The dust is still settling around Helen Zelon's City Limits re-examination of the Harlem Children's Zone, one of the biggest, most critical looks that the program has ever received. It's unclear what happens next for HCZ or the replication efforts that are taking place around the country. Will momentum lag, or program requirements change?
For myself, I came away from reading Zelon's article with deeply mixed feelings. I was reminded of the power of easily graspable phrases ("conveyor belt," "tipping point," "contamination,"), the organizational zigs and zags hidden beneath the surface narrative of many nonprofits, the collateral damage among teachers and kids who function as guinea pigs, the reality that the impact of so many efforts have "eluded measurement" (as Zelon so delicately puts it). But Zelon's article also makes clear that big-sounding ideas and big personalities are, for better or worse, often a key element of what's needed to motivate change. Smaller, perhaps better, more consistently effective ideas may exist, but they fail to capture the imagination needed to motivate action. We want -- we need -- bold risk-taking from our leaders. If that's the case then perhaps we need to be grown-ups about the failures large and small that come from taking big risks.On the Hot Seat, Zelon describes the "juggernaut" of praise that's surrounded the HCZ effort, the realization that there were lots of unanswered questions about HCZ, the challenges of reporting on the effort, and the uncomfortable experience of digging into a program that everyone seemed to think was a big success. Read Zelon's interview below.
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