Picked-up edpieces from the edworld:
The Strive Partnership gets still more positive press in a short Education Sector write-up about a report on community-wide education accountability which I look forward to reading in whole. Strive, Promise Neighborhoods, Harlem Children's Zone, etc. Will be interesting to see what sort of critiques the report puts forward. The burgeoning writing on Strive is almost all breathless--perhaps for good reason, it's a cool new model, but one gets concerned with anything that looks (or is portrayed as) too perfect.
Incisive post at Eduwonk on Boston Teacher Residency teachers' effectiveness, and how it relates to larger rhetoric about in-district vs. out-of-district approaches to teacher development. btr vs. tfa and what it says about standards, bigger issues, etc. as always cuts to the bone.
Coach G has a good piece on the role of making errors. Whole set of other implications for ESOL classrooms, but that's for another day. Time to go outside and play; it's like 30 degrees warmer than usual for the 30th straight day.
Showing posts with label Harlem Children's Zone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harlem Children's Zone. Show all posts
January 7, 2012
October 14, 2011
How Do You Have a Mission and Still Be a Dreamer?
... or, how do you get nitty-gritty and fuzzy all at once?
Dan Pallotta had a post a few months ago urging missions, not just "mission statements":
The four most important things: 1) Everyday language skills, like how to talk to the doctor. 2) Academic behaviors and skills, like arriving on time to class and organizing a binder. 3) Setting goals that are realistic and achievable. 4) Links to "next steps," i.e. the program they could continue on to after graduating from mine.
I talked about them constantly. I would even say, "I'm on a mission to help them ..." And I focused like a laser on making sure they happened. Did they happen? You bet they did. I wouldn't let them not happen.
But if you focus like a laser, how do you remember all the other things you care about? One class, we tried to get students job placements, and failed. We got them more job-ready, but they didn't have enough English to do more. I saw how hard it was for my immigrant students to change certain parenting habits. I saw how even the many services my human-services agency provided--food stamps applications to immigration assistance--weren't enough to move most families out of poverty. I constantly wanted to expand to more levels of ESOL, but without expanding staff, it wasn't realistic.
I was so focused on what I could do and had to do--and how to do it better. That was the mission.
How did I keep dreaming about solving the bigger problems? I sat on the porch on summer Saturdays reading about language acquisition, or the Harlem Children's Zone. I spent a couple months visiting other programs doing similar but slightly different things. I schlepped to trainings, networked, debated ideas over food and beer. I piloted a bunch of ideas in my program--some successes, some failures. Any way to increase the flow of ideas into my brain--and classroom.
But ultimately I found the day-to-day work, in a one-man program in a small agency, was so demanding that it shut off the really big dreaming. I moved on.
Wherever I land next, I hope I can answer the question, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" with a resounding "Yes." I hope my workplace makes it easy to do that. I hope my colleagues are asking themselves the same question. Nonprofits must focus on doing excellent work every day. It is about the daily impact. It is, at some level, about the next grant. But it has to be about dreaming, too.
Dan Pallotta had a post a few months ago urging missions, not just "mission statements":
Don't waste your advertising space on your mission statement. Use the space to tell people what you've accomplished, or what amazing thing your product will do — use it to show them what mission you're actually on.And from Steve Jobs's Stanford speech, where he asked himself:
"If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.When I ran an adult ESOL program, I came up with a clear mission statement outlining exactly what my students would get out of it.
The four most important things: 1) Everyday language skills, like how to talk to the doctor. 2) Academic behaviors and skills, like arriving on time to class and organizing a binder. 3) Setting goals that are realistic and achievable. 4) Links to "next steps," i.e. the program they could continue on to after graduating from mine.
I talked about them constantly. I would even say, "I'm on a mission to help them ..." And I focused like a laser on making sure they happened. Did they happen? You bet they did. I wouldn't let them not happen.
But if you focus like a laser, how do you remember all the other things you care about? One class, we tried to get students job placements, and failed. We got them more job-ready, but they didn't have enough English to do more. I saw how hard it was for my immigrant students to change certain parenting habits. I saw how even the many services my human-services agency provided--food stamps applications to immigration assistance--weren't enough to move most families out of poverty. I constantly wanted to expand to more levels of ESOL, but without expanding staff, it wasn't realistic.
I was so focused on what I could do and had to do--and how to do it better. That was the mission.
How did I keep dreaming about solving the bigger problems? I sat on the porch on summer Saturdays reading about language acquisition, or the Harlem Children's Zone. I spent a couple months visiting other programs doing similar but slightly different things. I schlepped to trainings, networked, debated ideas over food and beer. I piloted a bunch of ideas in my program--some successes, some failures. Any way to increase the flow of ideas into my brain--and classroom.
But ultimately I found the day-to-day work, in a one-man program in a small agency, was so demanding that it shut off the really big dreaming. I moved on.
Wherever I land next, I hope I can answer the question, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" with a resounding "Yes." I hope my workplace makes it easy to do that. I hope my colleagues are asking themselves the same question. Nonprofits must focus on doing excellent work every day. It is about the daily impact. It is, at some level, about the next grant. But it has to be about dreaming, too.
October 10, 2011
ConStrived?
I had a fascinating conversation Friday with a self-described "instigator" who's helping lead a replication of the STRIVE Together program of the Cincinnati area elsewhere in the Midwest.
Such organizations are modeled loosely off the Harlem Children's Zone and attempt to create cradle-to-career pathways for kids in disadvantaged areas. These Midwestern models differ from HCZ in that they are larger than 100 square blocks and promote collaboration among existing agencies. And their funding is different--I mean, not everyone can be hand-in-glove with Wall Street, right?
Here's what else the Other Midwest Plan has going for it: business, community, and school-district buy-in. Focus on STEM subjects: science, technology, math. Accountability measures from top-to-bottom, including managed instruction and continuous improvement plans. Use of great practices from across the country. Assurance of on-the-ground quality, through plenty of support and professional development for teachers, out-of-school time programs for kids, inclusion of volunteer labor. Emphasis on kindergarten readiness. I took the devil's-advocate pose over and over, and got pretty satisfying answers back.
When what started as a 20-minute call ended at an hour, I thought: Wow, this Other Midwest Plan sounds great! ...
... But is it too good to be true?
The rapid dissemination of the cradle-to-career idea (which I've written about before) is encouraging, insofar as I think it's a good way to frame the movement to achieve legitimate outcomes for kids from tough backgrounds. But it's also a new path full of booby-traps.
A few questions that I think must be addressed:
Such organizations are modeled loosely off the Harlem Children's Zone and attempt to create cradle-to-career pathways for kids in disadvantaged areas. These Midwestern models differ from HCZ in that they are larger than 100 square blocks and promote collaboration among existing agencies. And their funding is different--I mean, not everyone can be hand-in-glove with Wall Street, right?
Here's what else the Other Midwest Plan has going for it: business, community, and school-district buy-in. Focus on STEM subjects: science, technology, math. Accountability measures from top-to-bottom, including managed instruction and continuous improvement plans. Use of great practices from across the country. Assurance of on-the-ground quality, through plenty of support and professional development for teachers, out-of-school time programs for kids, inclusion of volunteer labor. Emphasis on kindergarten readiness. I took the devil's-advocate pose over and over, and got pretty satisfying answers back.
When what started as a 20-minute call ended at an hour, I thought: Wow, this Other Midwest Plan sounds great! ...
... But is it too good to be true?
The rapid dissemination of the cradle-to-career idea (which I've written about before) is encouraging, insofar as I think it's a good way to frame the movement to achieve legitimate outcomes for kids from tough backgrounds. But it's also a new path full of booby-traps.
A few questions that I think must be addressed:
- How does the laudable focus on educational achievement not get narrowed to outcomes in math and English (or, in a better world, math, English, and science)?
- How do you avoid imposing so much quantitatively-based accountability that you create (unfortunate but plausible) incentives to "teach to the test," or worse, manipulate data? How do you create broad, fair evaluations?
- We know that quality of teaching and adult-child interaction are so important in both K-12 classrooms and daycare. How do C2C programs assure that the consensual, progress-oriented message from movement leaders is not diluted at the grassroots level? More to the point, how do they plan to increase the supply of effective front-line practitioners, especially in an era of fiscal retrenchment?
- The C2C approach is warm, fuzzy, and consensus-oriented. It sometimes seems everybody's determinedly on the same page--or at least trying to get there. What if the consensus is wrong?
- How do you make room for (Business-Speak Alert) "process correction" or continuous reflection, when you're keeping a good face up to secure grant money and political will?
- Many of the major social advances in American history grew out of mobilization and politicization of people at the grassroots. People spoke up and got angry, and things changed (see Civil Rights, women's rights, the Voting Rights Act). Can a movement that is so--in some ways--bloodless have long-term impact?
- How do you keep funders and agencies working together? If funding pulled back at some point, or results were uneven between agencies, wouldn't agencies be tempted to steer their own ship again?
- Isn't this an idea from Rich White Men for poor people of color?
September 16, 2011
NFP, HCZ, QED?
I was born into luck.
I had healthy, well-educated parents, married, and stable parents. Dad had a good job, Mom was a dedicated and ardent community activist. My mom wouldn't have even thought of drinking when she was pregnant with me. They had the means to support having one more kid--my little sister--two years later. I grew up near parks, not power plants. There was no lead paint within sight or touch. From the earliest moments, I was loved, read to, and played with--not just by my folks but by aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers.
Am I thankful? You bet! To try to make such positive fetal health behaviors, early parenting, and stable life pathways more prevalent for mothers who didn't have the background of my own, enter the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP). I've been reading about it a lot recently.
For someone like me who's very interested in the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) and programs like it, the NFP raises some big questions.
First, the NFP in a nutshell: It was a plan developed in the 70's by a developmental psychologist to make the conditions I benefited from more widespread for kids born to poor, teenage mothers in Elmira, N.Y., and later Memphis and Denver. The backbone of the program? Sending nurses into the homes, from early pregnancy to a couple years after birth, to talk, teach, model, counsel, what it took to be a good mother.
The results? Less abuse and neglect, less use of public assistance by the families, and more involvement from fathers. Many effects still showed up in kids when they were fifteen years old. RAND found major cost-savings for the kids whose mothers were most at-risk and felt most helpless. A flurry of similar programs emerged, and political leaders were quick to find and implement in their own cities and states.
Teaching parenting is important. Programs like the Harlem Children’s Zone have taken that cue, and added to it: good early parenting should lead to good pre-school, to good K-12 education, to good social-service supports.
But there's an issue with this cradle-to-college "conveyor belt" now being replicated nationwide through the Promise Neighborhoods. The very psychologist who developed NFP, David Olds, found that benefits to his parental supports were only for the at-risk mothers. Secure families who got the supports didn't need them, and were a cost loss from an investment angle. Olds's warning: making services universal may cover some families that don’t actually benefit, diluting resources that at-risk families most need.
By keeping kids on the “conveyor belt” perpetually even if some of them could prosper by graduating out of it—cradle-to-college may threaten to “dilute” services at each level of its continuum. Most of the families in these program's zones would probably be called "at-risk." But maybe not all of them. With scarce resources to fund the kind of childhood I got, that's a reality worth examining.
I had healthy, well-educated parents, married, and stable parents. Dad had a good job, Mom was a dedicated and ardent community activist. My mom wouldn't have even thought of drinking when she was pregnant with me. They had the means to support having one more kid--my little sister--two years later. I grew up near parks, not power plants. There was no lead paint within sight or touch. From the earliest moments, I was loved, read to, and played with--not just by my folks but by aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers.
Am I thankful? You bet! To try to make such positive fetal health behaviors, early parenting, and stable life pathways more prevalent for mothers who didn't have the background of my own, enter the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP). I've been reading about it a lot recently.
For someone like me who's very interested in the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) and programs like it, the NFP raises some big questions.
First, the NFP in a nutshell: It was a plan developed in the 70's by a developmental psychologist to make the conditions I benefited from more widespread for kids born to poor, teenage mothers in Elmira, N.Y., and later Memphis and Denver. The backbone of the program? Sending nurses into the homes, from early pregnancy to a couple years after birth, to talk, teach, model, counsel, what it took to be a good mother.
The results? Less abuse and neglect, less use of public assistance by the families, and more involvement from fathers. Many effects still showed up in kids when they were fifteen years old. RAND found major cost-savings for the kids whose mothers were most at-risk and felt most helpless. A flurry of similar programs emerged, and political leaders were quick to find and implement in their own cities and states.
Teaching parenting is important. Programs like the Harlem Children’s Zone have taken that cue, and added to it: good early parenting should lead to good pre-school, to good K-12 education, to good social-service supports.
But there's an issue with this cradle-to-college "conveyor belt" now being replicated nationwide through the Promise Neighborhoods. The very psychologist who developed NFP, David Olds, found that benefits to his parental supports were only for the at-risk mothers. Secure families who got the supports didn't need them, and were a cost loss from an investment angle. Olds's warning: making services universal may cover some families that don’t actually benefit, diluting resources that at-risk families most need.
By keeping kids on the “conveyor belt” perpetually even if some of them could prosper by graduating out of it—cradle-to-college may threaten to “dilute” services at each level of its continuum. Most of the families in these program's zones would probably be called "at-risk." But maybe not all of them. With scarce resources to fund the kind of childhood I got, that's a reality worth examining.
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