Taking the Harlem Children's Zone Out of Harlem

On Friday, the Department of Education officially launched its Promise Neighborhoods program, which will give out more than $200 million for "cradle-to-career" services to improve educational outcomes and, ultimately, combat poverty among young people in distressed neighborhoods around the country.

A big, fat chunk of federal money being invested in the nation's poor youth — sounds great, right? But perhaps you're a cynic like me, and you're wondering why the government was willing to pony up so much cash for a brand new anti-poverty program. They haven't exactly had the best track record of supporting the nation's poor, after all.

The answer lies with a man named Geoffrey Canada, whose Harlem Children's Zone is the inspiration for Promise Neighborhoods. Canada launched HCZ nearly fifteen years ago as an experiment in tackling poverty at the hyper-local level. The ambitious effort worked its way through Harlem block-by-block, addressing everything from schools to violence to health, until it encompassed nearly a hundred blocks and had eliminated the neighborhood's longstanding mathematics achievement gap. The effort has shown such promise that the New York Times dubbed it "the Harlem Miracle," and President Obama not only name-checked it on the campaign trail, but promised to make it his administration's blueprint for fighting poverty: "There's no reason this program should stop at the end of those blocks in Harlem."

Promise Neighborhoods is the realization of that campaign promise, and given the success of HCZ, it seems like a good deal. But will the same model work in other neighborhoods that have entirely different demographics and unique challenges all their own? This could be either a very expensive experiment or an effort well worth the cost.

(By the way, the always excellent radio program This American Life dedicated half of one of its shows to Canada and the HCZ in September 2008. The segment is well worth a listen.)

Photo credit: ND Strupler