This Sunday's New York Times Magazine includes a spellbinding account of Geoffrey Canada and his extraordinary effort to change the lives of all of the children who live in one Harlem community. Until recently, Canada (who grew up poor in the Bronx but overcame the odds to go on to college and eventually earn a degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education) worked in traditional nonprofits, struggling to find ways to give a handful of poor Harlem students a better chance to succeed. After a while, Canada got fed up: Why just help the 500 kids you can serve in one particular program? Why them and not the 500 on the waiting list? And, why 500 and not 5,000? "If all he was doing was picking some kids to save and letting the rest fail," writes Paul Tough in the Times, "what was the point?" So, with the help of some powerful allies, Canada founded the "Harlem Children's Zone," a 24-block (recently expanded to 60-block) radius in central Harlem designed to help parents and students reverse, rather than beat, the odds. When he first created the "Zone," Canada believed that all of the programs - both the educational and non-educational - were equally important as part of the larger effort to improve the community. But over time, he began to realize that, to make an impact, the school system simply had to be better. "We've got to do something radically different," Canada explained. "If we keep fooling around on the fringes, I know 10 years will go by and instead of 75 percent of the kids in Harlem scoring below grade level on their reading scores, maybe it will be 70 percent. . . . But that is not progress. This is much more urgent than that." Today, Canada is working, with the help of New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to create new charter schools in Harlem that will eventually take over existing public schools. To that end, Canada's organization has established the Promise Academy, which next year will serve Kindergarten and 6th grade students, within an existing public school. Then, each year, as students move through the school, the Promise Academy will take over control of an additional class. "We're going to put the existing school out of business," Canada explains. Of course, there are political implications of Canada's efforts, not least of which is the resistance he is getting from the United Federation of Teachers, but for families in Harlem who recently learned that their child had won a spot in one of Promise Academy's first two classes, it must have been heartening to hear someone say: "If your child is in our school, we will guarantee that child succeeds. There will be no excuses. . . . If you work with us as parents, we are going to do everything - and I mean everything - to see that your child gets a good education."
"The Harlem project," by Paul Tough, New York Times Magazine, June 20, 2004