The bus trip to see the Harlem Children's Zone (http://www.hcz.org/) was amazing! I got to ride with 40 other folks from Rochester, most of them residents of the Rochester Children's Zone (http://www.rcsdk12.org/rcz/). We laughed, talked about everything, and generally had a wonderful time. As one of "the ethnographers" as they call us, I rode along, interviewing, observing - I'm like a kid in a candy store. It's been a long time since I've been able to do real ethnography and this project is a real gift.
We drove 6 hours down, visited the HCZ, met Geoffrey Canada, ate at Sylvia's, then drove 6 hours back. It was a long day but well worth it. I am continually impressed with the commitment of the Rochester people to transforming the lives of children in the northeast sector. They no longer accept the poverty, crime, poor schools, and dismal life opportunities in their community. I feel privileged to be able to tag along and feel a tremendous responsibiity to get this right.
Canada's project is amazing. They've done some truly phenomenal work. I'm concerned though about the overwhelming emphasis on testing and packaged curricula. He basically gave up on public schools (although he says he hasn't) and started a charter school. They do still send folks into the public schools in Harlem, but as "providers". He uses the term "conveyor belt" of services to describe what they offer; basically this means they start with new parents and go up to senior citizens. They really have done some amazing transformations of people's lives.
There are some significant differences between Harlem and Rochester though. Chief among them is money. Canada has $100,000,000 and a $35,000,000 annual budget. It's mostly private money he has raised with a huge amount from a friend from college. Plus he built his own building on 119th street for $42,000,000. No way Rochester has this kind of money. The other main difference is Canada himself. He is a strong, charismatic leader that is holding the whole thing together. Rochester doesn't have that either. What we do have though is a strong team. In the end, this may be the greatest strength.
So, last blog of 2006. Happy New Year!
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Friday, December 8, 2006
Policy Hangover
So I did the mayor's literacy summit. It's taken me a few days to figure out what I wanted to say about the whole experience. Overall I think I did okay. Twice I've run into people in the "street" who were there and who wanted to talk about what I said. Actually, both of them wanted to know on what I base my claim that there is no evidence that offers causal links between illiteracy and criminality (!), but more on that in a minute.
Being able to talk to policy-makers is something I've have been struggling with for a long time. I have wondered why policy makers typically do not ask folks like me to give input on their policy plans. Instead, they use “numbers” that use “folk” knowledge about literacy and how to understand it that ignores what research has told us for more that 25 years. My colleagues in policy point out that administrators, politicians, and news people don’t know what to do with qualitative research like mine or with the kinds of texts I typically produce. Cynically, I think they just don't want to believe that their long held ideas about superiority of the white middle class as the norm might need to be rethought, let alone eliminated.
Back to the summit...originally, no one on the committee had thought to ask a literacy researcher let alone me, but one of my colleagues pushed the issue. I was the only literacy researcher represented at all. The other panelists were institute directors or program directors who do not do literacy research, but rather analyze large databases to determine trends. I was shocked to hear two long-discredited arguments put forward without the blink of an eye [my eyes were wide open in astonishment]: 1) that illiteracy is a cause of criminality; and, 2) that African American parents do not talk to their children and they have to be taught how to do so. Not only were these assumptions taken as commonplace, in spite of my explicit naming of the fallacy of these points, but also NCLB and the resulting Reading First mandates were not of concern at all. It felt as though 30 years of research and practice had not happened. There were no teachers in the room either.
I kept my mouth shut for the most part in hopes that I would have a second opportunity to talk to the mayor and his committee about how to understand literacy and how to think about making citywide policy. We'll see. So far, my phone hasn't rung.
Being able to talk to policy-makers is something I've have been struggling with for a long time. I have wondered why policy makers typically do not ask folks like me to give input on their policy plans. Instead, they use “numbers” that use “folk” knowledge about literacy and how to understand it that ignores what research has told us for more that 25 years. My colleagues in policy point out that administrators, politicians, and news people don’t know what to do with qualitative research like mine or with the kinds of texts I typically produce. Cynically, I think they just don't want to believe that their long held ideas about superiority of the white middle class as the norm might need to be rethought, let alone eliminated.
Back to the summit...originally, no one on the committee had thought to ask a literacy researcher let alone me, but one of my colleagues pushed the issue. I was the only literacy researcher represented at all. The other panelists were institute directors or program directors who do not do literacy research, but rather analyze large databases to determine trends. I was shocked to hear two long-discredited arguments put forward without the blink of an eye [my eyes were wide open in astonishment]: 1) that illiteracy is a cause of criminality; and, 2) that African American parents do not talk to their children and they have to be taught how to do so. Not only were these assumptions taken as commonplace, in spite of my explicit naming of the fallacy of these points, but also NCLB and the resulting Reading First mandates were not of concern at all. It felt as though 30 years of research and practice had not happened. There were no teachers in the room either.
I kept my mouth shut for the most part in hopes that I would have a second opportunity to talk to the mayor and his committee about how to understand literacy and how to think about making citywide policy. We'll see. So far, my phone hasn't rung.
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