Paul Tough

Writer & Speaker

Posts Tagged ‘Obama’


Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Promise Neighborhoods in the Post

In Sunday’s Washington Post, a lengthy story about the Harlem Children’s Zone and President Obama’s plan to replicate it:

Canada was raised poor in the South Bronx and went on to earn a graduate education degree from Harvard. Years ago, he grew frustrated that his successful after-school program was not decreasing Harlem’s tally of high school dropouts, juvenile arrests and unemployed youths. He set out to devise an encompassing program to “move the needle” and improve the lives of poor children in a mass, standardized, reproducible way.

Now the Obama administration seeks to replicate Canada’s model in 20 cities in a program called Promise Neighborhoods and has set aside $10 million in the 2010 budget for planning. President Obama has frequently singled out the Harlem Children’s Zone, and first lady Michelle Obama recently called Canada “one of my heroes.”


Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Canada Returns to Colbert

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Reverse Racism – Geoffrey Canada
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

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.


Friday, July 17th, 2009

Obama Speaks

This week, in two separate addresses, President Obama spoke about his plans for Promise Neighborhoods. On Monday, the White House Office of Urban Affairs hosted a daylong conference on urban issues that the Washington Post described as “the first indication that the White House could back its urban policy office with the kind of muscle that Obama suggested during his campaign.” President Obama addressed the gathering, saying,

We’re going to put an end to throwing money at what doesn’t work — and we’re going to start investing in what does work and make sure that we’re encouraging that. Now, we began to do just that with my budget proposal, which included two investments in innovative and proven strategies. I just want to mention these briefly. The first, Promise Neighborhoods, is modeled on Geoffrey Canada’s successful Harlem Children’s Zone. It’s an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck effort that’s turning around the lives of New York City’s children, block by block. And what we want to do is to make grants available for communities in other cities to jumpstart their own neighborhood-level interventions that change the odds for our kids.

And then in his address at the NAACP centennial last night, he said,

We also know that prejudice and discrimination are not even the steepest barriers to opportunity today. The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect. … These are barriers that we are targeting through our White House Office on Urban Affairs, and through Promise Neighborhoods that build on Geoffrey Canada’s success with the Harlem Children’s Zone; and that foster a comprehensive approach to ending poverty by putting all children on a pathway to college, and giving them the schooling and support to get there.


Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Some recent links

– 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.


Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Charleston and Promise Neighborhoods

According to this morning’s Post and Courier, the schools superintendent in Charleston, S.C., is angling to make that city home to one of the first Promise Neighborhoods. According to the article:

The intention of the Promise Neighborhoods project is to replicate in communities nationwide some of what’s been done in the Harlem’s Children Zone, a 97-block area in Central Harlem in New York City that provides social, educational, health and recreational programs for children from birth through college. …

President Barack Obama began talking about Promise Neighborhoods during his campaign, and he’s requested $10 million in next year’s budget for one-year planning grants for communities that want to develop these programs. Grant recipients would be eligible to receive implementation money the following year. …

Communities can’t apply for the planning grant yet, but McGinley has been working behind-the-scenes to ensure that Charleston would be a frontrunner for the money. She’s talked with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, and downtown and North Charleston ministers to gather support. She’s pulled research on poverty and school readiness and drafted a preliminary proposal that targets downtown, North Charleston and possibly Hollywood-area schools.


Sunday, May 17th, 2009

Michelle Obama on Geoffrey Canada

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.


Thursday, May 7th, 2009

David Brooks on HCZ

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.


Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

A Promise Neighborhood in Boston?

In the Boston Globe, an article about an effort to make Boston the site of one of President Obama’s new Promise Neighborhoods:

Today, a group of Boston nonprofit leaders – led by City Year’s Hubie Jones – will be touring the [Harlem Children’s Zone], as they launch a campaign to make the city one of Obama’s chosen sites. Obama is calling his endeavor “Promise Neighborhoods,” a nod to the program’s success in boosting student achievement and reducing hospitalization rates for children with asthma, among other feats.

“It’s time for Boston to think differently about how to deliver programs to these really distressed neighborhoods,” said Jones, who will be blogging from today’s tour as part of his effort to generate local interest. “If the Harlem Children’s Zone or something like it is a good idea for Boston to do, we ought to get ready for it or we will be passed over by the Obama administration.”


Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Promise Neighborhoods on ABC News

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.”


Friday, April 24th, 2009

Marian Wright Edelman

Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, devotes this week’s “Child Watch” column to “Whatever It Takes” and the Harlem Children’s Zone:

“Whatever it takes” is Canada’s philosophy about serving and saving the thousands of children in the nearly 100-block radius that constitutes the Harlem Children’s Zone Project. Canada’s comprehensive, innovative strategies for how to do this are at the heart of the book and have brought him national attention, including praise from President Obama, who is proposing plans to replicate Canada’s successes in 20 more communities across the country.