The Harlem Children's Zone Eliminates Racial Achievement Gap

The results are in! We have stupendous statistics on black educational achievement coming out of the Harlem Children's Zone charter schools, and I want to share them with you.

Michelle-Style is devoted to tracking the Obama influence on fashion, style, and everyday living. That last term "everyday living" covers a lot of ground, and Michelle-Style tries to cover the issues that matter most in our lives -- and that's not fashion, with all due respect to my own career.

I will write later today on Sexy Futures about the "Models as Muse" exhibit that I saw yesterday at the Metropolitan Museum. Besides the fact that it was a poorly executed, uninspiring presentation -- to my humble eye -- the "Models as Muse" show couldn't thrill me as much as the David Brooks column in today's New York Times: The Harlem Miracle.

Michelle-Style features a Yes We Can channel for a reason!

When I read just now that the test scores coming out of the Harlem Children's Zone schools have eliminated the statistical black-white achievement gap, I wanted to cry.

Harvard economist Roland Fryer wrote to David Brooks: "“The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.”

Fryer continues: What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and president, has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. It’s amazing. It should be celebrated. But it almost doesn’t matter if we stop there. We don’t have a way to replicate his cure, and we need one since so many of our kids are dying — literally and figuratively.”

Read more details of the Harlem Children's Zone results from David Brooks.

This achievement by primarily African American students defies the advice of scholars of every skin color, who argue that quality schools cannot effectively change the lives of disadvantages, inner city students, without a change in the whole culture.

Refusing to abide by this premise, Ceoffrey Canada has disproven a core assumption about quality education.

Surely FLOTUS will address these results soon, with her core premise that quality education is critical to self-advancement.

Brooks refers us to author Paul Tough, who has detailed the journey of Harlem Children's Zone initiative; and also David Whitman, author of Sweating the Small Stuff. Woops. I just found POTUS on YouTube, talking about the Harlem Children's Zone project.

Barack Obama on the Harlem Children's Zone

The results are the best Yes We Can ones achieved ever. In his video, POTUS says that he will duplicate the results of the Harlem Achievement Zone in 20 cities across America. Let us pray that this initiative has survived the new budget.

Moving away from the experts, I want to share the thoughts of African American women living in Harlem, with children and grandkids attending Harlem Children's Zone charter schools. This news is not the end of the road, but the beginning of a new one.

Harlem Children's Zone Moms

This is a pay now or pay later conversation. Every American has a vested interest in duplicating the success of the Harlem Children's Zone initiative. What a wonderful Mother's Day David Brooks column for mothers everywhere.   Anne

Comments

[James]

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