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

By Paul Tough

New York Times bestselling author Paul Tough's Whatever It Takes is "one of the best books ever written about how poverty influences learning, and vice versa" (The Washington Post).

What would it take?

That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children — not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives — their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.

Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but also of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9780547348216

Paul Tough

PAUL TOUGH is the author of Helping Children Succeed and How Children Succeed, which spent more than a year on the New York Times hardcover and paperback bestseller lists and was translated into twenty-eight languages. He is also the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America. He is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to the public radio program This American Life. You can learn more about his work at paultough.com and follow him on Twitter: @paultough.

Reviews for Whatever It Takes

[klburnside · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I saw this book on a shelf at the bookstore and picked it up because it was praised by Ira Glass on the cover. I then turned it over and saw additional praise from Dave Eggers and Michael Pollan. I figured it was worth a read.

The book is about a community based set of programs in Harlem designed to help kids get out of poverty and into college. The program seems like it has done really amazing things and it was interesting to read about the successes and failures along the way. I can't believe how intense the programs are and how much it takes to catch inner city kids up to their more wealthy counterparts. The test scores of the children do dramatically improve with such intense programs, but it seems that such dramatic teaching to the test isn't a good idea in any kind of school.

[michellech_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ironically Paul Tough was a little tough on the parents he portrays in the Harlem Children's Zone and in my opinion, helps to promote stereotypes around dress, household composition and styles of speech. That I didn't like. With that said, he does do an excellent job of describing the incredible driving force that is Geoffrey Canada. The unwavering commitment to excellence and the determination to change systemic poverty is an example to be replicated everywhere- thank you Obama for Promise Neighborhoods! I suppose that Tough also reinforces the idea that money can change generational poverty. Someone please send some Wall Street tycoons to more nonprofits; individuals who can commit 25 million at a time and REALLY change lives. The idea of private/public partnerships is much too long in the making.

[ohernaes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good review of American schooling debates, including research. The successes and failures of Geoffrey Canada's efforts to set up educational services in Harlem. He had an ambition to change everything at once. Maybe this is called for, but a particular danger with that approach is that it makes it difficult to evaluate what works and what not. Canada was held up as a model by Barack Obama before he became president.

[richard9thurman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I finished reading Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough. It’s about the efforts of Geoffrey Canada to break the cycle of multi-generational urban poverty in America. Canada uses a 97 block Harlem neighborhood as his laboratory. First he learns that it’s not enough to change the lives of 2 or 3 kids through superhuman intervention. While that’s great for the few lives that are changed, what is really needed is a method that can change the lives of hundreds of children, and can be replicated in large cities across the country. Canada’s program begins with parents who are expecting or have newborns, teaching them about nutrition, health, and how important early stimulation and affection is for babies. He follows up with programs at age 3, pre-kindergarten, grade school, middle school, right up through college in what he calls his “conveyor belt” approach. In this time in America where we are feeling that there are so many things we’ll just have to give up; things that, while nice, just aren’t economically feasible, this book speaks to American’s “can-do” spirit. The only way to create a better tomorrow is to invest in our children today.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Tough takes an unflinching look at one man (Geoffrey Canada) and his quest to lift an entire area of Harlem from the unrelenting poverty that currently afflicts it. What I found so admirable was Mr. Canada's unwillingness to leave anyone behind, and his unrelenting work towards that aim, using all the resources he could muster. It also made me aware of how much I take for granted as a member of the middle class - right down to the kind of parental interaction I had as a child and am having now as a parent. I hope Mr. Canada succeeds and that his methods can be applied throughout the United States.

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Earlier this year I read Work Hard, Be Nice which describes the development of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Charter Schools. This book concerns a similar but even more radical approach to the problem of educating underprivileged students, and the one endorsed by President Obama: The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ).The author, who covered the project's first five years for the New York Times Magazine, thoroughly documents the nature of poverty in black America to give readers a sense of what founder HCZ Founder Geoffrey Canada was up against. While this book is rigorously researched, it does not read like a sociological treatise. Rather, it is engrossing and engaging, and has you rooting not only for Geoffrey Canada but also for the people of Harlem who so generously shared their struggles with the author.In 1999, Geoffrey Canada began planning a poverty-fighting project that would cover the twenty-four-block zone of central Harlem (eventually expanded to a ninety-seven block area) with the biggest problems: crushing poverty, unemployment, crime, high homicide rates, young single parents, bad schools, and children who were for the most part doomed to failure. The statistics of the HCZ were grim. More than 60% of children lived below the poverty line, and three-quarters of them scored below grade level in reading and math. Tough writes:"The average white family in Manhattan with children under five … had an annual income of $284,000, while their black counterparts made an average of $31,000. Growing up in New York wasn’t just an uneven playing field anymore. It was like two separate sporting events.”Geoffrey Canada’s idea was to create a safety net for these children, to save them from more poverty, from prisons, or even an early death. He started with a third grade, and was shocked and overwhelmed to see all the parents who swamped the auditorium in Harlem for the first lottery drawing to reserve a space in The Promise Academy." One of the most stirring passages in this book is the speech made by a friend of Canada’s, the Reverend Alfonso Wyatt, to these Harlem parents:"I want to tell you something that maybe you don’t know. … The people who run prisons in this country are looking at our third-graders. They look at their test scores each year to begin to predict how many prison cells will be needed twenty years from now. … And so I want the people in this house to tell them: You will not have our children!... ‘Let me hear somebody say it,’ Wyatt called out, and he led the crowd in a chant: ‘You! Will! Not! Have! Our! Children!’”Canada wanted these kids to have the same chances as the kids in Manhattan. But his goal was daunting. Researchers found the dysfunction of ghetto families to be the result of generations of discrimination, isolation, and cultural decay. As a result, ghetto residents tend not to qualify for many jobs in the modern economy that require high levels of education and technical expertise, and the lethal vortex of poverty continues to hold them in its grasp. Most importantly from Canada's standpoint, decades of study reveal that the difference in academic achievement begins very early – before kindergarten! Tough reports:"By middle school, the gap between avid readers and reluctant readers has grown into a chasm.”Much of the gap stems from the depth of exposure to language: not only is the number of words the child hears important, but the kind of words and statements (“encouragements” versus “discouragements”) as well.Cognitive skills have a complement in non-cognitive skills (also lacking in the poor) that also confer advantages in both education and in the job market. These include: the confidence to deal with institutions, authorities, and situations; patience; persistence; ability to follow instructions; ability to delay gratification; and the sense of entitlement that comes from positive parental involvement in both children’s education and in activities and recreations. Training for both kinds of skills is an integral part of The Promise Academy.In sum, to change the trajectory of a poor child in an inner-city neighborhood, research shows you need to do the following:1.intervene early in the child’s life2.continue to intervene throughout adolescence3.give him extra time in school and extra support outside of school4.involve his parents if possible but be prepared to compensate for their absence5.focus on improving his cognitive skills but also nurture his non-cognitive, social, and emotional skillsFinding that advantages as well as disadvantages accumulate, Canada decided - when he was finally able to expand - to begin his program with a “Baby College” for prospective parents. From there, kids went to the Three-Year-Old Journey, then Harlem Gems prekindergarten, and then on to the Promise Academy. Canada called this the conveyor-belt approach:"The way Canada sees it, the middle-class children he wants Harlem’s kids to compete with are surrounded by a cocoon of support – educational support, emotional support, medical support – that starts at birth and never stops.”He describes his project's aims using a basic principle of Newtonian physics: what he wants to do is build enough positive momentum so that kids can escape the downward spiral of poverty in Harlem and reach “escape velocity." What he does not want to do, however – and here is how he differs from KIPP – is to strip the kids of the good aspects of their black or Spanish cultures. Rather, he wants to “contaminate” Harlem with positives and combine the best of both worlds.Canada emphasizes that one could say the desire to help the poor has nothing to do with “morality.” In fact, he avers, is in the country’s best interest to help these kids: it will save money on the costs of social programs for the poor, and add tax money from more workers.Fittingly, the book ends with the creed that the students of the Promise Academy recite (try to overlook the split infinitive in deference to the good sentiments expressed):"I promise to always dream out loud, to lift my head and be proud. And never end up a face in the crowd.”Note: As of the author’s writing in June, 2009, Congress did not yet approve the White House’s request for planning grants to go to community-based non-profits interested in applying to start a Promise Neighborhood.Evaluation: I have always been interested in the enduring problem of poverty, as well as the challenges of education. If either or both of these subjects interest you, I believe you will find this book quite rewarding.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Geoffrey Canada is a teacher who came up against the most-difficult-to-educate group of kids a teacher can face: kids who grew up in poverty, with broken homes, surrounded by drugs and guns and alcohol. But Canada was not daunted by this group. As a child, he grew up in the same world and, somehow, he managed to transcend that world and make a good life for himself. Canada, unlike other reformers, found much to love in the Harlem in which he grew up. He found support and love among his fellow African American men, support and love he never really found in any other world. So Canada came to want to retain the strengths of the culture all the while bringing in the strengths of the broader American culture.And did Canada ever have a dream?! Canada wanted to do more than bring in the superheroes to lift a few children here and there out of poverty. Instead, he decided to work in every area of a child’s life to improve the entire world. He started classes to teach parents from day one how to take care of their children. He created a baby school for the youngest of children to learn in an enriched environment. He began preschools and kindergartens and elementary schools and middle schools. He maintained the superhero programs for the oldest and most jaded and most difficult to reach children of poverty. Did Canada accomplish his goals? His is still a work in progress. But the early results are startling. What could we do if we all worked together to have poor children experience the kind of lives those of us in the middle class take for granted?Here are a few brutal facts from his book:“…significant skill gaps exist---by race, class, and maternal education---and they open up very early. At age one there is not a great difference between the cognitive abilities of the child of a college graduate and the child of a high school dropout, but by age two there is a sizable gap, and at three it’s even wider.”“…GED recipients earn no more than high school dropouts, on the average, even when their intelligence scores are higher. And why? Heckman says it is because they lack all of the noncognitive skills that a person must possess in order to make it through high school: patience, persistence, self-confidence, the ability to follow instructions, the ability to delay gratification for a future reward….”“…both cognitive and noncognitive skills are teachable---but it matters a great deal when you try to teach them.”“There was plenty of research around that showed that poor children not only benefited from being in prekindergarten, but they benefited more than other children.”“And in reading, as it turns out, the metaphorical rich overlap with the literal rich. Even as early as the beginning of kindergarten, children’s level of ability with the printed word tends to correspond closely to the income level of their parents. As Susan B. Neuman, the education scholar, has reported, more than four out of five children at the highest socioeconomic level recognize the letters of the alphabet on the first day of kindergarten, compared to less than two of five children at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Half of all well-off kids can identify the beginning sounds of words when they start kindergarten, while just 10 percent of poor children can do the same.”“…with very few exceptions, good early readers become great readers, and limited early readers almost always end up as poor readers. Late bloomers are, in fact, quite rare.” (The Matthew effect)“And then after kindergarten, because of the Matthew effect, the disparities get even worse….Kids who are able to master “decoding,” to grasp the strange fact that black marks on a page connect to sounds…and that those sounds and marks go together to convey information…---those kids think reading is fun. They do more of it. And the more they do, the easier it gets, and the easier it gets, the more they do. For children who have a harder time cracking the code early on, the opposite occurs, a grim process that one researcher calls “the devastating downward spiral.”“By middle school, the gap between avid readers and reluctant readers has grown into a chasm. If you rank fifth-grade students by how much time they spend reading on their own, outside of school, you find a huge range. A child at the ninetieth percentile---not the most book-crazy kid in class, but close to the top---will spend an average of twenty-one minutes a day reading…which means that she goes through more than 1.8 million words a year. A child at the tenth percentile---not the most reading-averse kid in class, but close---will spend an average of six seconds a day on independent reading, which works out to just eight thousand words a year.”‘Joseph Torgesen, a researcher at the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University…looked at a dozen or so experimental studies of intensive reading interventions done in different parts of the country and targeted at different ages. When he analyzed the interventions aimed at nine-to twelve-year-old struggling readers, he found results that were mixed at best. With enough time and work, it seemed, it was possible to push these middle school-aged kids forward on the reading basics, like decoding, accuracy, and word comprehension. But the news was much more discouraging when it came to “fluency”---the ability to read with ease. Torgesen’s conclusion: by the end of elementary school, “if children’s impairments in word-reading ability have reached moderate or severe levels,” catching kids up may be simply impossible. But when Torgesen looked at early interventions with delayed readers---in first and second grade---his mood brightened….The interventions were remarkably effective; each one brought at least half of the targeted students up to an average level of reading ability by the end of the grade, and in one study, 92 percent of them hit that level.’

[jgoto_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paul Tough’s Whatever it Takes chronicles Geoffrey Canada’s revolutionary efforts to reverse the cycle of poverty and hopelessness prevalent in African American communities in Harlem. Canada’s organization, Harlem Children’s Zone, targets a ninety-seven block area filled with poverty, drugs, violence, uneducated single parents, and children with bleak prospects for the future. Canada acts on the premise that good schools alone are not enough to ensure the success of Harlem’s youth; the problem is much larger. Changes throughout the entire community must occur. He believes that just as a bad apple can contaminate an entire barrel, the opposite can also be true. Success can “contaminate” and spread throughout a community.Canada began with “Baby College,” a series of classes for pregnant or new parents. HCZ outreach workers went door to door soliciting members for Baby College, offering incentives such as free breakfast and lunch, as well as prizes and raffles for attendance. The classes taught basics that are common knowledge in affluent communities: A child who is talked to and read to from a very young age has a much better chance at succeeding in school. Good nutrition and enough sleep are important. Corporal punishment is not always the best way to discipline a child. The HCZ’s program later evolved into a “conveyer belt” of support for its families. They began with Baby College; Parents then attended “Three Year Old Journey,” followed by pre-kindergarten and kindergarten for the youngsters and then entrance into The Promise Academy, an elementary through high school charter school with an extended school day and an extended school year.I found Geoffrey Canada’s aspirations to be very exciting. Being a teacher myself, however, some of his methods disturbed me. His emphasis on improving standardized test scores at the expense of all else in the classroom is something that all teachers I know believe to be highly counter-productive. Running a school on the big business model is also abhorrent to most educators. Yet Canada’s goals are unquestionably noble, and judging by the improvement of his elementary school students (in grades before “teaching to the test” takes over) his overall plan is a good one. In his pre-election speeches, President Obama cited Geoffrey Canada’s work and promised to initiate similar programs in 20 cities around the USA. It is an exciting experiment that has the potential to make a great improvement in our society as a whole. Whatever it Takes is an interesting read.

[girl1der · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book tells the story of the education activist Geoffrey Canada and the development of his Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), a prebirth-18 series of programs designed to improve the educational opportunities and experience of disadvantaged children in Harlem.It's a balanced outsider's look at the overall program, its individual programs and the people who run it and participate in it. There are personal stories about Canada and some of the students and their families, triumphs and failures.I enjoyed learning about HCZ and seeing that its model--while still relatively young and far from perfect--could very well be successful in helping turn things around for the next generation of children and families in Harlem and that there is interest in implementing similar programs in other parts of the country.The author's tone is that of a reporter, which makes it less rah-rah or critical of what's taking place and lets the reader form his or her own opinion by just watching the story unfold.I found myself being pulled through the book, anxiously wanting to know the outcome of the storylines. An enjoyable, informative read.