Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas \u201d\u201d reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start \u201d\u201d produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That\u2019s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.<\/p>\n
Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap. \u201cThe results changed my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes,\u201d\u009d [Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist] wrote in a subsequent e-mail. What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children\u2019s Zone\u2019s founder and president, has done is \u201cthe equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. It\u2019s amazing. It should be celebrated. But it almost doesn\u2019t matter if we stop there. We don\u2019t have a way to replicate his cure, and we need one since so many of our kids are dying \u201d\u201d literally and figuratively.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
These results are powerful evidence in a long-running debate. Some experts, mostly surrounding the education establishment, argue that schools alone can\u2019t produce big changes. The problems are in society, and you have to work on broader issues like economic inequality. Reformers, on the other hand, have argued that school-based approaches can produce big results. The Harlem Children\u2019s Zone results suggest the reformers are right. The Promise Academy does provide health and psychological services, but it helps kids who aren\u2019t even involved in the other programs the organization offers.<\/p>\n