Stefan Lallinger had just finished teaching a lesson that traced the fight for civil rights and school integration in the U.S. when a student in his New Orleans classroom posed a question: “So, why do no white kids go to our school?”
Decades after Lallinger’s own grandfather had helped argue the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in front of the Supreme Court, which declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional, he said the boy’s question left him speechless — and still demands an answer today.
“I think as a country, more broadly, we don’t have a satisfactory answer to that,” Lallinger said.
Courtesy photo/The Century Foundation Stefan Lallinger will head The Bridges Collaborative, a new initiative launched by The Century Foundation to spark and support school integration efforts.
Segregation remains rampant in American classrooms, and New York City is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country. Now Lallinger is heading a new effort to address the country’s unfinished business of integrating its schools. He is heading the Bridges Collaborative, an initiative launched Monday by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
The collaborative seeks to fill the gap between research showing more diverse schools can improve outcomes for all students, and the political will to pursue integration. To do that, Lallinger hopes to bring together advocates and policy makers who rarely work together — from charter and district schools, and housing — to learn from successful integration efforts across the country.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the collaborative has delayed plans for meeting in person, but is still laying foundations for the inaugural class of about 50. Applications are expected to open this fall.
Lallinger spent about a decade teaching and leading a New Orleans charter school post-Katrina, in classrooms where virtually every student was black and came from low-income homes. For the last year, he was a Harvard doctoral resident working in the New York City education department on integration issues.
Here’s what Lallinger had to say about what’s still standing in the way of more diverse schools, and what integration should look like in 2020.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How would you describe the status of school integration right now?
We know that integration is good for kids and there’s tons of research that backs this up. Yet most people across the country don’t know about that research. In part, because folks don’t know about this — and also because of many, many historical reasons — the state of our public schools continues to be segregated.
Nationally, about a fifth of schools across the country have almost no white children. That is to say, they are 90% or greater students of color. And then another fifth of our schools nationally have almost no students of color. So their student bodies are about 90% or greater white.
There’s other data that shows that the percentage of American schools that are intensely segregated along both racial and socioeconomic lines has actually increased over the last two decades.
So we’re not headed in the right direction, coming up on the 66th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education.
What kinds of bridges does this collaborative seek to build? Who or what needs to be brought together to advance school integration?
Ultimately, the goal is to build bridges across lines of difference in our schools and in our classrooms, creating environments in which children who come from different backgrounds have the opportunity to learn together. I don’t think we need to look any further than the state of our country today to see why that is needed.
If that’s not good enough, then there’s research to demonstrate that students who go to integrated schools are much less likely to harbor bias, they’re much likelier to have higher average test scores, much likelier to enroll in college.
Our collaborative is also looking to build bridges across sectors. We’re bringing together folks from school districts, from charter schools, and from fair housing organizations. We want to provide a space for folks to be able to have the difficult conversations and engage in the type of collaboration that is actually going to move the needle in communities across the country.
What is getting in the way of that collaboration now?
To start with, charter and traditional school districts, the way things have been set up structurally, there’s often either competition or distrust.
Then, to bring in the housing folks — oftentimes folks who work in housing and folks who work in education speak in different languages. Getting them on the same page to truly understand what the barriers are that each set of folks face is a feat.
Your grandfather, Louis Redding, was a civil rights lawyer who played a role in the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. How is your personal history connected to your current work?
I always start with my grandfather, a man who was born in 1901 and whose grandmother was a slave. Despite that, he attended Brown University and was one of few African Americans at the time. He decided to move to the South after graduating and went to teach at a school created by freedmen after the Civil War to serve children of emancipated slaves. Then he went to Harvard Law school, where he was one of the first African American graduates of that institution, and decided that he wanted to move back to his home state of Delaware to practice law.
In 1952, he brought two lawsuits against local districts in Delaware, which he won, forcing them to admit black students. When those cases were appealed, they became a part of Brown vs. Board.
I often think about my grandfather and wonder, if he were alive, if he came to tour the school where I was a principal and saw all the amazing things, how proud he would be — and then wonder how long it would take him to realize he was walking the halls of a segregated school, and what he would think about that decades after he won this legal battle.
Why do you think integration should remain a goal of American schools, all these years later?
In the divided society that we live in, research also demonstrates that attending a diverse school helps reduce bias and counter stereotypes. For many of us, this is the most divided any of us have seen our country in our living history, and this is one way we can address that for the future.
Thirdly, this is something that will improve outcomes for students.
How can policymakers begin to overcome skepticism of integration — whether due to racism, from more affluent and white families worried about losing access to ‘good’ schools, or from families of color afraid of sending their children into hostile environments?
Folks by and large don’t have the vision for what a truly integrated school is, and therefore don’t truly know why it’s the best option for all of our students. Additionally, I think a lot of people fall prey to old and stale arguments, and fear mongering tactics.
It’s incumbent on folks who really believe in this issue to make clear, through appropriate communication and messaging, how we might do this in 2020 that’s different than 1960 and 1970, why it’s worth doing, what are the benefits that all students get — that it’s not some social justice crusade on behalf of one group of students, but that it’s truly beneficial to all students.
We have gotten to a place where, when we look at segregated schools, we’ve tricked our minds to think that is a natural phenomenon. That is absolutely not a natural phenomenon. There are specific reasons, and specific actions, and choices that have been made throughout the course of history that have made us believe that this is normal.
How are today’s integration efforts any different from the past?
Matthew Delmont has a great book that talks about the history of busing in this country and the use of ‘busing’ as a phrase, just as a fear-mongering tactic — when in fact, students have been bused in this country for decades with few ill effects. Ironically, busing really came into vogue in the era of segregation when white families needed to go to school farther from where they lived.
These are the things that come to people’s mind when, in reality, there are so many innovative ways to think about how we might get a diverse set of bodies into schools.
The things I’m talking about include reexamining district lines that mostly have been drawn specifically for the purpose of segregation, number one. Number two: being more creative about where we place sites for new schools.
Number three: developing innovative programming in schools that might attract different types of populations. Number four: identifying very closely systems of tracking that segregate children within schools. Number five: developing magnet programming and specialized programming that allow students to attend schools away from where they live.
And number six: opening up school choice in the public system, and, in places where choice exists, coming up with innovative enrollment mechanisms that promote diversity.
What will success look like for the Collaborative?
We want districts, and charter schools, and housing folks around the country to see examples of districts and schools advancing the issue in ways that make sense, and in ways that bear fruit, in a way that makes it feel safe for them to try.
To get a little more specific on some of the tangible things that we will be doing, we have engaged with a reputable polling and messaging firm to help us tackle this issue of how do you develop messaging that is compelling and gets across all of the benefits of diverse schools.
In New York City, one of the country’s most segregated school systems, there has been growing local support for integration, but few systemic changes. Why?
One of the things that needs to happen more is a clear articulation of why creating integrated schools in New York City is a strategy for improving our schools. You can’t really define an excellent school without answering the question of how diverse the school is, because a key element of excellence is what kids are learning from one another.
What does integration look like in a system like New York City, where most students are black or Hispanic and come from low-income families?
We have to think of integration more expansively than just black and white, and low income and not low income. New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and it’s not just because you’ve got a lot of white folks and black folks living together. There’s a lot of beautiful and rich diversity within a lot of these blanket categories we use.
There’s a huge difference between a family of four that has a household income of $35,000, and a family of four that relies on public assistance, or a family that has students in temporary housing.
For race, there are schools that are reported as having 95% of their population being black or Latino, and you have Dominican populations, and Puerto Rican populations, and you’ve got Mexican students and you’ve got students from the Caribbean. We need to think more expansively about that.
The last thing I would say is that, what I think a lot of folks who bring up that argument are getting at is that, if we think of integration as necessarily involving a critical mass of white students, that integration of the entire city is then mathematically impossible. Well, that doesn’t mean that any action is futile. It means we need to start by integrating the spaces where we can and those spaces will become richer and better environments because of it.
How has COVID-19 changed or shaped this effort?
I definitely think that COVID-19 has shone a light on the rampant inequities that exist in our system. Some folks have adapted really easily to digital learning, mainly due to their environmental circumstances, and other folks have had a really, really hard time. At a time when these inequities are laid bare and there’s an opportunity to rethink the way we do things, I think the collaborative becomes even more important.
One of the things that we do want to make sure folks think about is that, during this time of social distancing, numerous parents and children have talked about how important the social aspect of schooling is, and how much they get from the interactions they have day to day with folks. Even when folks are not socially distant, where kids are in close proximity in the classroom, there’s so much that they are missing out from when they attend schools that are homogenous. Everybody’s experience would be so much richer if they attended schools with a vast array of beautiful diversity of students.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Stefan Lallinger had just finished teaching a lesson that traced the fight for civil rights and school integration in the U.S. when a student in his New Orleans classroom posed a question: “So, why do no white kids go to our school?”
Decades after Lallinger’s own grandfather had helped argue the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in front of the Supreme Court, which declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional, he said the boy’s question left him speechless — and still demands an answer today.
“I think as a country, more broadly, we don’t have a satisfactory answer to that,” Lallinger said.
Courtesy photo/The Century Foundation Stefan Lallinger will head The Bridges Collaborative, a new initiative launched by The Century Foundation to spark and support school integration efforts.
Segregation remains rampant in American classrooms, and New York City is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country. Now Lallinger is heading a new effort to address the country’s unfinished business of integrating its schools. He is heading the Bridges Collaborative, an initiative launched Monday by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
The collaborative seeks to fill the gap between research showing more diverse schools can improve outcomes for all students, and the political will to pursue integration. To do that, Lallinger hopes to bring together advocates and policy makers who rarely work together — from charter and district schools, and housing — to learn from successful integration efforts across the country.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the collaborative has delayed plans for meeting in person, but is still laying foundations for the inaugural class of about 50. Applications are expected to open this fall.
Lallinger spent about a decade teaching and leading a New Orleans charter school post-Katrina, in classrooms where virtually every student was black and came from low-income homes. For the last year, he was a Harvard doctoral resident working in the New York City education department on integration issues.
Here’s what Lallinger had to say about what’s still standing in the way of more diverse schools, and what integration should look like in 2020.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How would you describe the status of school integration right now?
We know that integration is good for kids and there’s tons of research that backs this up. Yet most people across the country don’t know about that research. In part, because folks don’t know about this — and also because of many, many historical reasons — the state of our public schools continues to be segregated.
Nationally, about a fifth of schools across the country have almost no white children. That is to say, they are 90% or greater students of color. And then another fifth of our schools nationally have almost no students of color. So their student bodies are about 90% or greater white.
There’s other data that shows that the percentage of American schools that are intensely segregated along both racial and socioeconomic lines has actually increased over the last two decades.
So we’re not headed in the right direction, coming up on the 66th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education.
What kinds of bridges does this collaborative seek to build? Who or what needs to be brought together to advance school integration?
Ultimately, the goal is to build bridges across lines of difference in our schools and in our classrooms, creating environments in which children who come from different backgrounds have the opportunity to learn together. I don’t think we need to look any further than the state of our country today to see why that is needed.
If that’s not good enough, then there’s research to demonstrate that students who go to integrated schools are much less likely to harbor bias, they’re much likelier to have higher average test scores, much likelier to enroll in college.
Our collaborative is also looking to build bridges across sectors. We’re bringing together folks from school districts, from charter schools, and from fair housing organizations. We want to provide a space for folks to be able to have the difficult conversations and engage in the type of collaboration that is actually going to move the needle in communities across the country.
What is getting in the way of that collaboration now?
To start with, charter and traditional school districts, the way things have been set up structurally, there’s often either competition or distrust.
Then, to bring in the housing folks — oftentimes folks who work in housing and folks who work in education speak in different languages. Getting them on the same page to truly understand what the barriers are that each set of folks face is a feat.
Your grandfather, Louis Redding, was a civil rights lawyer who played a role in the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. How is your personal history connected to your current work?
I always start with my grandfather, a man who was born in 1901 and whose grandmother was a slave. Despite that, he attended Brown University and was one of few African Americans at the time. He decided to move to the South after graduating and went to teach at a school created by freedmen after the Civil War to serve children of emancipated slaves. Then he went to Harvard Law school, where he was one of the first African American graduates of that institution, and decided that he wanted to move back to his home state of Delaware to practice law.
In 1952, he brought two lawsuits against local districts in Delaware, which he won, forcing them to admit black students. When those cases were appealed, they became a part of Brown vs. Board.
I often think about my grandfather and wonder, if he were alive, if he came to tour the school where I was a principal and saw all the amazing things, how proud he would be — and then wonder how long it would take him to realize he was walking the halls of a segregated school, and what he would think about that decades after he won this legal battle.
Why do you think integration should remain a goal of American schools, all these years later?
In the divided society that we live in, research also demonstrates that attending a diverse school helps reduce bias and counter stereotypes. For many of us, this is the most divided any of us have seen our country in our living history, and this is one way we can address that for the future.
Thirdly, this is something that will improve outcomes for students.
How can policymakers begin to overcome skepticism of integration — whether due to racism, from more affluent and white families worried about losing access to ‘good’ schools, or from families of color afraid of sending their children into hostile environments?
Folks by and large don’t have the vision for what a truly integrated school is, and therefore don’t truly know why it’s the best option for all of our students. Additionally, I think a lot of people fall prey to old and stale arguments, and fear mongering tactics.
It’s incumbent on folks who really believe in this issue to make clear, through appropriate communication and messaging, how we might do this in 2020 that’s different than 1960 and 1970, why it’s worth doing, what are the benefits that all students get — that it’s not some social justice crusade on behalf of one group of students, but that it’s truly beneficial to all students.
We have gotten to a place where, when we look at segregated schools, we’ve tricked our minds to think that is a natural phenomenon. That is absolutely not a natural phenomenon. There are specific reasons, and specific actions, and choices that have been made throughout the course of history that have made us believe that this is normal.
How are today’s integration efforts any different from the past?
Matthew Delmont has a great book that talks about the history of busing in this country and the use of ‘busing’ as a phrase, just as a fear-mongering tactic — when in fact, students have been bused in this country for decades with few ill effects. Ironically, busing really came into vogue in the era of segregation when white families needed to go to school farther from where they lived.
These are the things that come to people’s mind when, in reality, there are so many innovative ways to think about how we might get a diverse set of bodies into schools.
The things I’m talking about include reexamining district lines that mostly have been drawn specifically for the purpose of segregation, number one. Number two: being more creative about where we place sites for new schools.
Number three: developing innovative programming in schools that might attract different types of populations. Number four: identifying very closely systems of tracking that segregate children within schools. Number five: developing magnet programming and specialized programming that allow students to attend schools away from where they live.
And number six: opening up school choice in the public system, and, in places where choice exists, coming up with innovative enrollment mechanisms that promote diversity.
What will success look like for the Collaborative?
We want districts, and charter schools, and housing folks around the country to see examples of districts and schools advancing the issue in ways that make sense, and in ways that bear fruit, in a way that makes it feel safe for them to try.
To get a little more specific on some of the tangible things that we will be doing, we have engaged with a reputable polling and messaging firm to help us tackle this issue of how do you develop messaging that is compelling and gets across all of the benefits of diverse schools.
In New York City, one of the country’s most segregated school systems, there has been growing local support for integration, but few systemic changes. Why?
One of the things that needs to happen more is a clear articulation of why creating integrated schools in New York City is a strategy for improving our schools. You can’t really define an excellent school without answering the question of how diverse the school is, because a key element of excellence is what kids are learning from one another.
What does integration look like in a system like New York City, where most students are black or Hispanic and come from low-income families?
We have to think of integration more expansively than just black and white, and low income and not low income. New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and it’s not just because you’ve got a lot of white folks and black folks living together. There’s a lot of beautiful and rich diversity within a lot of these blanket categories we use.
There’s a huge difference between a family of four that has a household income of $35,000, and a family of four that relies on public assistance, or a family that has students in temporary housing.
For race, there are schools that are reported as having 95% of their population being black or Latino, and you have Dominican populations, and Puerto Rican populations, and you’ve got Mexican students and you’ve got students from the Caribbean. We need to think more expansively about that.
The last thing I would say is that, what I think a lot of folks who bring up that argument are getting at is that, if we think of integration as necessarily involving a critical mass of white students, that integration of the entire city is then mathematically impossible. Well, that doesn’t mean that any action is futile. It means we need to start by integrating the spaces where we can and those spaces will become richer and better environments because of it.
How has COVID-19 changed or shaped this effort?
I definitely think that COVID-19 has shone a light on the rampant inequities that exist in our system. Some folks have adapted really easily to digital learning, mainly due to their environmental circumstances, and other folks have had a really, really hard time. At a time when these inequities are laid bare and there’s an opportunity to rethink the way we do things, I think the collaborative becomes even more important.
One of the things that we do want to make sure folks think about is that, during this time of social distancing, numerous parents and children have talked about how important the social aspect of schooling is, and how much they get from the interactions they have day to day with folks. Even when folks are not socially distant, where kids are in close proximity in the classroom, there’s so much that they are missing out from when they attend schools that are homogenous. Everybody’s experience would be so much richer if they attended schools with a vast array of beautiful diversity of students.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
SCENES FROM THE CHICAGO STRIKE: For seven days, Chicago teachers went on strike for a fair contract as well as better learning conditions in the city’s most under-resourced schools. (Photo by Jen-Morales Crye)
When I moved to Chicago from Onalaska, Wisconsin, to begin my teaching career, I chose to move into the Westside neighborhood where I taught. I figured it just made sense to be part of the same community as my students. Soon I realized that being part of a community isn’t just a one-sided choice. I was humbled and blessed to see that the families of my students chose to welcome me into their community. With that acceptance came a new responsibility to learn about and represent our mutual needs.
As a math teacher and member of the Chicago Teachers Union for the past eight years, I’ve learned a lot from my neighbors about what they want from their schools. Consistently, parents wanted schools that provided quality learning opportunities, stable places for their children to grow, and challenging and supportive environments that prompted academic, social, and moral development. The community wanted and needed schools that encourage the ripening of all the potential stored inside each of their children.
Unfortunately, I saw a system of schools that focused on students and their teachers only as statistics. Priorities have focused more and more on raising test scores at the expense of the growth of our children. The system has ignored so many of the needs of our students and when we attempt to meet some of these needs, we are chastised for not focusing on academics. My colleagues and I feel isolated by this system. Imagine how our students and their families feel!
Standing Up to Authorities and Powers
Every day, I try to remember the source of my hope. In Colossians 1, Paul writes of Jesus Christ: “By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him.” Later Paul writes that Jesus reconciles all things to himself “whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
TAKING IT TO THE STREET: Over the past week, Chicago teachers marched in support of the city’s first teachers’ strike in 25 years. (Photo by Matt Crye)
As a follower of Jesus, I know that he is the ultimate hope we have for the reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth. Jesus Christ cares about systems like the Chicago Public Schools and wants to reconcile them back to himself — to bring them back into their proper role as systems that empower and improve our communities.
I now live with the responsibility to be an agent of reconciliation in my role as a public school teacher. In Chicago, I believe the public schools are a part of a system of power, run by the mayor and the school board, that is unjust. It hurts our kids and their families. When the rulers decide to give the taxes collected from our communities to corporations so they can remodel their bathrooms, something is wrong.
This system needs reconciliation back to the priorities of families and students. And now as a member of it, my duty is to stand up and fight on behalf of the voices of my community. My community wants their kids to be given the same resources and opportunities as those from wealthier zip codes.
Learning from My Students’ Lives
As I stood on the picket line joined by parents and students, I realized more and more that our fight for a fair contract really is about fighting for better schools for our students.
A few years ago, I had the unique opportunity to co-teach an enrichment class exploring hip-hop and social-emotional health as part of our school’s service learning initiative. Though I had many of the same students in my math class, I saw the students and they saw me in new ways.
My students shared many struggles, including harassment from police, anxieties about body image, fear of crossing into other neighborhoods for fear of encounters with gangs, and trying to develop their own identity as teenagers. I’ll never forget the day we studied research about the power of forgiving those who’ve hurt us. As everyone wrote letters of forgiveness to someone who had hurt them, some that couldn’t even be delivered, I sat with one student and we cried together as she struggled to forgive her absent father for just one layer of the harm he had done to her and her family. That letter became a poem that she now performs throughout Chicago with power and confidence. Seeing her bravery and pain, never again could I measure my success as a teacher simply by a student’s performance on a test. Schools must be so much more than that! For me, I see this struggle as part of Christ’s reconciliation of this system back to himself.
As teachers we want fair compensation for our work, but we also want working conditions that create good learning conditions for our students. I want class sizes that allow me to be effective and give each student the attention they deserve. I want wraparound services, like counselors and social workers, to serve the holistic needs of my students. I want equitable resources for all Chicago students so that all have the same opportunities to learn and become successful citizens. I want schools where parents and families have a say in what happens in their school — not just some politician Downtown, or in Springfield, or Washington.
Our students were created in the image of God and they deserve a lot better than what they’ve gotten from this broken system.
The Struggle Continues
Though the Union voted to end the strike today, our fight for better schools continues. As I write this, I look ahead to struggles at my own school. Even after we officially settle the details of the contract and head back to the classroom, we face the threat of a school takeover that began before the strike. Less than a week before our students came for their first day of class, the system removed our principal without warning and without offering a reason. Our new interim principal was introduced to us that same day, even while they changed the locks on all the office doors.
MORE THAN A MONEY MATTER: From the beginning, the Chicago Teachers Union has maintained that their work stoppage goes beyond matters of wages to include issues of job security, teacher evaluation, and school conditions. (Photo by Jen Morales-Crye)
On the first day of classes, students and teachers showed up to school to find three Advanced Placement (AP) classes had been canceled and that their schedules would be different from what they were originally told. Since then, office staff and our English department have been fired; teachers and students have been reassigned into remedial classes without curriculum; several classes have been taught by substitutes because of the holes created in the schedule; and we continue to fight the effects of this destabilization every day.
On the third day of classes, almost the entire student body participated in a sit-in demanding reinstatement of their AP classes. At a full community forum and several Local School Council meetings, parents have demanded answers for these actions, but have heard almost nothing. Now, a group of parents have written a petition and are collecting signatures demanding the reinstatement of our principal and a return to August 6th, the day before all the destabilization occurred.
But despite these obstacles, I know there is hope. As a result of pressure from students, parents, and the Union, our English teachers have been reinstated and the return of the AP classes has been promised. These victories embolden us to still push for the complete restoration of our school.
The battle for better schools, shaped by the voices of our community, continues. And I am honored to take part in this struggle alongside parents, students, and my fellow teachers.
SCHOOL REFORMER: Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada believes under-resourced communities, where the odds are stacked against kids, must be changed to give their young people the same shot at success as kids in more privileged communities. (Photo: Tom Fitzsimmons/Center for Public Leadership/Wikipedia)
“There are many places in our nation that we have allowed to become areas of hopelessness,” said educator and activist Geoffrey Canada last month at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. “Despair rules and young people who grow up there have no way of knowing right from wrong.”
Canada, the founder and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, told Willow Creek ministry leader Nancy Beach that youth become “contaminated” with negative values and principles that must be counteracted. It’s a message he’s been proclaiming in New York and now around the nation for more than twenty years.
Perhaps you’ve seen Canada discussing education on television. He was prominently featured in the controversial 2010 documentaryWaiting for Superman, which took a hard look at the tenuous condition of American public education. These days when any serious conversation about public schools turns toward the topic of real solutions, it’s difficult not to reference Canada’s name and work.
In inner cities where overcoming the odds is the only way for children to achieve success, Canada contends that the odds need to be changed. This conviction, coupled with a waiting list for the after-school and summer youth programs Canada directed through the mid-1990s, convinced him to scrap a model social services organization in favor of what TheNew York Times Magazinecalls “one of the biggest social experiments of our time.”
As we begin a new school year, and our nation’s system of public education continues to falter, it’s worth taking a look at Geoffrey Canada’s efforts as a case study on what might be possible if we’re willing to work hard, think innovatively, and put our children first.
The Great Experiment
Founded in 1997 as a corporate reorganization of the Harlem-based Rheedlen Centers, which ran various after-school, violence-prevention, and summer youth programs for 500 children with a $3 million annual budget, Harlem Children’s Zone has embraced a mission to prove that poor children, especially poor black children, can succeed in big numbers. Success means good reading scores, grades, and graduation rates for average students, not just the smartest or most motivated or the ones with involved parents.
The catalyst for Canada’s changed approach was a perpetual waiting list at Rheedlen. Canada became dissatisfied that no matter how many children his centers served, their services merely treated symptoms of far deeper social ills for hundreds of children while thousands went unattended every day.
He was also frustrated with an “apartheid” type of school district where kids living below 96th Street were super achievers and kids above 96th Street chronically underperformed. Grappling with the disparity, he wondered whether it’s even possible to transform the system so that success might become the norm for Harlem too.
INVESTING IN LIVES: Canada (left) works with students in a Harlem Children’s Zone classroom. “We can’t afford to lose another generation,” he says.
Fueled by the belief that individual children will do better if the children around them are doing better, Canada set out to prove that success can indeed become normalized. Unapologetically, HCZ is a social experiment designed to amass evidence that demonstrates how to equalize the playing field so that poor children perform on the same level as middle-class children. Canada foresees a day when, “This isn’t an abstract conversation anymore. If you want poor children to do as well as middle-class children,” to become “typical Americans” who can compete for jobs, “we now know how to do it.”
According to the Times Magazine, “If [Canada is] right, the services he will provide will cost about $1,400 a year per student, on top of existing public-school funds. The country will finally know what the real price tag is for poor children to succeed.”
In 2005, U.S. News & World Report described Canada as having “the street walk and Harvard talk.” That combination generates enough credibility to be given a legitimate shot at making his experiment work.
Holistic Programming, Tightly Networked
Geoffrey Canada’s political philosophy is both liberal and conservative, meaning he believes the economy systematically disfavors poor people no matter how hard they work, but he also believes poor parents need to raise their children better. His solution is a holistic approach that invests in traditional services such as public schools, day care, and after-school programs to remedy structural inequities, while also teaching parenting and life skills to enhance personal responsibility.
None of the Zone’s programs, by themselves, is unique. What is unique is how they create an interlocking web of services designed to nurture poor children in a particular neighborhood from birth through college. The Cleveland Plain Dealer describes HCZ’s distinctive this way: “The Zone is a network of tightly connected initiatives. … What sets them apart is the unifying vision Canada has imposed, creating a single, womb-through-college cocoon for thousands of poor kids … and fierce determination to achieve measurable outcomes.”
Each individual initiative fits into an expansive strategy that meets different needs differently. There’s no one right, cookie-cutter formulation for what every individual child needs. Instead, HCZ offers a panoply of services, including:
• Harlem Gems, a computer-based, pre-kindergarten program teaching Hooked on Phonics
• Employment and Technology Center
• TRUCE after-school program for teens
• Family Support Center and foster care alternatives
• Baby College co-ed class for pregnant parents
• Promise Academy charter school
All of HCZ’s programs are geographically located within a 100-block area of Central Harlem, a neighborhood characterized by a poverty rate of nearly 50 percent and foster-care placement rates among the highest in New York City. The 10,000 children living within this community Canada describes as “my kids,” and his goal for them is “fairness … just give my kids a fair shot.” Once they have completed college, “they’re as equal as anybody else, and they’ll be able to fend for themselves.”
Four Pillars
Harlem Children’s Zone rests its various program initiatives on four pillars.
1. Rebuild the community from within by developing indigenous leaders who already live in the neighborhood. “Mostly we found that to change a block, you had to get between 10 and 20 percent of the people engaged.” Hope spreads and negative elements move elsewhere.
2. Start early and never stop. Provide services from before birth through prenatal parenting classes and continuing through the completion of college. “Our theory is you never let the kids get behind in the first place.”
3. Think and plan big. Overwhelm the negative with positive influences. Make success and hard work normative.
4. Evaluate relentlessly. HCZ holds 1,300 full and part-time employees accountable to predetermined results. “If you took a salary to deliver an outcome and you didn’t deliver the outcome, you can’t stay here in the organization.” All programs have ten-year business plans with goals, targets, and timetables.
Measurable Results
Canada asks no less than 15 years from stakeholders to demonstrate that HCZ’s approach actually works, calling quick fixes to entrenched social problems “pipe dreams.” In exchange, he promises a rigorous reporting and evaluation methodology to track progress and identify program weaknesses.
His management style runs the non-profit like a business and treats philanthropists like venture capitalists. The HCZ business plan focuses on business-oriented ideas like “market-penetration targets” and “new information technology applications” and a “performance-tracking system.”
The Zone regards clients as “customers” and outreach as “marketing.” Administrative staffers wear suits; every meeting starts on time; and reports, budgets, and evaluations flow constantly.
HCZ focuses its energies and resources on what it can control — namely excellent supportive services for children — and not issues beyond their control such as adult marriages and underemployment. Then it recruits relentlessly to register its target market — the most “at-risk” youths in the neighborhood — through door knocking, fliers, sign-ups, raffles, prizes, and give-a-ways (even “bribes”); and promises to deliver excellent results. For example, HCZ called its first charter school Promise Academy because, “We are making a promise to all of our parents. 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.”
HCZ’s educational philosophy emphasizes both testing and accountability. They work within the existing public school system while simultaneously opting-out by starting two charter schools. HCZ’s charter schools operate a longer school day, from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m., with supplementary after-school programs until 6 p.m.; and their academic years extend into July. HCZ has met resistance from the Teachers Union because, even though charter school teachers get paid more than union teachers, they work longer hours, a full 12 months a year, and without the possibility of tenure.
The Zone supplements its own service offerings by partnering with parents, residents, teachers, and other community stakeholders to create a safe, nurturing environment that extends beyond its programs. By collaborating with churches, parks, local businesses, and schools, HCZ advocates for education reform, economic development, and crime reductions while proactively rebuilding the neighborhood.
The Challenge of Fatherlessness
The issue of fatherlessness is deeply personal for Canada, both as a central subplot in his own “against the odds” story and as a driving factor in the culture the Zone seeks to overcome. Canada tackles the subject specifically in one of his books, Reaching up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America (Beacon Press 1998).
Raised in the South Bronx by a single mom with four children, Canada’s father left when Canada was only 4. His mother supported them through a combination of odd jobs, welfare, and food donations. He found solace, and trouble, in the streets as a teenager — drinking, smoking pot, and resolving conflicts with his fists. But mom’s work ethic rubbed off, as he secured a factory job after school and ultimately earned a scholarship to attend Bowdoin College, where he majored in psychology and sociology. He then went on to earn a master’s in education from Harvard.
Canada speaks with conviction about the need to “father the fatherless” in part due to his own experience, but also because of the degree to which the absence of fathers has ravaged his community. “It is so much more dangerous for boys today because there aren’t any role models around for them. There’s some 15-year-old telling a 12-year-old what it means to be a man, and these children are really growing up under so much stress.”
Compounding matters is a cultural environment that “preaches anarchy.” Despite a rich tradition within the African American community of music that “always tried to lead us to the light … [and] get us through the tough times,” the current generation of hip-hop stars espouse “a message that is leading us to destruction. The message is, ‘Go out and do things that will destroy you, that will get you locked up in jail, that will ruin your life, that will ruin your relationships, that will estrange you from your kids.’ That’s what this music is preaching. And we’ve never had any music like that in our history before. … The street isn’t driving the music anymore. The music is driving the street.”
The two-fold solution, Canada contends, begins by reconnecting young boys to men in meaningful, long-term relationships that he calls, “loving men and not just mentors.” Mentors are needed, “but mentors do not replace a responsible adult who loves you, who disciplines you, who’s there when you’re afraid at night, who’s there to really talk to you about school and work. That’s what young boys need, and we have to figure out a way to get uncles and cousins and other folks re-involved with these young people for long periods of time so these boys have role models on what it means to be a man.”
For kids who lack a father’s love, these “re-involved” adults must “not only give them the good, solid, love, and support they need, but the tough love that says to them that you’re going to be held responsible, but I’m going to help you, I’m going to hold your hand; I’m going to make sure that when you are crying, there’s someone wiping those tears out of your eyes, picking you up and saying you can do it, try again.”
Only then will boys get messages contradicting pop and street culture values about sex, alcohol, tobacco, clothing, sneakers, and other “stuff that means absolutely nothing when we really look at what it means to be a caring, responsible father, a real responsible adult in today’s society.” What really matters are values like working hard, saving money, and investing in education. There are no “quick and easy” shortcuts, just hard work over a long time modeled for boys by grown men who are willing to take them by the hand and live life together.
The second piece of the strategy is teaching boys necessary skills to care and nurture children as fathers. Canada argues that if a dad is uninvolved in a child’s first three months, meaning not directly supporting, interacting, and bonding with the child, then that father is able to leave without feeling like his abandonment of the child is a big deal. But a boy who hasn’t had a fathering role model lacks basic skills for bonding with children. Worse, they have to overcome street culture biases by insisting that poor boys and girls refrain from exploitative sexual relationships, and redefining manhood to include nurturing as well as providing. To this end, HCZ’s Baby College intentionally works with both pregnant mothers and fathers.
Challenges to Replication
VISION CASTING: Canada during his interview at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit in August.
Over the years, many groups and individuals have studied Geoffrey Canada’s work with the intention of duplicating it in their own cities. But Canada identifies three main challenges to replicating the Harlem Children’s Zone model in other communities. The first, and most fundamental, is finding the right leadership. An appropriate leader is someone whom the community and donors are going to hold accountable while giving that person the authority to hold others accountable. “This won’t work with a collaborative of equal partners.”
Second, groups and individuals must have the discipline and resolve to stay true to the four pillars, including: empowering indigenous leadership to own the transformation process; embracing large and scalable strategies; adopting a long-term, comprehensive, birth through college service commitment; and evaluating and improving performance constantly.
Finally, group leaders must mobilize and sustain the commitment of staff, volunteers, community stakeholders, funders, and residents.
Staying the Course
Back at Willow Creek, Nancy Beach engaged Canada in a wide-ranging conversation on faith and leadership that offers additional insight into his way of thinking and the things that have made him successful.
“I grew up in the ’60s and lost faith in the church because the church wasn’t making a difference in the world around me,” he said. But his grandmother taught him a profound lesson. “She told me, ‘It’s easy to have faith when everything is going great, but the real test of faith is when you’re faced with something where only your faith will keep you believing in God.’”
It’s evident that Canada has taken his grandmother’s words to heart as he goes about the work of transforming education in America. “I’ve never lost this sense that we can test it, but in the end if you have faith, it will pull you through anything.”
Sources
+ Harlem Children’s Zone website: www.hcz.org
+ Sam Fulwood III, Bob Paynter and Sandra Livingston, “Central Harlem program combines leadership, commitment to rebuild a community,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (Dec. 13, 2007)
+ Chester Higgins, Jr., “Vision,” New York Times (June 7, 2006)
+ Anderson Cooper, “Stop Snitching,” 60 Minutes (April 22, 2007)
+ Deborah A. Pines, “America’s Best Leaders: Thriving in the Zone,” US News & World Report (Oct. 31, 2005)
+ Paul Tough, “The Harlem Project,” New York Times Magazine (June 20, 2004)
+ Transcript, “Moving Toward Manhood,” The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (Jan. 20, 1998)
+ Felicia Lee, “Being a Man and a Father Is Being There,” New York Times (June 18, 1995)
RELATED BY TRAGEDY: The death of 17-year-old Florida student Trayvon Martin (right) has sparked comparisons with the iconic death of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago native who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a White woman.
I have an 18-year-old brother whom I love dearly. He’s an African American college freshman, and sometimes a knucklehead. He has all of the answers and therefore does not always listen to wise counsel. He has never been in trouble with the law, never used drugs, and has never drunk alcohol. Sometimes he leaves the house dressed in a suit. At other times, he leaves dressed in sweats. His attire doesn’t give anyone a license to kill him.
The reality is, I sometimes leave home looking both ways myself. I choose how I dress and what is appropriate for lunch with my girlfriends or a quick grocery-store run. If someone approached me at either location with an armed weapon and I feared for my life, I would do everything I could to defend myself and so would you.
HE COULD'VE BEEN MY BROTHER: Images of Trayvon Martin reminded the author of her own younger brother, pictured above. (Photos by Deronta Robinson)
My initial response to Trayvon Martin’s death was, “That could have been my brother.” As I witness the media hysteria build around the case, I have to sit back for a moment and take inventory of our culture. It would be quite easy to write a Facebook status or change my profile picture to an image of myself in a hoodie. It’s quite easy to march for a day or protest for a month. We may blog about the case, read an article, or discuss it with friends at work, or a Black preacher may shout about this injustice from the pulpit on a particular Sunday, maybe even two, but eventually, we will forget.
The danger in our current outrage is that we might turn Trayvon Martin into a symbol, when in fact he was a real teenager. Some have drawn comparisons between Trayvon and Emmett Till, the Chicago teen whose brutal murder by Mississippi racists in the 1950s helped mobilize the civil rights movement. One commentator suggests Trayvon’s death may be “our Emmett Till moment.”
Trayvon is not the modern-day Emmett Till. Our attention spans are much too short for that, and our thirst for the next trending topic is much too great. We will forget Trayvon Martin. It may not be this week, this month, or this year, but eventually we will all forget.
This is the travesty of the Trayvon Martin situation: injustices like this occur against poor and minority children every day in this country and many pretend not to know. Black-on-Black crime is still real, often effectively ending the lives of both parties. Black kids are still dropping out of school at alarming rates. Young Black men are still checking into prison at rates comparable to those who enroll in college, and too many of them are being raised in homes without fathers. They are struggling in failing public schools. Gangs are lurching around those schools and targeting our children on the streets. Every day young girls are born into welfare-type situations and growing up to repeat the cycles modeled by their mothers simply because they have not witnessed an alternative. These children lose hope long before the age of 18, and as a result they often descend into committing crimes against humanity. We are all guilty. We cut the lives of these kids short and murder them with our complacency and our silence.
Why? Because we are busy. As individuals, we have personal goals of success to pursue. We have to raise our own kids. Our churches are busy with a bunch of good programs and activities which cater to our children. We ignore large chunks of the Bible because they are disruptive to our current lifestyles. Remember the part when Jesus returns and all nations of people are gathered before him? Here is the qualification for entering God’s heavenly kingdom on that day:
“For I [Jesus] was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothe me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him ‘Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:31-40).
Then Jesus proceeds to curse and turn away those who respond in the opposite manner. In this passage, Jesus is not asking whether or not someone recited a profession of faith or was baptized. He is simply asking, “How did you live?” See, the gospel is not something to simply accept and show up for on Sunday mornings. The gospel is life — our day-to-day choices of what we are going to prioritize. Are we going to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and whether or not we are going to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves? That is the critical question that we must ask ourselves every day of our lives. The answer to that question will make all the difference.
The question marks surrounding the Trayvon Martin case may never be resolved. It’s possible that the man who shot him will never be charged. But Trayvon’s life already has been laid down. The question is: Are you willing to lay down your life for those like him?
What are you going to do, Christian? What are you going to do, Church? Are we going to turn our frustrations into something positive that has a lasting impact? Are we going to turn the tide and reclaim responsibility for our children? Are we going get into the schools and communities to teach, mentor, and tutor our young people and equip their mothers and fathers to be better parents? Are we going to continue to murder, or are we going to choose life?
The issue of fatherlessness is deeply personal for Canada, both as a central subplot in his own “against the odds” story and as a driving factor in the culture the Zone seeks to overcome. Canada tackles the subject specifically in one of his books, 
