Harlem Children's Zone

The Harlem Children's Zone, New York City

In a speech on urban poverty given by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, he described the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) in New York City as “an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children in a neighborhood where they were never supposed to have a chance.” In Harlem, 61 percent of all children live below the poverty line. Because poverty is a disease that infects the entire community, Obama explained, “We can’t just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community.”

The HCZ serves more than 8,000 children and their families who live in a 97-block area, providing them with an interlocking system of education, social service and community-building programs from birth to post-college.  Researchers Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer, from the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard, call the HCZ “arguably the most ambitious social experiment to alleviate poverty of our time.”

Parents attend “Baby College” where they receive counseling on how to care for newborns and what to expect in the first months of parenthood.  Early childhood education includes an all-day pre-kindergarten program with a 4:1 child-to-adult ratio. Quality child care is also provided, allowing parents to work and young children to socialize and learn during a critical development period.  Innovative charter schools are supplemented with after-school programs and summer programs. The HCZ also offers free preventive health services to help children stay healthy and medical services when they get sick. In addition, families gain access to affordable healthy food, job counselors, free tax assistance, technology training, and crime prevention.

“Today our children in Harlem are doing better than they have ever done before,” said Geoffrey Canada, founder of the HCZ. Parents are reading to their children more frequently. All students in the HCZ’s pre-kindergarten program are school-ready. Almost all students tested are performing at or above grade level in math. African American students in the charter schools have practically eliminated the black-white achievement gap on standardized test results. The prospect of higher education is a reality for these children—in fact, 91 percent of 2008’s graduating seniors went on to college. Researchers Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer concluded in their study that the HCZ is enormously effective at increasing the achievement of the poorest minority children.

Most school reform models attempt to lower racially- and ethnically-based student achievement gaps by quarantining the strongest students from the rest of the community. The HCZ takes a different approach, “contaminating” the community with hope to overcome despair, spreading effective practices, and engaging families through multiple local institutions. The HCZ acknowledges that “it is difficult, often impossible, to raise healthy children in a disintegrated community. Without local institutions that draw families and young people together around common interests and activities—religious, social, and recreational organizations; effective schools; safe and well-used public spaces—even the most heroic child-rearing effort is likely to fail.”

President Barack Obama requested $10 million in his budget to jumpstart his campaign promise to improve the lives of many more children living in poverty. He has proposed 20 “Promise Neighborhoods” across the country, modeled after the HCZ, that would target areas with high poverty and crime rates and low student achievement.

But the HCZ model alone cannot transform public education. In 2008, the HCZ’s expenses for approximately 8,000 children were $40 million, funded through private contributions and government grants. The Promise Neighborhood initiative provides competitive one-year planning grants to nonprofit, community-based organizations to support the development of plans for comprehensive neighborhood programs. Cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Durham, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh are already preparing plans and building partnerships to compete for the federal money. “There’s no reason this program should stop at the end of those blocks in Harlem,” the president said. “It’s time to change the odds for neighborhoods all across America.”

Cristina Sepe was an Emerson National Hunger Fellow through the Congressional Hunger Center in 2008-2009. She worked for part of her fellowship at Bread for the World.

Issues