An incredible and noble effort to erase poverty in Harlem. Webster Pacific has done some work in the educational space and so it was with great interest that my family paid a visit to The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) on June 15, 2009. Our tour was guided by Rasuli Lewis, who has been with HCZ since 1993 and went to college with HCZ’s CEO, Geoffrey Canada. For those of you not familiar with HCZ, it is a series of programs intended to guide and support families raising children, from when families are expecting a child until the children go to college. It’s mission is to end generational poverty. Barack Obama has been a supporter of HCZ for a number of years. See one of Barack’s speeches on HCZ from 2007 here.
My over-arching impression of HCZ is of incredible and noble effort, made possible by the steely determination of Canada, Rasuli and many others, as well as generosity of many private individuals, most notably Stanley Druckenmiller, a college classmate of both Canada and Rasuli. I am convinced that HCZ has the right approach to solving generational poverty. The challenges in the way of HCZ’s mission are the government, vested political interests and funding.
Other impressions:
- Engineering Approach. HCZ is trying to solve problems of poverty at the earliest possible stage…before children are born. This approach completely resonates with my experience improving business operations, which involve the theories of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who helped revitalize the Japanese economy after the second world war. (See “Meta-Quality Seminar” summary here.) Deming would say that the most leverage in any system is at the beginning of that system. He developed and used a memorable demonstration of this theory called “The Red Bead Experiment“. Educating the parents of children not yet born is about as early in the system of education as one can conceive (no pun intended).
- Intelligent Marketing. I asked Rasuli about Baby College and how they get families to come to a program in which they may have no interest. I asked him, “How do you get someone to buy something they don’t think that they need?” He said that when they first started Baby College, they put out fliers for their informational events with big words saying something like “Brain Research Proves Importance of Early Childhood Education.” In small print at the bottom, they put “Free Diapers.” Attendance was lousy. Then they changed it around, putting “Free Diapers” at the top in big letters and leaving research at the bottom. Attendance was terrific. His point is that many of the people they are trying to attract are at the base of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs, just trying to provide food and shelter for the present day. HCZ tries to reach them at their level of need, but then upsell them on a larger mission. My impression is that HCZ is being smart about their marketing efforts, along the lines of a great book about marketing ideas, called Made To Stick.
- Data-driven & Technological. Rasuli and all the people I met were thinking about and conversant in the unbiased data-driven measurement of their efforts. I was impressed to learn that HCZ is using CRM (customer relationship management) software to keep track of all the families in Harlem. Outstanding! Many of our business clients are just starting to take on this sort of a systematic approach to tracking their customers. HCZ understands that each family will engage with HCZ when they are ready. A CRM system means a comprehensive, long-term view of ALL the possible customers.
- Most At Risk. The most noble (and challenging!) part of the HCZ program is that they target those most at risk. Rasuli segments the world of possible HCZ families into 1) those who understand and want HCZ’s services, 2) those who are indiffierent, 3) those who don’t want what HCZ has to offer, although, in HCZ’s opinion, would benefit from HCZ services. HCZ is going after group 3, the families that don’t want their services and are most at risk. I remember this concept from the Paul Tough book and it struck me again as very noble AND very challenging.
- Costly. Providing the HCZ services costs a significant amount of money. I was told that the cost per student of providing their GEM’s preschool program was in the high teens, meaning roughly $17,000 to $19,000 per student per year. This is a big number. This funding comes from three sources: private investment, Head Start and New York State’s Universal Pre-K program. I should note that GEMS is ancredible program. They have a teacher student ratio of 4 to 1 and their facilities are as nice as the facilities the preschool in San Francisco where I sent my kids. However, I paid less than $12,000 per child (although that was for only about 8 hours where HCZ offers 10 hour days). I’m not saying that HCZ is inefficient with their use of money. I’m just saying that providing the services that HCZ offers takes a significant investment. However, HCZ should be evaluated in light of the costs of NOT providing this program or one like it. Both Canada and Barack Obama realize this and have specifically pointed to the societal costs as a result of poor education: lack of productivity, crime and corrections, which far outweigh the additional costs of education. A recent and important McKinsey study, commented on by Tom Friedman here, pointed out that the costs of NOT educating our children properly is between $310 and $525 billion in GDP per year. Compare that with the roughly $60 billion spent each year on American public k-12 education (100 million public school students times $6,000 per student per year). So, even if we doubled our budget on education, spending an additional $60 billion to provide for programs like HCZ nationwide, as well as to upgrade our existing public school educational system, the benefits could be at least five times our investment. It is also worth noting that for k-12 education in New York, I believe the state funding is about $17,000 per student, so GEMs costs about the same and in that light might not be expensive.
- Replicable. The success of HCZ could be replicated in other communities. HCZ is open to and has already shared their systems with other social entrepreneurs in other communities.
My conclusion is that the Harlem Children’s Zone is a program worth getting behind. While they are actively raising money, I think they also understand that money is not the only factor that will solve generational poverty. Paul Tudor Jones, a successful investor and supporter of charter schools, recently spoke at a graduation ceremony about his efforts helping kids in New York and how, in his first foray, he threw money at the problem, but was unsuccessful. In his second foray, he changed his strategy and tactics and ended up successful. “That [experience] was the first real-time example for me of how intellectual capital will always trump financial capital. In other words, I had the money to help these kids, but it was useless because I didn’t have the brains to help them. I had tried to succeed with sheer force of will and energy and financial resources. I learned that this was not enough. What I needed were better defined goals, better metrics, and most importantly, more efficient technologies that would enable me to achieve those goals.”
I was going to conclude with a discussion of the challenges facing HCZ, but I realized that it is more important to point out the challenges facing America in its effort to educate its children and end generational poverty. HCZ has taken up the challenge that America as a whole must accept. HCZ is an example for what the rest of the country must get behind if we are to end generational poverty, educate our children and remain a vibrant and productive country. The challenges facing America around education and poverty are, first, government. While it is great that Barack has gotten behind HCZ and its mission, if the government tries to be the organization that sets up programs like HCZ in every community we are headed for failure. We need entrepreneurs to solve this problem and they DO exist. Second, vested political interests are a huge challenge to education in America. Unions represent their members, not children. Democrats represent Democrats, not children; Republicans represent Republicans, not children. It continues to amazes me that states like California have not and are not paying for early childhood education. We pay for educating kids in high school, when the die on a person is solidly cast, but we don’t want to pay for early childhood education, when we can have a profound positive impact on a child’s life? How can we be so dense? For a history, click here. The third challenge to educating our children and ending generational poverty is funding. How can that be? America spends more than most countries on educating its children. The problem is that America, like Paul Tudor Jones in his first effort, spend it on schools that are simply not working. Throwing more money at bad school systems and bad ideas is wrong. However, funding programs that get it right, like The Harlem Children’s Zone, will lead us toward the end of generational poverty, toward renewal and revitalization.
See Stephen Colbert’s interview of Geoffrey Canada here.
See Barack speaking about HCZ here.
See documents received during our visit to HCZ here.
