Book Salon.
Everyone, if you haven’t bought Paul’s book yet, here is a link.
Thanks all.
Anything you wished you done differently in the book after you pressed send on the final manuscript?
Thanks, Paul. As I say in the intro, Whatever it takes is a must read.
I just wished I could add updates! Needless to say, the story continues to develop. Fortunately, they let me write an afterword for the paperback edition, so I was able to do a little of that.
Thanks Andrea, and thanks Beverly, and thanks to everyone who stopped by. I appreciated all the thought-provoking questions.
emptywheel is upstairs!
Bob Bauer and Scooter Libby Justice