Collaboration also key, says book's author

By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM -- The most important factor in replicating the success of the Harlem Children's Zone is accountability, says the man who wrote the book about the successful New York initiative.

"For a model like this to succeed, people have to be held accountable when kids fail," author Paul Tough told around 250 people in the auditorium of the Holton Career and Resource Center Sunday afternoon. "Accountability can be really tough, but someone has to take responsibility for each failure. That's the only way it works."

Tough is the author of "Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America." The book describes the program Canada -- who grew up in poverty in the South Bronx and ended up going to Harvard -- launched more than a decade ago that took a holistic approach to educating poor children.

The program, which focuses on offering a continuum of services from birth to college, has attracted the attention of everyone from President Barack Obama to local leaders who would like to duplicate the efforts with the East Durham's Children Initiative. Many of those involved in the initiative were at Tough's talk, as were a host of school system leaders and elected officials.

Many in the audience had brought Tough's book with them, and dozens stayed after the talk to buy copies and have the author sign them.

Tough, a former New York Times editor who spent five years researching the book, described to the audience the challenges faced by Canada -- and that other communities face as well -- in improving the prospects for poor children.

"The disadvantages poor children face in the this country are huge," he said. "And sometimes they seem insurmountable."

He cited the fact that on the first day of kindergarten, while 80 percent of children from well-off homes can recognize the letters of the alphabet, only 30 percent of those from the lowest socio-economic sector can.

"The possibilities of change can seem awfully bleak at times, until you see it happen," Tough said.

The way you make it happen, he explained, is to "start as early as possible and keep it going as long as you can," describing what Canada calls "a conveyor belt of services."

Those services include "baby college," continuous access to community resources and K-12 charter schools.

"It's really straightforward, taking them from birth to college and given giving them the resources they need," Tough said. "But along the way, you have to hold yourself accountable if you are not meeting any of those goals."

When an audience member asked how a community can create that spirit of accountability, Tough responded that it must be collaborative, with everyone realizing that "we are all in this together."

Then, he said, "when things start to change, it becomes easier to change people's ideas, and they accept it."