Making a Difference: Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone

For Geoffrey Canada, Ed.M.’75, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), reforming education in his community has depended on both the theoretical underpinnings he learned at HGSE and the business savvy he wished he had developed before he took on the job.

With its 1200 employees and $36 million annual operating budget, HCZ, founded in 1970, is a full-service community organization, comprising charter schools, preschools, afterschool programs, parenting education, and employment and technology centers, among other offerings. There are over 9,000 children that take advantage of the HCZ services.

The community Canada serves—60 square blocks in the heart of central Harlem—was beset with problems, including, according to Canada, “the largest number of children going into foster care of any place in the state, the worst-performing schools, the highest incidence of children going into the criminal justice system, and the highest rate of children with asthma ever recorded in the United States.”

He realized that the community needed a program that addresses the issues which resulted in the development of HCZ project. Canada recently told 60 Minutes that his dream was to provide poor kids the same opportunity as affluent kids. On top of just the education services, HCZ also offers social and medical services for free to local children.

“They get what middle-class and upper middle-class kids get,” Canada told the television newsmagazine. “They get safety. They get structure. They get academic enrichment. They get cultural activity. They get adults who love and them and are prepared to do anything. And I mean, I’m prepared to do anything to keep these kids on the right track.”

Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx, has dedicated his life to helping children who face similar conditions as his family. “Single mom, she had four kids, overwhelmed, doing the best she could do, living in tenements with roaches and mice and rats. That’s something that’s driven me, I think, all of my life,” he told 60 Minutes.

In order to make sure that students get on the right track, part of Canada’s program includes Baby College—a nine-week course that teaches new parents how to raise their kids to prepare them for school.

“Middle-class families know education begins at birth. Poor parents don't know that,” Canada explained to 60 Minutes. “We're just trying to tell the parents, ‘Look you have to start giving them the kinds of stimulation that’s gonna help those brains develop.’”

Since 1990, Canada has been the president and chief executive officer for the Zone. He has been publicly recognized for his dedication and work in Harlem. In a June 2004 cover story in the New York Times Magazine, the agency's Zone Project was called “one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time.” In October 2005, Canada was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News and World Report.

In January 2006, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg chose Canada to be cochair of a task force assigned to significantly reduce poverty in New York City. He has also received many awards like that Robin Hood Foundation’s Heroes of the Year Award and New York University's Brennan Legacy Award.

Canada, a sought-after public speaker who also keeps busy performing endless fund-raising for HCZ, says he owes a lot to his HGSE years. “I learned education and systems and curriculum and reading at Harvard,” he says. “That’s where I spent a lot of time and energy, and certainly I use those skills every day in the work that I do.”

Part of Canada’s job includes making sure to keep up with the agency's private earnings over the last five years of nearly $100 million. In today’s competitive funding environment, a little bit of management and business training would go a long way, Canada says. “I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but there are a lot of people who have lost confidence in schools and community organizations because they just haven’t seen the end results that suggest that these organizations and these schools are making a difference. I would suggest that organizations that will thrive over the next decade are going to be ones that are as savvy about education as they are about management.”

The need for such love and support, Canada says, couldn’t be more urgent. “It’s time for educators to face the fact that the old model doesn’t work for everybody. When they had this old model they weren’t preparing all students for college—a very small percentage of students were being prepared for college, and everybody else was being prepared for the factories!”