Blog Assignment: Sharing Web Resources

The Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) is a non-profit organization for poverty-stricken children and families living in Harlem, providing free support for the children and families in the form of parenting workshops, a pre-school program, three public charter schools, and child-oriented health programs for thousands of children and families. The HCZ is "aimed at doing nothing less than breaking the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and families it serves.

The Harlem Children's Zone Project has expanded the HCZ's comprehensive system of programs to nearly 100 blocks of Central Harlem and aims to keep children on track through college and into the job market.

Quoting from the HCZ Project web page: "The HCZ Project began as a one-block pilot in the 1990s, then following a 10-year business plan, it expanded to 24 blocks and then 60 blocks. The goal is to serve 15,000 children and 7,000 adults by 2011. The budget for the HCZ Project for fiscal year 2009 is over $40 million, costing an average of $3,500 per child." In addition to this private financing, the HCZ schools receive about $12,500 in public funding per student. According to The New York Times, these figures do not include the costs of the HCZ "after-school program, rewards for student performance, a chef who prepares healthy meals, central administration and most building costs, and some of the expense of the students' free health and dental care".

The HCZ and its promotion as a model of education to aspire to, especially in the recent documentary Waiting for "Superman", have been criticized as an example of the privatization of education in the US.  University of San Francisco Adjunct Professor in Education, Rick Ayers writes that Waiting for "Superman" "never mentions the tens of millions of dollars of private money that has poured into the Harlem Children's Zone, the model and superman we are relentlessly instructed to aspire to."  One year after this film was made; the Grassroots Education Movement made a film entitled The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, which accused the original film of exaggerating the success of the HCZ.

The Harem Children Zone has a program called project pipeline. Their model is from the cradle to college to community: preparing our kids for bright future.  I am intrigued by this because although initially I want to focus on early childhood education, replicating the program when I move across the country. I’m drawn to this model because I believe that children should have a strong foundation and if they are support throughout their lives, the will become successful adults. Simultaneously the families of these children would receive support and services through the children academic career. The children and families will grow and flourish together.

www.hcz.org