Canada Tells Tulsa To Build on Its Successes
Founder of Innovative Education Venture Gets Brock Prize
By
ANDREA EGER
Tulsa World
TULSA--The founder of Harlem Children’s Zone urged leaders here to build on their education successes, and to confront race and socioeconomic challenges.
The recipient of the 2010 Brock International Prize in Education, Geoffrey Canada was in Tulsa on Thursday to participate in an education symposium.
The symposium was sponsored by Oklahoma State University at Tulsa.
Since he founded Harlem Children’s Zone, it has become one of the nation’s greatest success stories in urban education.
“There are a lot of reasons for the city of Tulsa to be excited about the future,” he said. “A lot of fundamentals exist in very high-quality levels here in Tulsa.
“There has to be a clear plan drawn up [that outlines] where we go from here.”
Mr. Canada toured Kendall-Whittier Elementary School in Tulsa and Rosa Parks Elementary School in the Union Public School District.
Both have been named “community schools,” since they offer a web of support for children and their families, including health care, social services, after-school enrichment programs and adult education, all with the help of community organizations.
Mr. Canada knows a thing or two about that model, to put it mildly.
His nonprofit organization offers parent education, all-day preschools and charter schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as a variety of social and medical services.
Mr. Canada said the programs help fulfill Harlem Children’s Zone mission.
What’s that mission?
To do “whatever it takes” to help transform central Harlem, he said.
Harlem Children’s Zone serves 10,000 children at 20 sites within a 100-block area plagued by crime, drugs and decades of poverty.
But Mr. Canada is quick to point out that the program started in the early 1990’s with a mission to turn things around for poor families on just one block.
It didn’t open its first preschool until 2001, and then its first charter school, Promise Academy, followed in 2004.
“In five years, we’ve produced schools where kids are successful,” Mr. Canada said.
“I’d like to tell you I’m a genius, but we did very basic things where the education system had failed.”
“What it takes is a group of adults who will say,” the founder of Harlem Children’s Zone went on, “ ‘This is unacceptable and we’re not going to allow it anymore and we are going to do whatever it takes.’ ”
Asked by Supt. Cathy Burden of the Union school district how Harlem Children’s Zone can be replicated, Mr. Canada said he thinks replicating its critical components for success is more valuable than its specific program designs.\
Those critical components?
Among them, he said, are securing help from the community, and creating a pipeline of schools where “best practices” are used, so that students can progress from early childhood through high school.
Others, he pointed out, are creating “scale,” so that at least 75 percent to 80 percent of children in the target area are affected, using data to make adjustments, and holding adults accountable for results.
He joked that he and Bill Gates have advocated for many of the same reforms in education, but Mr. Gates gets a different response.
“Bill Gates will say the same stuff, and people will say, ‘Oh, this is deep stuff,’ ” Mr. Canada commented, eliciting laughter from the audience.
“Well, we need the Bill Gateses of this community to take this on, because people will listen to them,” Mr. Canada said, emphatically.
He also called on business and clergy leaders to help schools confront the financial crises faced by many across the nation.
“We cannot allow schools to go through two of three really bad years,” he said.
“Even at good schools, you lose the infrastructure for success,” he continued.
“We have to have a robust conversation about education, and what it means to this community--and it shouldn’t be just the ‘do-gooders.”
“There is a greater sense of optimism here [regarding] change than I’ve found in lots of other communities,” Mr. Canada said.
But he also mentioned the need to confront the issues of race and socioeconomic.
“These are things that have to be talked about in honest conversations,” he remarked.
The Brock Prize, sponsored by OSU, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Tulsa, includes a $40,000 cash prize.
It is awarded annually to an individual for innovative and effective ideas that have significantly effected the practice or understanding of education.
