Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Great summary of Geoffrey Canada

I haven't posted as much as I ought to have about Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children Zone. Canada is among those who are speaking at the New Yorker Summit .
Kottke has a great summary of what Canada's discovered:

1. We have to tackle everything at the same time. Small programs touching unconnected parts of kids lives aren't that effective.

2. They start working with kids from birth and stay with them until they graduate from college. If they don't let them get behind, later superhero-type interventions (which don't often work) are not needed.

3. Scale is important. If you work with lots of kids, their collective action reinforces itself with little further effort.

4. Accountability and evaluation is needed. Canada said that if bad teachers aren't teaching the kids, they should be fired.

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