We are expecting a full house to hear from Geoffrey Canada at the next Minnesota Meeting. Check back here next week for an update on the discussion.

He says, “Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.”

He goes on to quote a Harvard economist who believes what Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids.”

Brooks finishes his column by challenging other communities to take on HCZ’s best practices to make the necessary reforms to close the achievement gap.  Locally, the Northside Achievement Zone is working on replicating the HCZ model by creating a collaborative of community organizations serving youth in North Minneapolis.

Since becoming a mother I find myself periodically referencing Hillary Clinton’s book from the 1990′s “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.“  I believe this to be very true, I regularly rely on family, friends, neighbors, and community members to support me (and my husband!) on my adventure of raising a child.  I also believe in being an active member of the village.  Whether it is modeling  HCZ or the development of the Northside Achievement Zone, we all have a role in the success and positive development of the youth in our community.