Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America Book

"It's the parents' fault", is the oft-heard retort to all sorts of problems in our educational system. While that statement may be descriptive, it isn't prescriptive. Geoffrey Canada has an ambitious prescription to help poor urban kids in Harlem, first by ignoring vexing political and social question about the origins of the cycle of poverty. His plan is social engineering on a grand scale -- he needs to break the cycle somewhere, and chooses to draw a line in the generational sands. All the kids born after some date (1998?) in the 97 block Harlem Children's Zone are eligible for the "conveyor belt", with a program to introduce formerly middle-class practices to these kids from before birth to high school. Most notable, he has given up on improving the lives of their parents, except in their parenting of the next generation.

While the HCZ cause is noble, sadly, this book is an uncritical hagiography. The prime objective of the schools is to improve standardized test scores. The book claims that the schools don't "teach to the test", but it is blatantly obvious that they do. In the third grade, practice tests are given monthly for the six months preceding the actual tests. The kids are tutored in the specific areas where they are lacking on these New York standardized tests, and in test-taking skills.