Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough

Mar 18, 2009 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars

"It's the parents' fault", is the oft-heard retort to all sorts of problems in our educational system. While that statement may be descriptive, it isn't prescriptive. Geoffrey Canada has an ambitious prescription to help poor urban kids in Harlem, first by ignoring vexing political and social question about the origins of the cycle of poverty. His plan is social engineering on a grand scale -- he needs to break the cycle somewhere, and chooses to draw a line in the generational sands. All the ki...more

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Nov 11, 2008 Awallens added it

I like the idea behind Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone. Take babies and parents of those babies and put them through a conveyor-belt system, from the time the baby is in the womb until high school. However, parts of the book annoyed me. I know test results are important in today's educational system but I felt Canada was obsessed with them, and like one of the members of his staff pointed out, you can't treat a school like a business. You can't take a kid, throw in X plus Y and get a co...more

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Jan 09, 2009 Molly rated it 5 of 5 stars

straightforward writing made this book about the effects of poverty (and the many issues that accompany it) on the spectrum of children's education really digestable and extremely compelling. Makes the best case for why an integrated and holistic approach to raising/nurturing/education children is essential for them as individuals as well as the society.

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Feb 03, 2009 Iris added it

This was a hard-hitting look at the impact of poverty upon the education of minority children. It can be applied to any child growing up in an area of 60% poverty whether they live in Harlem or not. Tough chronicles Geoffrey Canada's life experiences and revolutionary perspectives. He deftly combines research with real life experiences to detail the struggle between hopelessness and possibility. I LOVE IT!!!!

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Feb 27, 2009 Edwin rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've heard about Geoffrey Canada; he was featured on episodes of NPR's Fresh Air and This American Life. As a former inner city teacher and current suburban teacher, I'm always interested in issues like education equity, achievement gap, etc...
I think Canada is a fascinating figure-- idealistic and intensely pragmatic at the same time. God bless him and people like him who serve the poor and oppressed

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Nov 01, 2009 Sarah marked it as to-read

Shelves: nonfiction

Picked this up at Borders today. Been meaning to read it for a while now... ever since these guys were all over NPR last fall. Heard Paul Tough on the September 26, 2008 episode of This American Life. Then Geoffrey Canada appeared on both This I Believe and Eight Forty-Eight on November 6, 2008.

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Jan 10, 2009 Elevate Difference rated it 5 of 5 stars

Geoffrey Canada comes from the Harlem streets, raised by a single mother who wanted to make sure her sons excelled even though the options for young Black men in poverty seem limited to imprisonment or death. Paul Tough’s book, Whatever It Takes, is part-biography of how Canada went from gang member to head of a large non-profit organization, and part-documentation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which is Canada’s vision for egalitarian education. His method has gained support from Oprah, and Pre...more Geoffrey Canada comes from the Harlem streets, raised by a single mother who wanted to make sure her sons excelled even though the options for young Black men in poverty seem limited to imprisonment or death. Paul Tough’s book, Whatever It Takes, is part-biography of how Canada went from gang member to head of a large non-profit organization, and part-documentation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which is Canada’s vision for egalitarian education. His method has gained support from Oprah, and President-elect Barack Obama has already stated that the federal government will help set up twenty similar systems throughout the country.

Harlem Children’s Zone is a grassroots effort that began as a “Baby College” to give poor, new parents the same tools and knowledge that middle class parents are being bombarded with, and often take for granted. The curriculum includes explanation of child development: how babies learn, what sort of stimulation and interaction they need at different ages, and discipline techniques. The teachers are from the same ethnic cultures as the parents, and come from similar economic and lifestyle backgrounds. Harlem Children’s Zone has grown from its inception to include a fully functioning preschool, elementary, and middle school. The promise that Canada made to parents was that he would get their children into college, and he proposes to do this via a “conveyor belt.”

Canada’s “conveyor belt” strategy refers to working with the children from the time of their birth in “Baby College.” They then move on to programs for children before they enter school, and Harlem Children’s Zone keeps working with them throughout their schooling right up until they are ready to enter college. In this way, Harlem Children’s Zone is a long-term project that strives to be active in educating the child from birth through high school. By starting at birth and working with children continuously, Canada believes that they can be just as successful as children from more privileged upbringings.

Paul Tough is an editor at the New York Times and has followed Canada’s work from its beginning. Tough writes his own eyewitness accounts of events, and shares information gleaned from parents, teachers, principals, and board members. The history of Harlem Children’s Zone is thoroughly laid out for readers—including the trials, unsuccessful ideas, and mistakes made. Tough includes simplified explanations of many studies about children’s development and educational needs, looking at the data differentials for children of color and in poverty versus middle class, white children. The history of both racial and economic disparity in the education system in the United States is laid bare for us to examine and learn from.

Harlem Children’s Zone also includes health clinics and other support services in order to meet the complete spectrum of needs for the Harlem community. Community members know that if they need help of any sort, Harlem Children’s Zone is the first stop to get connected to the resources available.

A concern I have about the book is in how it may be interpreted by its readers. Many communities, including my own, are looking to Canada’s system as a one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, Harlem Children’s Zone offers a three-day tour for organizations that want to explore all aspects of its service model. There could be problems for communities that selectively incorporate aspects of the model without understanding the way the different programs works best together or, alternatively, who are not ready to be flexible to accommodate unique needs or challenges that may arise.

There is also the danger of a “savior” mentality being perpetuated by organizations that fail to appreciate that Canada’s success owes much to the intimate first-hand understanding he and his staff have of the community they work in. Service providers have to accept that successful community change must come out of the community itself, not be imposed upon it.

Harlem Children’s Zone remains a work-in-progress; as the first generation to benefit from the entire conveyor belt has not yet graduated from high school, it is difficult to gauge the full success of the programs. Canada may not have all the answers, but there is much that can be learned and applied from his work thus far to guarantee that all children truly do have equal opportunities, and are prepared to succeed both in school and in life.

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Nov 27, 2008 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Geoffrey Canada wants to save all the children. In the Harlem Children's Zone, a "97-block-laboratory in Central Harlem," the Harlem Children's Zone programs run from Baby College through high school, providing effective (and expensive) support ot parenets and children with the goal of changing the lives of poor children. Canada's vision goes beyond the Harlem Children's Zone, to the hope of creating a model that can be replicated in other neighborhoods, other cities, other places where class an...more Geoffrey Canada wants to save all the children. In the Harlem Children's Zone, a "97-block-laboratory in Central Harlem," the Harlem Children's Zone programs run from Baby College through high school, providing effective (and expensive) support ot parenets and children with the goal of changing the lives of poor children. Canada's vision goes beyond the Harlem Children's Zone, to the hope of creating a model that can be replicated in other neighborhoods, other cities, other places where class and race conspire to defeat families and destroy the hopes of children.

Paul Tough covered the Harlem Children's Zone for the New York Times. this book provides an admiring -- but not hagiographic -- portrait of Canada and a clear-eyed look at the successes and the failures of his project.

But Tough goes beyond the Harlem Children's Zone to summarize the national debate on race, poverty and education, with particular attention to competing views published since the 1960s. He identifies two competing explanations:

One explanation blames powerful social and economic forces beyond the control of any individual. This belief holds that it is the very structure of the American economy that denies poor people sufficient income, and so the appropriate and just solution is to counter those economic forces by providing the poor with what they lack: food, housing, and money. The opposing explanation for American poverty is that it is caused by the bad decisions of poor people themselves and often perpetuated by the very programs designed to help relieve its effects. I fthis theory is correct, what the poor need is not handouts but moral guidance and strict rules.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James S. Coleman, Charles Murray, William Julius Wilson ... Tough reviews the reports, and then asks the right questions.

In some ways, the verdict is still out on the Harlem Children's Zone and whether it can truly transform the culture of poverty in a community. Even if it does, larger questions about cost and replication remain. The questions take on new significance in view of the campaign statements that Barack Obama made in 2007:

If he were elected president, Obama went on to say, "the first part of my plan to combat urban poverty will be to replicate the Harlem Children's Zone in twenty cities across the country."

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Nov 26, 2008 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

highly readable account of Harlem Children's Zone, including description of how the approach (trying to get poor kids on a "conveyor belt" of success from Baby College for their parents with advice on speaking and reading to kids, discipline techniques, etc. through pre-K and schooling so that they'll bypass culture of failure) differs from Kipp academies and related efforts.

The author describes parenting research and its implications well, and it was actually exciting reading about the various...more highly readable account of Harlem Children's Zone, including description of how the approach (trying to get poor kids on a "conveyor belt" of success from Baby College for their parents with advice on speaking and reading to kids, discipline techniques, etc. through pre-K and schooling so that they'll bypass culture of failure) differs from Kipp academies and related efforts.

The author describes parenting research and its implications well, and it was actually exciting reading about the various staff issues, pressure from the private funders backing the effort to show results quickly, etc.

my only quibble with the book is that it lacks a critical perspective on the research base of this initiative itself. I gather it's viewed as a huge success [according to the book Obama is set to provide gov't. funding to roll out the model to 20 cities], but I wonder....obviously, getting a randomized controlled trial of the longterm life outcomes for kids going through such an intensive intervention would take a hell of a long time and a lot of money, but so does replicating it on a massive scale, and it would be nice to know how well it works first.

From this case study it sounds great in the early years but questionable thereafter -- first cohort to go through the middle school they ended up cutting short [cancelling plan at last minute to keep them for a 9th grade year b/c the kids were out of control and b/c a preliminary analysis of the standardized test data suggested that they weren't improving any (an analysis proven wrong when encouraging progress was evident in the official results after they'd already made the decision, oops)], and 1/3 had dropped out during middle school anyway. Not much is said about what happened to them.

None of that detracts from the point that this is an interesting book about an important subject and an inspiring, dedicated team of people trying to do something about it, but I would have valued a more objective perspective from the author.(less)

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May 16, 2012 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

In Paul Tough’s book, Whatever It Takes, he takes the reader on a journey through Harlem, New York’s fractured public education system, and introduces a remarkable person with a solution to fix it. Geoffrey Canada, having grown up in an urban school system himself, had a vision for the city of Harlem and the children that resided there. For years Canada attempted to work with public schools in Harlem, attempting to provide the children with the education suburban kids are given on a daily basis....more In Paul Tough’s book, Whatever It Takes, he takes the reader on a journey through Harlem, New York’s fractured public education system, and introduces a remarkable person with a solution to fix it. Geoffrey Canada, having grown up in an urban school system himself, had a vision for the city of Harlem and the children that resided there. For years Canada attempted to work with public schools in Harlem, attempting to provide the children with the education suburban kids are given on a daily basis. However, he ran into multiple roadblocks in the public system. Even after providing in-school services such as after school programs and tutors, scores were on the decline. It was then that Canada began developing Harlem Children’s Zone.
Canada knew the public school system could not work in urban areas the same way it did in suburban neighborhoods. The children in urban places face too many challenges at home to be taught with the same methods. Although Americans now preach equality for all races, statistics show a very different reality. For example, the average white family living in Manhattan has an annual income of $248,000 while the average black family living in the same city makes a mere $31,000 each year. After viewing many statistics such as this one, Canada made up his mind that the two groups of children had very different lifestyles, and therefore required very different teaching methods as well.
He began with a project he called “Baby College”. Baby College was a free specialty program for expecting parents living in the city of Harlem. Held weekly on Saturdays, attendees of Baby College received free breakfast and lunch, as well as prizes such as gift cards, after attending a seminar on parenting skills. Many of the seminars revolved around vital parenting techniques, such as the difference between discipline and punishment and to use as much vocabulary as possible around their children. Here parents reformed and refined their skills and techniques for parenting. This was an important part of Canada’s overall plan, for he holds a strong belief in the fact that a child’s education begins in the home.
Many parents that attend Baby College later enroll their toddler in Harlem Gems, a pre-kindergarten program run by Harlem Children’s Zone. From the pre-k class, children transition in Harlem Children’s Zone, a kindergarten through twelfth grade charter school sitting in the center of the city of Harlem. However, although this is a smooth transition process now, this was not always the case.
When Canada first opened the school, he began with only sixth grade and kindergarten classes. Each year, a new lottery would be held for each of the two grades, until the school was full. The kindergarten class was progressing quickly and swiftly; the sixth grade class’ scores were decreasing. Canada soon found himself wondering if he could fulfill the promise he had made: success. He began wondering if sixth grade was simply too late of a start for many of the students. To his dismay, he made the decision to not open the Harlem Children’s Zone high school when it came time for the sixth grade class to enter. Instead, they were kicked out to several other local schools. To this day, that choice remains one of Geoffrey Canada’s toughest and saddest decisions, although he stands by the choice he made. He knows how horrible the statement sounds, but was thinking about the future of the school in lieu of the future of that specific group of students. In other words, students in the elementary school were flourishing, and he was scared he would lose funding for the school because of the middle school students. They were casualties
As discussed in class, America has not made very large strides in racial employment and salary equality.

In 1965 the national employment rate for black men in their early twenties was 82 percent, slightly higher than the corresponding figure for young white men, at 80 percent. Nineteen years later, in 1984, the employment rate for young white men had dipped just slightly, to 78 percent- while the number for young black men had fallen off a cliff, to 58 percent. (31).

For the years following 1984, this racial inequality in employment rates has remained an issue. In class, a TIME magazine article that asked white and black Americans about their views on racial equality was discussed. A staggering amount of white people claimed the U.S. now held racial equality, while an extremely low percentage of black Americans stated racial equality in employment had still not been reached.
Another topic covered in both class as well as Whatever It Takes is the controversial charter school trend. Charter schools are not only controversial, but also under immense pressure to perform well academically. When testing time came around, Canada was faced with a difficult choice. Should he give extra help to the lower-scoring students or try to improve the best students? In New York City, scores are scored in four categories: 1s, 2s, 3s and 4s. But the 1s and 2s are reported together as a group, making the public see only three categories. Due to this, Canada decided to ignore the 1s, claiming “I think we may have thrown in the towel on the kids at the bottom… we want to give the extra time to the students who are doing the best” (144). In class, when charter schools were discussed, the topic of academic success was mentioned, as well as the fact that many times these schools only care about scores. This quote personifies that conversation.
Another topic covered in class was poverty. In this book, Paul Tough discusses poverty on numerous occasions. Harlem Children’s Zone was developed to combat poverty. As mentioned previously, the average white family living in Manhattan has an annual income of $248,000 while the average black family living in the same city makes a mere $31,000 each year. Canada’s response to this statistic was simple. He stated, “There’s just no way in conscience we can allow poverty to remain the dividing line between success and failure in this country, where if you’re born poor in a community like this one, you stay poor… we have to give these kids a chance” (18). In class, New Jersey’s poverty rate was discussed along with the extraordinarily large amount of children born into poverty. This book addresses that horror as well.
Whatever It Takes was written with very little bias. Geoffrey Canada is a black man, while the author, Paul Tough, is a white man. Charter schools are discussed, a very conservative idea, but a love for Barack Obama, who was the democratic candidate for president at the time, is also expressed. However, a tiny bit of class and racial bias can be detected in the writing.
Canada grew up in poverty and was able to escape the vicious cycle. However, he is only person spoken of in the book who has done so. The book provided no examples of people who fell into poverty, only people who were born into it. For example, Tough writes in depth about a woman who “grew up in Harlem in the 1980’s… her mother became addicted to drugs and lost control of her life… she bounced around between upstate and the city, in and out of foster homes” (63). Many stories such as this woman’s are shared about birth into poverty, yet none about falling into poverty are expressed. In other words, only one view of people in poverty was shown.
There is also a slight racial bias in the book. Canada attended Bowdoin College, where students were very enthusiastic about integration of different races. However, Canada established an Afro-American Center at the college. Many “criticized the Afro-American Center as too radical” and even bias against white Americans (121). This is important to note because many excerpts in the book are written with a slight radicalism in favor of Black America. Although no one can deny the oppression the community has faced, it is possible that Canada’s membership to a “radical” group has clouded his opinion and views on White America.
Some people have also criticized Canada for only being concerned about poverty in Black America and ignoring white American families plagued by poverty as well. This bias can perhaps be viewed on the very first page of the book when Tough writes of Canada, “the parents in the auditorium were the ones he had hoped to attract… mostly African American, some Hispanic” (1). This sentence can perhaps demonstrate more racial bias in the story.
Whatever It Takes is a compelling story that makes the reader feel hopeful about urban education. Well-written and powerful, this story on Canada’s accomplishments inspires readers to combat poverty and racial inequality themselves. It also challenges previous opinions on charter schools and the public education system. But most of all, Whatever It Takes is a call for change.
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Jan 21, 2012 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-books, non-fiction

I've read articles and heard interviews with Geoffery Canada and just heard him speak at Old Dominion University, and for the most part I am a fan of what he is doing in Harlem with the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) and his Promise Academy. And this book is definitely worth reading for anyone who hasn't read articles about him, or the HCZ. Canada has been doing excellent work with his varied different initiatives in Harlem, trying to tip the scales in his community, to break the cycle of imbalanc...more I've read articles and heard interviews with Geoffery Canada and just heard him speak at Old Dominion University, and for the most part I am a fan of what he is doing in Harlem with the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) and his Promise Academy. And this book is definitely worth reading for anyone who hasn't read articles about him, or the HCZ. Canada has been doing excellent work with his varied different initiatives in Harlem, trying to tip the scales in his community, to break the cycle of imbalance of achievement and opportunity for those who grow up in poverty and those who do not. The problem I have is my discomfort with the emphasis on test scores, the same discomfort that his first principal had (a discomfort that got her fired). When I heard him speak, and in the interviews I've read (and in this book), Canada speaks for the need for revolutionary educational reform, and yet he then buys into the same system of non-stop testing and teaching to the tests. It seems to me that teaching to the test is not revolutionary and never can be. However, it is the system we currently have, and so I understand why Canada, KIPP and Teach For America (TFA) all emphasize teaching to the test and pushing to raise the student's test scores by 2 or more grade levels in a year, because the tests are the way we have for evaluating where students are currently achieving. But, as everyone knows, as this book acknowledges, the tests are flawed, not accounting for cultural differences, not counting for lack of motivation in the students to do well on a test (instead of motivating students to become true learners, driven by the excitement and power of learning), and discounting all the educational studies that show that teaching things like writing is best done not by testing, but by simply writing and reading a lot, without fear of writing the "right" or "wrong" way for tests.

I am not pretending to know a solution. I am not an education scholar, and I absolutely know that Canada and KIPP and TFA and all the other great teachers out there that are working so hard within the current system of testing are doing so because they are working to do the best for their students. And we need them to keep on doing that work. I respect everything that Canada is doing, and I also know that their have been a great many successes with his, TFA and KIPPs methods. But I also wonder what would happen if we were truly revolutionary and threw out the tests and instead focused on true, holistic learning. What if we treated teachers as professionals and trusted them to do their job of education? What would happen if we had a program of education like in Finland that focuses on equality of education for all, including the radical (to us) step of having NO private schools. No separate and unequal educations serving and creating a social elite? That is a truly radical idea.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/a...

Here's a excerpt for that article:
"For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.

Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools.

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country."

I'm not saying that we have to become Finnish here in America, but their programs seem to bear looking into, and ultimately, Canada's Promise Schools seem a bit like more of the same. A definite improvement over the regular public schools in Harlem, but not a long-term solution. Indeed, Canada talks eloquently in his desire to get away for the Superman mentality, that we need long-lasting, wide-reaching solutions to combat the education inequality problem, but in the end, the Promise Academies are seeming like a Superman project. That said, I also wonder what would happen if every child in America had the right to quality preschool beginning at age three (like Canada has created with his Harlem Gems, and if all parents had the support of something like the HCZ Baby College, and if all children were guaranteed a right to a quality education in a safe school, with food and health care provided as part of the deal? That may paint a very bright future for all of America.

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Aug 05, 2011 Meurs rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

2008/2009 : document romancé sur l'experience d'Harlem Children's Zone, mis sur pied par Geoffrey Canada en 2004. Objectif : eduquer TOUS les enfants de Harlem, pas seulement en sauver quelques uns avec le prof super heros . Diagnostic : retard scolaire des pauvres liés à leur parental background (methodes d education, alimentation, teenagers mothers, familles monoparentales, etc...). Importance du milieu, de l'influence des pairs, des modèles. Stratégie : commencer au plus tôt, à la grossesse;...more

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May 09, 2011 lady jane added it

Shelves: education

I was disappointed in this book. I wanted more information about the actual educational processes that Canada is advocating and implementing. Apart from the discussion of the "conveyor belt" concept and the detailed description of the Harlem Gems program that concentrated on language, I found the obsession with test scores highly disturbing. I also thought that his time-goals for raising test scores for the middle school students were unrealistic. He made decisions based on his benefactors' need...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Al rated it 4 of 5 stars

Journalist Paul Tough's incisive history of Geoffrey Canada's quest to establish effective childhood education in Harlem. The beauty of this book is that, while it focuses deserved attention on Mr. Canada, it spends equal amounts of time on the parents, the children, the teachers and administrators of the Harlem Children's Zone. Mr. Tough's presentation of all the parties is clear, sympathetic and honest. The reader sees the difficulties to be overcome, but one is left with the feeling that des...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Kristin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: be-the-change, education

Why are children from low-income families less likely to do well in school? What would it take to help an entire neighborhood of kids succeed? Author Paul Tough mixes stories of individual kids and families involved in Harlem Children’s Zone programs with a larger discussion of research on anti-poverty programs in an engaging and fascinating book. (It feels very efficient to read a summary of an entire body of research in a few very readable pages ;-) We learn about Baby College, Three year old...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Giedra rated it 4 of 5 stars

Picked this up at a Borders going out of business sale and I'm so glad I did.

I had heard a good bit about Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone on the radio and in magazines over the past few years, but was fascinated to get a more in-depth look at what he has done there. In addition to details on all the interlocking programs that are part of the HCZ, the book also includes background explaining the history of poverty in America, including summaries of important books/theories that influence...more

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Dec 21, 2009 Karin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone committed to doing whatever it takes to make a positive impact in the educational community.

Recommended to Karin by: Executive Director of a Non-Profit

For a graduate project, I was researching the effects of poverty on first generation college bound students and this book was recommended to me by a friend.

I've worked in the field of education for 15 years in various capacities and have been more discouraged than encouraged regarding the importance of education for both the individual, communities, and our society overall. The lack of commitment from students and families, and lack of passion on the side of administrators and faculty, has crea...more

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Sep 08, 2009 Cynthia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book after liking a story about Harlem Children's Zone on This American Life. It's written by a scholar/journalist who sunk years of his life into examining this plan for educating poor black and hispanic kids. It's longer than it needs to be and duller than I'd like to read but he does a good job explaining the minutae that matters.

Here's the best bit of a Slate review: Canada likens KIPP's mission to a kind of reverse quarantine: Take the best kids, who already enjoy distinct adva...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 5 of 5 stars

Geoffrey Canada is a teacher who came up against the most-difficult-to-educate group of kids a teacher can face: kids who grew up in poverty, with broken homes, surrounded by drugs and guns and alcohol. But Canada was not daunted by this group. As a child, he grew up in the same world and, somehow, he managed to transcend that world and make a good life for himself. Canada, unlike other reformers, found much to love in the Harlem in which he grew up. He found support and love among his fellow Af...more

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Jun 09, 2009 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The title is a little misleading. Canada puts a lot into his Harlem Children's Zone, and his "conveyor belt" concept does seem to be working. However, he is essentially dismantling the middle school until the "conveyor belt" kids arrive. Starting in the 6th grade seems to be too late even with intensive before and after school programs, an extended year, one-on-one tutoring, etc. State test scores started at 20% passing and only made it up to the 30s in 3 years. There was difficulty with discipl...more

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Feb 18, 2009 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an incredible book -- one of the best overviews of the achievement gap and the research surrounding it I've seen to date. Tough has an incredibly balanced style -- he manages to capture the intense juxtaposition of hope and despair that characterizes the struggle for educational equality. The structure of the book is incredible -- he focuses on a few stories that make his point (focus on early childhood interventions) quite convincingly without hitting you over the head with it.

Unfortuna...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Cruton rated it 4 of 5 stars

You can tell the author has a background in journalism as the language of the book was very smooth and approachable. As a forewarning this review will be in no small measure something of a comparison to Savage Inequalities which I read before this.
In any event unlike the depression brought on by the shear weight of the endless figures ans statistics in Savage, Whatever it Takes is quite uplifting. Not only does it offer solutions but it also gets away from the message that education is a functi...more You can tell the author has a background in journalism as the language of the book was very smooth and approachable. As a forewarning this review will be in no small measure something of a comparison to Savage Inequalities which I read before this.
In any event unlike the depression brought on by the shear weight of the endless figures ans statistics in Savage, Whatever it Takes is quite uplifting. Not only does it offer solutions but it also gets away from the message that education is a function of dollars spent per student but more. The quantities of money Canada spends on his students is indeed quite large but it is not his focus.
Main Ideas:
You've got to get to kids early. By establishing good reading habits early as adults they won't give a second thought to reading. Additionally, talking to your kids as infants and small children constantly on any and every topic will expand their vocabulary immeasurably.
Get the parents involved.
In the past arguments for or against welfare programs have been made in mostly moral terms with evidence presented that was not actually correlated to the programs. Consequently welfare tended to swing from pole to pole depending on the moral view of those in power at the time. To get away from this one most look at results. If the program teaches at risk teens job skills but doesn't actually raise the chances of these individuals to be employed when compared to a control of similar teens who didn't take the program the program isn't working and should be discontinued because of failure to accomplish it's purpose, not because the new occupants of congress decide they don't like social safety net programs.
To really effect change you must do so on a relatively broad scale. To try and save just an individual from a bad neighborhood, the hero method, while personally rewarding is much harder and less effective as all their available role models are high school dropouts with criminal records.
To make sure the change you wish to instill takes effect you have to keep up the rigor of their education. It is insufficient to provide a good elementary school and then dump kids in a terrible middle school and high school. The gains made in elementary will gradually slip away.
Really the central message of the book is get to the kids early and then stay on them as the go along.
As a note in closing Geoffery Canada undoubtably a great man who took a huge risk both personally and financially in doing all that he has done and has prevailed only through a superhuman investment of time, work, and attention. That said I was quite sad to read of his quite distrust of white people. Perhaps putting this comment at the end of the review will give it the appearance of being more important than it actually is. I found the information to be troubling but mostly irrelevant to any of Canada's many great accomplishments. Any evaluation of Canada on the merits of his many accomplishments must conclude he is an outstanding individual and a credit to his community, it is only on a personal level that I find this tid-bit to have any significance.(less)

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Aug 21, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a genuinely important book. The famous pro-capitalism quote "the business of America is business" could easily be updated to "the business of America is education" as the only employees who are still in demand are the well-educated and those willing to work for pennies (and the second group are not to be found in the U.S. anymore). Yet voters and politicians who are all blandly willing to repeat how valuable an education is have not taken the concrete actions to improve a system that has...more

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Nov 13, 2009 Redeemer Community Partnership rated it 5 of 5 stars

We shared this book with our board of directors in September. It tells the story of the Harlem Children's Zone, one of the most innovative and impactful community development efforts in the country.

Geoffrey Canada, the organization's director, is attempting to transform a 100 square block section of Harlem. Not just provide services to those who want/need them, not just help a small number of young people "escape" their neighborhood, not just intervene in one or two specific urban problems. Wit...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Mark Schlatter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: shreve, friend_suggestion

I was very impressed by the book, although that may speak more to Geoffrey Canada and his work than Paul Tough's writing.

I will highlight two aspects of Tough's work. First, he does a great job of taking the reader through the sociological history of how Americans have viewed poverty, educational achievement, and race. I learned a lot about the swings our society takes from government intervention (and the belief that our country is failing the poor) and government retraction (and the belief tha...more

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Oct 12, 2010 Kaleena Menke rated it 5 of 5 stars

A tough read because this book spoke exactly to the work I'm doing right now: intergenerational poverty and working to overcome it. Several times while reading I found myself nodding in agreement and wondering why I was spending my leisure time reading about something I spent struggling with all day long.

Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, is constantly struggling to come up with creative solutions to help children escape from their circumstances. He's set up a "conveyor...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Natalie (Natflix&Books) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Whatever It Takes is an in-depth look at Geoffrey Canada and how he is working to transform Harlem and Harlem's educational system with the Harlem Children's Zone, a multi-step "conveyor belt" system of interventions put in place to help a child from birth through high school.

Canada was raised in Harlem on Union Avenue, an exceptionally bright child, he went to a different school than his friends from the block, eventually going to Bowdoin College for his undergraduate and Harvard for masters....more Whatever It Takes is an in-depth look at Geoffrey Canada and how he is working to transform Harlem and Harlem's educational system with the Harlem Children's Zone, a multi-step "conveyor belt" system of interventions put in place to help a child from birth through high school.

Canada was raised in Harlem on Union Avenue, an exceptionally bright child, he went to a different school than his friends from the block, eventually going to Bowdoin College for his undergraduate and Harvard for masters. He went back to Harlem with the idea of transforming the educational system and to close the black/white achievement gap.

The first part of his plan is called Baby College. This is for parents who are pregnant to those with children up to three. Baby College teaches (usually) very young, poor parents how to care for the babies. It teaches them how reading to their children, constantly talking to them, taking them to museums and parks, etc. will help them give their child a leg up in the world. The gap between rich, white kids and poor urban children begins at age 2 and by age 3 it is even bigger. *I am going to speak in generalities here, as the book does. I understand that every parent and child is different. I am in no way making judgements on how different races raise their children. This book is based on the multitude of research that has been done on the achievement gap and why it exists.* One of the biggest reasons for this is because white, middle-class parents constantly talk to their children, they read to them, and answer their questions. The verbal gap between groups entering kindergarten is already huge. If the gap continues to widen throughout the child's life, it just makes it that much harder for middle school/high school teachers as they try to get their students up to grade level abilities. Canada wants to change all of that. After Baby College, there is the Three Year Journey, also for parents; the Harlem Gems, an extensive pre-kindergarten program; onto the elementary school; and then to Promise Academy, the secondary school. Before and after school tutoring, Saturday school, literary programs--all types of interventions are in place through the Harlem Children's Zone, not only for the kids who are lucky enough to win a seat in the charter school, but for all children living in Harlem.

I've read the criticisms of Canada's obsession with test scores, and I absolutely agree--it sucks that such an emphasis is placed on math and reading scores at the expense of art and other programs, but that is the way it is for a couple of reasons. First, in this current climate of high-stakes testing that has come out of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) laws, schools have to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) or be penalized. Two, because the Harlem Children's Zone and Promise Academy was advertised and lauded so heavily in the media (Canada was on the cover of Time Magazine and featured on 60 Minutes), to have its students not do well on these tests would have been devastating to the whole program. Also, when students are four or five grade-levels behind in reading or math, extensive measures must be put in place in order to get those students on to some sort of post-secondary education. Hopefully, as more and more children go through the early parts of the program, the need for such extensive measures will be less necessary and other programs will be given more attention. (Although I personally believe that some type of art, music or other creative program should be a part of a student's daily life, not an afterthought.)

Canada's model is impressive, to say the least. He honestly cares about the children in Harlem and is doing everything he can to make sure they lead happy, successful lives. The author, Paul Tough, does a great job reporting on the five years he followed Canada and the other administrators in the schools. The book is easy to read and introduces a lot of people and research in without being dry or overloaded. Highly recommend to those interested in education. (less)

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Oct 21, 2009 Krista rated it 4 of 5 stars

I waffled between 3 and 4 on this one. It's hard to separate the ballsy experiment of the Harlem Chidren's Zone, to which I would give 5 stars for effort and innovation, from the book detailing some of the stories, to which I give 3 stars because I didn't think it provided adequate coverage or information.

Paul Tough tries to tell too many stories so he ends up telling too many stories not so well. The organization of the book is troubling, flipping back and forth between Canada's youth, Canada's...more

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Mar 28, 2009 Will Gardner rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is theMountains Beyond Mountains of ed reform. It's a compelling look at Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone, told by a journalist who has clearly lived and breathed his subject for many months.
There are two complementary strategies employed by the HCZ to help all the kids in their 97-block escape the cycle of poverty.

The Conveyor Belt
What Canada, along with many researchers, has found is that early interventions like Head Start significantly improve the academic achievement of...more

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May 17, 2012 Kristy rated it 5 of 5 stars

After having taught in schools that focused on working with largely under-served, under-achieving students, this book really spoke to me. I was prepared to be a bit cynical, but Geoffrey Canada is trying to change the lives of people in color who live in poverty before they are even born... and he's succeeding. Paul Tough, the author, does an incredible job of highlighting the research that has been used to justify one strategy or another in addressing poverty. He also does not avoid showing the...more

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