Everyone’s chiming in on David Brooks’ column on the amazing work done by Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, so I’ll throw my hat into the ring as well…

It’s always exciting when a NYT columnist writes about education, not because it’s anything new to those of us in the education world, but because it delivers issues we care about to a vast audience typically beyond our reach (Brooks’ column sits, as of now, at #2 on the NYT most emailed list). The flip side is that a NYT columnist, intentionally or unintentionally, can negatively skew how the public views an issue. Brooks is right to highlight HCZ’s success in narrowing the achievement gap, and he’s right to emphasize the role the charter schools’ culture of accountability and no excuses play. But he’s wrong to write this:

These results are powerful evidence in a long-running debate. Some experts, mostly surrounding the education establishment, argue that schools alone can’t produce big changes. The problems are in society, and you have to work on broader issues like economic inequality. Reformers, on the other hand, have argued that school-based approaches can produce big results. The Harlem Children’s Zone results suggest the reformers are right. The Promise Academy does provide health and psychological services, but it helps kids who aren’t even involved in the other programs the organization offers.

False dichotomies are pervasive in education debates, and Brooks perpetuates one of the most prevalent: the idea that between the Broader, Bolder Approach and Education Equality Project, one must be proved right and one wrong. This is unhelpful and untrue. As Canada himself has lamented (he is one of the few who signed both manifestos): “Unfortunately, so much of the discussion is around academic outcomes that people are going to make some false choices.”

Canada is certainly a reformer, but he’s stated that he deals in building communities, not just building schools. HCZ bills itself as “An innovative and unique community-based organization, offering education, social-service and community-building programs to children and families.” While successful schools are the central plank, they’re just one of many, the majority of which provide social services and community building rather than education. To ignore or minimize this, as Brooks does, is to miss the entire premise of HCZ: it’s a holistic “conveyor belt” of services aimed at improving an entire neighborhood. How does HCZ’s success provide evidence that a solely school-based approach somehow wins?

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From the moment the Center for American Progress event began, it was apparent that all the panelists were in awe of Geoffrey Canada and his work with the HCZ. With his personal dedication and vision, the incredible infrastructure and scale of his project, the numerous philanthropic dollars he garnered for the HCZ, his unfailing belief that the community can change, and the testimonies of families about the difference the HCZ has made in their lives, chronicled by Paul Tough’s book, Whatever it Takes, it’s hard not to be impressed. Even Roland Fryer, playing the self-proclaimed “grumpy economist” role, prefaced his comments by stating that he is a Geoffrey Canada fan.

Third graders in HCZ’s Promise Academy charter school outperformed their peers in math on the New York state standardized tests, but the reading scores aren’t making the same gains yet. The mixed results forced Fryer to put on his grumpy hat and concede that the jury is still out on academic effectiveness based on the standardized test data.

While academic achievement is the ultimate measure of success, it is just one part of Canada’s program. HCZ also focuses on changing the culture of the neighborhood to a place of respect and opportunity. Shifting adolescents’ attitudes about success must be a part of the equation if there is to be real change, for they are the ones that set the tone on the streets and who the elementary students look to for behavioral cues. Fryer and Canada discussed the need to have adult role models “re-brand” success in terms that are relatable to the Harlem students, which often meant breaking with middle class decorum and simply revealing how much money a person makes being an accountant/dentist/professor, etc. Canada admits that working with this age group is a constant struggle, and Tough described the emotional tone in the charter middle school as feeling like it is always in crisis mode.

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So I crashed the Aspen Institute’s National Education Summit at the Mayflower Hotel yesterday, and returned to the office today deeply pleased that I did. A lot of food for thought from a lot of smart people. I’ll put down some more extended and possibly coherent thoughts later this week, but for now, a few quick takeaways:

∙ I’ve seen Prince George’s Superintendent John Deasy speak twice now, and both times I’ve been blown away by the no-nonsense way he frames our commitment to impoverished students as a moral imperative. If you’ve never heard him speak, he says things like:

My mission is to make the invisible visible … We [as a society] still have deep trains of thought that not all students can learn at high levels. But we have privilege and agency and it’s our obligation to provide it for students who don’t yet have it.

And he really makes you feel it when he says it (or at least he makes me feel it). Sort of recalls the whole education-as-a-civil-rights-issue vibe that got me into this business in the first place. Deasy also earned spontaneous applause when he declared that teachers who don’t improve after professional development and intervention “don’t get to stand in front of our youth.”

∙ Not sure what amazes me more: that 100% of Atlanta schools met AYP last year (!!!), or that Beverly Hall has been Superintendent there for nine years (in D.C. we’ve had six in the last 11 years). Of course, the two factoids might be connected.

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In an earlier post, Ben introduced the Third Way Approach and I agree with his slightly mellowed perspective. We have to do things differently both in the schools and in the community. The “third approach” is right on the money and will have the biggest impact on the most kids.

It is time for the old way of schooling to evolve.  Charter schools like Kipp, SEED, and others along with community programs like Harlem Children’s Zone, which served as the model for the program I worked with in Orlando, Parramore Kidz Zone, are doing whatever it takes to make sure kids have every opportunity to succeed.

I’ll sign on to Ben’s “third way” approach. And according to Tom, even the school reform golden children at KIPP are proving that accountability and social supports are not mutually exclusive. His report from Denver notes that:

In response to a question from one of the 350 or so people in the audience about whether schools should be expected to overcome the many disadvantages that students from poor families bring to the classroom, [KIPP founder Mike] Feinberg pointed out the KIPP is build on the premise that there should be high expectations for all kids–and that schools serving kids from impoverished backgrounds need to surround them with support. KIPP provides a longer school day and school year, tutors, parent education programs, and host of community partnerships that supply vision screening, health care, counseling and other services.

With the girls giving me grief for my post on the Broader, Bolder Approach, I thought I should clarify my stance with the help of Paul Tough’s timely piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine about the split over education in the Democratic party.  Lining up on one side is the anti-NCLB, pro-union crowd, and standing against them are the pro-accountability, pro-merit pay reformers who believe that schools that fail poor students of color have a responsibility to overhaul themselves.  Tough describes this latter group as “a loose coalition of mayors and superintendents, charter school proponents and civil rights advocates;” these are the Education Equality Project folks.

But then, Tough writes:

A new and growing movement of researchers and advocates has begun to argue that the longstanding and sharp conceptual divide between school and not-school is out of date. It ignores, they say, overwhelming evidence of the impact of family and community environments on children’s achievement. At the most basic level, it ignores the fact that poor children, on average, arrive in kindergarten far behind their middle-class peers. There is evidence that schools can do a lot to erase that divide, but the reality is that most schools do not. If we truly want to counter the effects of poverty on the achievement of children, these advocates argue, we need to start a whole lot earlier and do a whole lot more.

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What can I say? I guess I want to have my accountability cake and eat my free or reduced lunch, too.

I believe 100% in holding schools accountable for student achievement. (Unlike Ben, I wasn’t a TFA core member. But I come from that tradition, and as a young white teacher in SE DC it was usually assumed that I was TFA. I even got pretty good at starting stories with “this one time, at Institute…”) So what is it that makes me uneasy about using the Education Equality Project as a foundation for my thinking on education policy? I suspect it has something to do with that icky feeling I got watching heads nodding above suits, agreeing that the “new paternalism” will of course avoid the pitfalls of the “old paternalism” because it teaches English in the context of code-switching.

I wonder if making teachers and schools alone responsible for student achievement allows us to wash our hands of a whole host of other issues. What if holding schools accountable for closing the achievement gap means we’re no longer accountable for the history and social structures that created it? Does it give us permission to turn a blind eye towards the social problems of the inner-city? If I can teach my student to ace the math exam, sit up straight and track me with her eyes, should I stop worrying that she’s been wearing the same shirt for 3 days? And shouldn’t her daily existence inform the policies that guide her education?

Of course, some will write me off as a classic case of white liberal guilt. It’s undeniably true that a good education is the ticket out of our worst neighborhoods and the best hope to make them more stable, healthy places to live. I’m not attacking the schools that have made it work in those neighborhoods without relying on increased social services. It’s obvious that we need more KIPPs and more SEEDs, and that serious changes need to be made in our traditional schools.

But until parents start pulling their kids out of Andover to send them to SEED, our schools are still part of something bigger, and I think we should take care that school accountability doesn’t become an excuse to ignore it.

Update: As I pour my liberal, bleeding heart out over here, Mike is over on Flypaper insisting that

in a tight economy, arguing for investments in out-of-school interventions means arguing against investments in k-12 education.

Maybe after 9 months I’ll be that cynical too, but I sort of hope not.