Whatever It Takes

Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

Paul Tough

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780547247960
• eBook ISBN:
  9780547348216
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Abecedarian Early Childhood Intervention, 192–93

“Accomplishment of natural growth,” 49

Achievement Gap Initiative, 102

Alston, George, 120

See also Khaldun, George

Amistad Academy in New Haven, Connecticut, 130, 157, 160, 175

Amrani-Muhammad, Fatiha, 206

Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), 35–36, 37

Avance program, 93

Avedon, Richard, 153

B

Baber, Elijah, 237–38, 253

Baby College

baby showers at, 60–61

beginnings of, 58, 66

budget/spending, 58, 94

conveyor belt concept and, 194–96

cultural imperialism and, 95–96

culture/atmosphere of, 94–97

description, 13, 58, 66, 199–200

discipline class, 75–84

expansion, 261

funding, 58

goal/mission, 79, 87, 96–97

growth, 58

outreach workers, 58–60, 64–66, 94, 96

twenty-first cycle beginnings, 61–63, 64–66

twenty-first cycle graduation, 90–92

young-adult class at, 78–79

Baby College stories

Cheryl Waite, 59–61, 71, 72, 73–74, 75, 79, 84, 87–88, 90–91, 92, 94, 257

Darryl Reaves/Damita Miles-Reaves and son, 67–69

Shauntel Jones, 59, 69–71

Stridiron Clark, 62–65, 66

Victor Boria, 60, 71–72, 75, 77–78, 79, 81–84, 87–88, 90–91, 94, 257

Bacon, Brandon, 237–38, 253

Bell Curve, The (Murray and Herrnstein)

controversy over, 33–37

criticism of, 34–36, 37, 190

standardized tests and, 35–36, 37

thesis/observations in, 33–34, 35, 37, 190, 191

Bernstein, Leonard, 25

Black Panthers, 114

Black-White Test Score Gap, The (Jencks and Phillips), 41

Bloomberg, Michael, 6, 152, 169

Bonner, Jasmine, 139, 140

Boria Jr., Victor ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• The Lottery
• Unequal Childhoods
• Baby College
• Contamination
• Battle Mode
• Bad Apples
• Last Chance
• The Conveyor Belt
• Escape Velocity
• Graduation
• What Would It Take?
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Sources
• Index
• Sample Chapter from HOW CHILDREN SUCCEED
• Buy the Book
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH