Whatever It Takes

As an editor of the New York Times Magazine, Paul Tough is also a leading author on the issues of poverty, education, and the achievement gap. This new book takes a look at the idea Geoffrey Canada, the President and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, has for improving the success rates of African-American students, who, through the “accident of birth” were born into a place where their futures are more likely to end up in an early grave or in a prison cell than in a college lecture hall. His system of creating an “assembly line” of different services to address needs at different levels, starting with a prenatal care program for expecting parents, to after-school tutoring for high school students, and everything in between including a preschool, a charter school and a team of social workers is somewhat revolutionary in the battle against poverty.

Addressing the “fade-out” effect where a program is seemingly only effective while a participant is actually receiving the services and is impact dwindles afterwards, HCZ’s approach of serving a child throughout his or her entire lifetime is meant to have a lasting effect in which Canada is searching for the point that a person will have received enough of a foundation to be successful on his or her own. As well, Canada is looking for the tipping point at which he will have reached enough people in a neighborhood that they will begin to “contaminate” others – even those whom HCZ was not able to reach directly. If all of a sudden reading for pleasure, and being smart were the cool things to do then perhaps others would follow suit. When a program is only reaching 10% of the people in the neighborhood, it is hard to make an effect on the entire community, however, if, for example, 60% of people are receiving positive services then it becomes the norm and not something different to be looking out for a child’s success and then we will see true change in a community.

Added Jan. 9, 2009 @ 22:37

Thanks to a post over at The Big Picture, I was reminded of the story that appeared on the radio show This American Life, which was where I first heard about the book. I first heard about the organization back in 2005 when I sent in a resume to Harlem Children’s Zone… no response. There was also a nice article on HCZ and the book posted on Edutopia.

Added Jan. 31, 2009 @ 13:58

You can see more reviews of Whatever It Takes on Paul Tough’s blog.

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