What Would It Take?
When I set out to write Whatever It Takes, I wanted to accomplish two things. The first was, simply, to tell a story. I wanted to describe the life and work of Geoffrey Canada and chronicle his attempt to build the Harlem Children's Zone, an ambitious and well-funded nonprofit that stretches across 97 blocks of central Harlem. And I wanted to tell the stories of the children and parents in Harlem who are using the organization's resources to try to improve their lives.
But as well as offering what I hoped would be an engaging story, I also wanted to use the book to investigate a few questions that I found intriguing and hard to answer.
The main question was one that is disarmingly straightforward and yet infuriatingly complex: Why are poor people poor?
More questions followed from that one: Why do poor children tend to grow up into poor adults? Why, specifically, do poor kids have such difficulty succeeding in school and, later on, in the world of work?
And perhaps most importantly: What, if anything, can we do to solve those problems?
In the book, I briefly trace the history of the American debate over these questions, from the poorhouse through the New Deal to the War on Poverty. And I argue that over the last decade or so, we've entered into a new and crucial chapter in that debate.
The idea at the center of this new chapter is that inequality today is mostly a question of a skills gap. Poor children turn into poor adults because they don't have the opportunity, either at home or at school, to gain the skills they need to succeed. But if we can find a way to help those kids acquire those skills, they have a very good chance at success.
One thing that's especially interesting to me about this new moment is that the critical research and re-thinking that's going on is taking place in two separate spheres at once. There are academics studying this stuff, just as in every era. (A week ago, I wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine that mentioned two academics whose work I think is especially important, James Heckman and Susan Neuman.) But this time, a lot of the most innovative thinking and experimentation is happening closer to the ground, in the ranks of nonprofit organizations like Teach for America and New Leaders for New Schools, in the offices of school superintendents and philanthropists, and in classrooms across the country.
These academics and practitioners come at this issue from different directions. But they're all now trying to answer the same question: Which interventions in a poor child's life are most effective at providing him with the skills he needs to succeed?
One of the most impressive new answers to that question, as I wrote in the New York Times Magazine back in 2006, can be found in a growing network of high-performing charter schools, mostly middle schools. That network includes the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, schools, as well as networks like Uncommon Schools and Achievement First and Green Dot, all of which are achieving remarkable results with low-income students.
The Harlem Children's Zone (as I wrote last week on Slate) is another impressive answer, one that I think may turn out to be even more influential. Geoff Canada's model draws on both data from researchers like Heckman and the experiences of practitioners like KIPP. It combines two intensive, extended-day K-12 charter schools with a whole network of social supports: a parenting program and an all-day pre-kindergarten and after-school tutoring and family counseling and a health clinic. It offers children in the Zone cradle-to-college support, a "conveyor belt," as Canada puts it, that surrounds children in Harlem with the same kind of emotional nurturance and intellectual stimulation that children in middle-class and upper-middle-class communities take for granted.
Barack Obama has embraced the Harlem Children's Zone, pledging to replicate it in 20 cities across the country if elected. And last week, in his speech on education reform, Obama voiced his support for a whole new set of educational innovations. (And no, they didn't include sex education for kindergarten students.) With any luck, the remaining weeks of the campaign will be about issues like education and poverty as much as they are about lipstick and pigs.
I'm grateful to Lila Shapiro and TPM for inviting me here this week, and I'm looking forward to hearing from the other participants - who will be posting soon, I hope - as well as from TPM's readers. Thanks for joining the discussion.
Having been a middle-school teacher, I observed that highly intelligent children who also happened to be from poor families more often than not mastered skills quickly and easily and went on to good universities and good paying jobs - almost inspite of teachers, schools and parents.
Children of average intelligence from poor families had to struggle to even meet the minimum standards for their grade. Not that they were incapable of mastery because they weren't - they simply did not come to middle-school with a background of learning and experience afforded by parents. The various programs mentioned in the article would be a real boon for these kids.
September 15, 2008 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I asked the question -- and I hope Paul will drop in -- because from my limited reading in this area I've gotten the sense that by the time poor children are taught "skills" (RRR, for example) it's already too late for them to acquire real competency in them.
Or to say it differently --
As a result of the environmental insults, physical and emotional, that poor children experience in their first few years of life -- and not all do, obviously -- the development of their brains is subnormal. They suffer and will suffer throughout their lives with mental disabilities (what we call being slow) resulting from their having been born into poverty.
Paul asks, "Why are poor people poor?" presumably because he realizes that poor people rear poor children. And that's the last thing we want.
Well, the answer is that poor people are poor because they don't have money. And until we manage to get them money they will continue to raise poor children who, no matter what intercessions we try, will continue to lack "skills."
September 15, 2008 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Head Start helps and I think kids go into it at 4 or 5. Unfortunately, its effects wear off. A bright but congenitally right-wing husband of a friend claimed this proved it was ineffective. Well, when I stopped the 10 or so hours of exercise I enjoyed in school, the effects wore off. Instead of a six-pack, I now have a whole case.
So, I'm sure you're right that kids whose parents consciously educate them from birth will do better, but I don't think 6 is too late to begin education.
There was an inadvertent study done on poverty. An Indian tribe's (maybe in North Carolina) family income went from poor to well-off when they got their casino license. Crime and vandalism and school absenteeism plummeted.
September 15, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a good analogy, zero2vonnegut. (And it's not too late to get back on that jogging track.)
It's one of the complicated things I've had to balance in writing about this stuff. From the research I've read, I can say pretty conclusively that a 6-year-old child who has had six years of language enrichment and other cognitive and emotional support is much more likely to succeed in school than one who hasn't.
But at the same time, it's absolutely possible for that second 6-year-old to succeed. It's just going to take more work, more remedial help from the adults around her -- and it would be good if she got that help sooner rather than later.
To take it one step further: there are a number of middle schools, mostly relatively new charter schools, that have had quite a bit of success with 10- and 11-year-olds who have never had much academic support. It gets a lot harder, at that age, to compensate for an insufficient education -- and it gets harder still in the teen years.
But there's always more that a school can do with a disadvantaged child who has fallen behind -- and there's a danger that this research can be misinterpreted to imply that at a certain point, there's nothing you can do to help that child.
September 15, 2008 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Going from reading 3 years behind age at 11 to Harvard Law doesn't happen very often. But becoming a competent mechanic, machinist, dietitian, musician, artist, store manager, etc does happen. And as a retired engineer who has seen off-shoring of intellectual work, hands-on and personal contact jobs have as much or more security than many graduate degree jobs.
September 16, 2008 12:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that early brain development is key to making any progress. How to do it without knee-jerk outrage about a socialist system taking the children away and indoctrinating them against their culture, visions of the U.S.S.R. is really the sticking point. I think liberals have to let go of some scruples about early curriculum in order to accomplish this. Let go of the "Heather has two mommies" stories at an early age and just pound on early stimulation of skills uber alles, whether in the most fundatmentalist religious private day care or Head Start. Once the kids have a well developed brain, they can unlearn any other indoctrination. Without that, we spin our wheels.
September 15, 2008 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, you wrote,
"Well, the answer is that poor people are poor because they don't have money. And until we manage to get them money they will continue to raise poor children who, no matter what intercessions we try, will continue to lack 'skills.'"
What I find most interesting about recent research on this question is that in fact, there's now lots of evidence that we can raise the skills of poor children without raising the income of their parents. It takes a lot of work, certainly, and it's not easy. But the whole premise of what Geoff Canada is undertaking in Harlem is that poor children need skills more than they need wealthy parents. If they can (with the help of the Harlem Children's Zone) acquire the skills they need to survive adolescence and get to college, then they will be able to create their own wealth.
September 15, 2008 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
What "skills" do poor children need to gain in order to succeed?
September 15, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, being able to read, which of course necessarily includes being able to comprehend what's written, is the primary skill. Obviously, ability to read/comprehend is necessary in almost all areas of learning.
Interestingly, children with marked emotional problems often struggle with reading - a condition which has never been, to me, satisfactorily explained. At the same time, if/when emotionally fragile children do master reading, a lot of their emotional problems seem to subside.
I've been out of education for years and perhaps by now the 'problems' around learning to read have been explained and rectified. I have my doubts though given that so many of our kids don't make it through high school.
September 15, 2008 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've often wondered whether the child has an "emotional" (sometimes known as "acting out") problem or the teacher has a disciplinary problem due to the child expressing her emotions -- often, extreme frustration over not being able to perform the task (reading, as an example).
Sort of a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" question.
September 15, 2008 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
So who has the 'problem?' Who the hell knows or cares. When a teacher has 35 bodies she's required to instruct and one of the bodies is making it pretty well impossible to do, the 'problem' becomes mutual, the blame game is a an exercise in futility.
Funding cut backs? Cut out the on site school psychologist. Cut the music program, which kids really dig because they don't experience failure. Cut the art program where kids can freely express themselves and there's no wrong or right. Dumb moves, really dumb.
Adults are kind of messed up at the moment. Kids are kind of messed up too - surprise, surprise. It actually might boil down to, when adults get their shit together, their priorities straight, kids will follow suit.
September 15, 2008 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another "skill" is being able to delay gratification. Doing something today and the day after and the day after to get something a year from now.
Another one is talking good, not 'hood.
Another one is patience, cool, and persistence. If one door is slammed in your face just because your name is DeWon (exchange white and black names on resumes and see who gets the call), then knock again, and again.
September 15, 2008 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, in answer to your question about which skills are most useful for a poor child to acquire: If you're interested in a little light economics reading, I'd recommend a recent paper by James Heckman titled "Schools, Skills, and Synapses."
I haven't figured out yet how to embed links in comments, so I'll just paste the url here:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14064
Heckman divides the skills necessary for success into two categories: cognitive and non-cognitive. The cognitive ones are predictable: reading is probably at the top of the list, but basic computational skills are high as well.
The non-cognitive list is more intriguing. Heckman writes: "An emerging literature shows that, as is intuitively obvious and commonsensical, much more than smarts is required for success in life. Motivation, sociability (the ability to work with others), the ability to focus on tasks, self-regulation, self esteem, time preference, health and mental health all matter."
The most successful interventions into the lives of poor children (including the Harlem Children's Zone) address both sets of skills.
September 15, 2008 8:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
The importance of the non-cognitive is recently emerging? Teachers have known its importance forever - but of course teachers are merely the hand-maidens in the field of education.
Motivated by having to clean up the giant mess that would ensue when engineer designed, additional elevator banks in an old building were to be built, the building janitor invented the outside elevator. (Teachers may be hand-maidens but they're highly motivated hand-maidens. Their opinions should be valued.)
September 16, 2008 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Skills are important but so are aspirations. If the best future you can see is on the NBA court, then shoot hoops by starlight and dribble your basketball everywhere you go. And those kids pushing on the corner have Air Jordan's and the big man has got a flash car, so that's a fall-back plan. But school, man that is a drag. Yeah, I have to get that paper so I can get my basketball scholarship, but it is a drag every day.
September 15, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now, President is cool. And Michelle, oh my, oh my. And he doesn't take shit from anyone.
September 15, 2008 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Speaking of aspirations and postponing gratification and persistence of purpose etc. something that's rarely mentioned, perhaps because it doesn't reflect well on the elevated opinion we have of ourselves as a country, is the fact that our heros, roll-models, people we really admire are not the well-educated.
In fact, we call them elites, eggheads, nerds, corrupters of youth if they're college professors - unless of course they are also extremely wealthy and then they are elevated into the stratosphere of American Idol.
Kids don't live in a vacuum.
September 15, 2008 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
phelicity,
Well said. I think Obama is going to inspire a lot of young blacks to head for where the air is cleaner. And Michelle will be a more effective bridge than Laura Librarian if that is what she chooses as a focus. (I wonder if LauraB has an opinion on SarahP and the Wasilla librarian :-) That she would share.)
September 15, 2008 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think he really Obama really understands this particular problem (i.e., "postponing gratification and persistence of purpose,") up close and personal. He himself admits he was a lackluster student until he up and decided to get real serious, almost monk-like, and make up for lost time, in his Columbia U. years.
September 15, 2008 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
oops: scratch the "he really" in my comment.
September 15, 2008 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Poverty is the underlying factor regarding poorly educated children. GC is definately found a good solution. As a Chicago Public School teacher, I have found students who come from socio-economically deprived families struggle in school the most. Children from middle class and upper class backgrounds have so much enrichment by the time they reach kindergarten. Children who come from families who struggle financially, struggle in school. They do not go to the library even though it is free. Parents rarely read to their children because they work many jobs. Conversations with children are limited and the TV is often on. Financial stress causes parents tempers to flare more often. These parents need parent classes to find out that in order for their children to compete in this global world, school must come first. I applaud GC and look for more programs like his. Now, we have to find a way to address the kids that do not receive the early childhood enrichment programs. These are the studens who fall through the cracks.
September 15, 2008 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Geoff Canada's model . . . combines two intensive, extended-day K-12 charter schools . . . . Paul Tough
Following your logic, emj, and noticing that "GC" doesn't become responsible for the children until they're five years old and doesn't provide "early childhood enrichment programs," I would think you would judge Geoff Canada's solution as being unlikely to succeed.
September 15, 2008 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen,
You cut off that quote a little hastily. The full sentence read,
"It combines two intensive, extended-day K-12 charter schools with a whole network of social supports: a parenting program and an all-day pre-kindergarten and after-school tutoring and family counseling and a health clinic."
Geoff Canada believes (and I agree) that those early childhood enrichment programs are essential to the success of his project.
September 15, 2008 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen,
Canada does provide early childhood programs and cradle to college support. I know his charter schools are trying to address children who did not receive Head Start or early enrichment programs. Those students are the toughest to reach. I have read that this is his biggest hurdle because once children miss that early enrichment it is hard for them to catch up. I wish him luck with that program and should the program succeed, I know he will share his strategy so others may try it.
September 15, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
My first confession is that I have no experience in pedagogy but my second confession is that I survived an inner city education. I survived because my teachers knew my family. In fact, my third grade teacher was my ( my grandmother's cousin). My teachers went to the church I attended. There was little or no room for mischief.
I think it was important to have my cousin as a teacher. Because she was my grandmother's cousin, it was like having a living part of genealogy teach me. Having her around provided me with an abundance of questions about my family's history
These questions remained with me throughout my educational experience. I wish someone, anyone would have used my curiosity about my family for educational purposes.
I think young poor children come to school, regardless of socio-economic standing with an abundance of curiosity about the new world around them. It is just a matter of finding and then tapping into a young person's curiosities.
I wish someone like Henry Gates had come along with his idea to include genealogy and family history into the curricula.
Offering family history and or genealogy is a chance to offer science, history and research skills to students in a unique way.
September 16, 2008 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have mixed feelings about charter schools. On the one hand, they can prove to be great educational "experiments" as they are released from so many of the cumbersome constraints as traditional public schools. On the other hand, I've seen mixed results from some of them. They face the same problems with accountability as our traditional public schools. (because our method of determining accountability is at its' very base faulty.) And I also hate the mentality of some that looks to charter schools as the solution, rather than part of it.
At the top - College - our financial aid system is terrible, for one. Something similar to The University of Georgia's HOPE Scholarship could be instituted in every state. Paid for by the state lottery revenues, any student who is a resident of Georgia, who graduates high school with a 3.0, and who maintains a 3.0 in college gets a full tuition merit scholarship.
Headstart and preschools need to be improved. The teacher turnover is terrible in those places, because in many of the states, the pay has not kept up with the requirements. In PA, one has to be a certified teacher to teach preschool. Of course, if one is a certified teacher, you're much more likely to work as a preschool teacher while you find a job that pays more than $10 an hour. The classrooms are often overfilled, understaffed, and under-resourced. Accreditation is not mandatory for all preschools. NAEYC (or similar) accreditation should be. A defined curriculum does not exist in many non-chain preschools.
In traditional public K-12 schools, the focus on math and literacy to the exclusion of everything else is a nightmare. A move toward interdisciplinary, integrated curriculum is one solution to that problem. Full day kindergarten should be available in all school districts. In kindergarten, 90 minutes of literacy is required, and I believe 30 minutes of math. Add in lunch, a brief recess, and 30 minutes outside the class each day for gym, music, art, or media studies leaves very little, if any, time for science, social studies, health, etc.
And the funding system for public schools is also faulty. Being funded so much by property taxes creates such a discrepancy between the wealthy areas and the poor ones. In Vermont, a huge battle was waged over Act 60, because the wealthy districts did not want their property taxes funding schools, at all, outside of their own district. Better teachers work in the wealthy districts. For simple reasons - it's less stressful, more fun - you have nearly limitless resources: Smart Boards, new books, Teacher Choice funds, active PTAs, etc. In some of the poor schools, finding ink for the printer or paper to write on requires creativity. In my opinion, the school funding system is one of the greatest causes of the discrepancies we see between wealthy and poor schools.
September 16, 2008 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
The idea of no child left behind is admirable and everyone would love for all the children to be well educated and grow to lead productive lives. However, as a parent of two young children in a rural Arkansas school, I resent that the individual states were allowed to write their own standards. These standards leave no room for basic skills to be taught. Children may acquire the thinking skills to work an algeba problem but use their fingers while adding or subtracting.
My children will most likely be fine well educated adults in spite of no child left behind. We have to school the children at home as well as send them to school. Children with behavioral issues are mainstreamed in the classroom and no learning can take place until thier they are brought under control or taken out of the room. Schools are in fear of being sued so most children fall behind so a few can try to function in a regular classroom. Johnny can't wipe his bottom or bath himself but is expected to take standardized tests. Bring on the education about two mommys or two daddys if we can have a classroom where my child can learn without having another child spit at him or pull him down.
Some children are born poor with the intellect to succeed if they are provided a support network and have their basic needs met. I'm all for this. But let's get real, some are always going to perform below standard due to mental ability. We all have families in our communities we know who are poor and will always be poor because of this. They do not marry into well educated or highly intelligent families. We can remediate and lower standards til the cows come home, but in the end, it is what it is.
September 16, 2008 10:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Paul, Here's my (naive?) question: Given all the incredibly sound research on the absolute necessity of early childhood education why hasn't there been the political will to provide sufficient early childhood funding? Has it simply not been a priority -- or has there actually been opposition to such programs?
September 16, 2008 10:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me take a stab at this. Headstart is government funded - but the rest of the preschool world is a private enterprise. I've never worked in a Headstart preschool so I can't speak to what working conditions and resources are like there. But I've worked in several private preschools - on in a wealthy area, that was well-resourced, and one in poor area, that wasn't. Finding even construction paper in the latter was a task. The owner didn't care about anything but the bottom line and the building was literally caving in - at one point parts of the roof started to fall in. Thankfully, not on one of the children. Eventually, the building was shut down. I stayed because of the kids. However, in both of those preschools, the classrooms were ridiculously overpacked. More so in the wealthy area. Over the room capacity. When the inspectors would come, the directors would ask us to basically hide some of the kids.
Because preschool is a mostly private enterprise, it leaves wide room for variances in curriculum, standards, etc. Some owners care. Others don't. Qualified teachers are few and far between because of the low pay rate and high stress of the job. I worked with a woman who once taped a kids' shoes to his legs! (She was fired.) Most of the rooms I worked in had 20-some kids and two teachers. There was very little time for individual reading, or individual anything really, as you are too busy controlling the chaos of a room of 3 or 4 year olds.
I loved my job, but because of the kids. Not the rest of it.
September 17, 2008 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
(1)Are the educational systems we envy national educational systems? If so, ....
(2)To pay more than lip service to equality of opportunity, shouldn't educational spending be federalized and equalized?
September 17, 2008 3:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
(3) The US pioneered mass public education, 1-12, and shot ahead in the world. With higher skills now needed to maximize productivity, shouldn't we catch up with our competitors by providing free public 12+ education?
September 17, 2008 3:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've got one granddaughter at Berkeley, one at UCI and one at Chico. It's taking three working adults and one retired (me) to fund them. Student loans are presently non-existing.
At the rate education in America is going, it's probably not too far-fetched a guess that down a fairly short road America will be supplying the 'educated' world with a third-world labor force.
September 17, 2008 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Prop 13. At one time, California had the world's best public education system. And it was nearly free for the students, and it made us one of the world's largest economies.
Prop 13 benefits all corporations some, but it really, really benefits commercial real estate corporations. How many times has the Transamerica building changed hands in the forty odd years since it was built? Homeowners average tenancy is what -- 18 years?
Prop 13 also royally fucked up the legislature by requiring super majorities for revenue bills. So a handful of bought and paid for or just plain pig-stupid Republic legislators can and do hold California hostage every year.
September 17, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
(4) And to get back to the topic, shouldn't the US offer free, universal, public pre-K enrichment/day care? If we are serious about saving as many as possible?
September 17, 2008 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink