"Whatever It Takes"

I just finished "Whatever It Takes" by Paul Tough, an account of all the amazing things Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone have been doing to essentially save the children of Harlem from the cycle of poverty. It was really a fascinating read, kudos to Tough for an easy-to-read, well-researched account of one of the most innovative programs around the country.

The unique aspect of HCZ is not any particular program or strategy; it's the whole organization. The book describes it as the "conveyor belt model." Essentially, Canada starts with parents before they even have children with a program called Baby College. From there, HCZ has a program for kids and parents called the 3 year-old journey, and after that kids go straight into the pre-k program called Harlem Gems, and from there kids are expected to progress into the Harlem Promise Academy charter school, which is also operated by HCZ.

The most fitting metaphor for this approach to poverty reduction is one Canada uses about gravity and orbits. Day-to-day life in Harlem, he says, is the gravity that tries to pull kids down to Earth, but the solid start and consistent programming from HCZ is pushing kids up, up into orbit so that no amount of gravity can bring them down. It is still to be seen how much is needed in order for kids to get up and stay in orbit; HCZ has kids who make it through different parts of the conveyor belt, due to any number of reasons. What is the tipping point for them? Can they make it if at age 13, for example, they move to the Bronx and have to find a new high school without all the supports from HCZ?

I'm a huge fan of what Canada is doing in Harlem, for the most part. He is exactly right that inequality in school and the much-discussed "achievement gap" begins way before school does. Disparities in pre-k programs have been addressed federally by things like Headstart, but studies have shown the positive impact of Headstart starts to diminish as early as 2nd or 3rd grade. Constant, sustained effort is so important if we want to have an impact on poverty.

Nothing is perfect, of course, and the ability of Canada and HCZ to make a real impact in the Harlem community--an impact beyond the direct scope of its programs--the focus of its schools must change. In Tough's account, Canada and the HCZ Board discuss testing and test scores ad nauseaum. The way they measure success is simply by the numbers, and that has huge impacts on students. At one point the board encourages Canada to bring in KIPP to restructure the Promise Academy middle school, and although they end up going in a different direction, many of KIPP's main tenets find their way into the school. Especially the exclusive focus on testing.

A lot of things cant be measured by standardized tests. The NCLB-mandated tests that Canada and wealthy donors like Stan Druckenmiller use to evaluate the school's progress rarely even measure the things they are designed to measure. At one point Tough reports one teacher acknowledging this, explaining that the reason certain students don't do as well is that they don't know the tricks to test-taking that were certainly taught in my school and are taught in most middle and upper class schools. But what's the educational benefit of learning process of elimination and avoiding "red herring" trick answers? Is this cognitively significant? (NO!)

Likewise, by focusing so much time on test prep, other subjects lose out. Do inner city kids not deserve enrichment like music, art and history? Learning isn't only about tests, it isn't only about math and reading. School has to be about more than that, or kids will (and empirically do) simply shut down. Even if scores go up and the reputation of the school improves--so what? Is quality of education truly linked to reputation? When Tough relayed the heavy emphasis on testing and Canada and Druckenmiller's obsession over scores, I couldn't help but think that they were more interested in their reputations and the reputation of HCZ than they were about helping kids learn and grow into successful, productive adults.

Terri Grey was the founding principal of Promise Academy middle school, but she was quickly discarded after she refused to compromise her belief in comprehensive schooling in order to appease Dept. of Ed bigwigs or her bosses. She has since moved onto a more progressive school environment, discussed at length in a recent Ed Week piece. She has continued to focus on learning and not testing, which, to me, seems like the obvious thing to do.

Geoffrey Canada is really a hero for youth growing up in poverty, especially in Harlem. During his campaign for President, Barack Obama talked of a proposed federal effort to expand HCZ's key components to 20 cities around the country, and as a proud supporter of both Obama and Canada, I applauded this plan (and I still hope it happens). However, if the KIPP ethos of test first and test often continues to pervade these schools, kids will suffer. It's too bad that test scores are the only data most people look at when measuring student achievement, because learning is about so much more, and it's about a lot that simply cannot be measured.

The long-term focus of HCZ has a lot to say about other efforts to reduce poverty and raise student achievement around the country (and the world). I see an unspoken commentary on Teach For America, in fact. Canada and his organization recognize that two years in a child's life is the blink of an eye; it isn't long enough to make an impact, and it is nowhere near enough time to launch those kids into "orbit" and out of the cycle of poverty. TFA is a two-year resume builder. It isn't a substantive effort to address the achievement gap, it cant be unless it's dedicated to not only spending many years in classrooms, but to training teachers for more than a few weeks as well. (I apologize for the constant TFA-bashing, I just cant help it. I feel like the organization is brainwashing college kids and even policy makers, and it irks me to no end.)