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I read a paper by Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc. about Poverty and how it relates to education in America.  He states that there are 13 million children living in poverty in the United States.  He feels that the educational system as it is today is failing and has failed particularly in regard to poor students of color.  He states that education is the way to fight poverty and states five ways to make a difference in the years to come.

1)       Reform the Bureaucracy - Good teachers and other school staff should be able to move from a successful school to failing school.  Principals and lousy teachers are not replaced in a timely manner.

2)      End the public school monopoly – In poor communities parents don’t have choices as to where their children will attend school.  Children can’t opt out of a failing school and attend a successful school.

3)      Attract and retain Good Teachers – He states that the median starting salary for a teacher in the U.S. is $29,564, while a recent MBA can start his or her career with a salary of $75,000 or more.

4)      Making teaching and learning full-time jobs.  Mr. Canada proposes that school hours be extended over the summer months because schools are failing.

5)      Create incentives for excellent teachers – He proposes that our educational system needs to structure a reward system for great teachers and train other teachers to improve their classroom skills.

He states “We can spend escalating amounts of money on jails, drug treatment and welfare or we can pay a fraction of that money up front and do the job of educating low-income Americans right the first time” (G. Canada, n.d.). 

I found this short paper inspiring because as an early head start teacher I would like to advocate for families living in poverty.  I believe like Geoffrey Canada that education is the way to fight poverty for the next generation.  His ideas make sense. 

I also watched a video of Barack Obama speaking about the Harlem Children’s zone and the fight on poverty.  He is a strong supporter of this program and stated that when he became president he combat urban poverty by replicating HCZ in 20 states in the United States.

I think this topic lines up with the Economists, neuroscientists and politicians support of early childhood field.  HCZ on a small scale has launched it attack on poverty in a small community.  They are providing services in the area of medical services, crime prevention technology training, early childhood education, after school programs, job counseling, charter schools, which is directly benefiting the families and children of poverty.  HCZ reasons may be different from the economists, neuroscientist and politicians, but they are preparing children to be a benefit to society not a liability.

The insight I gained is that the Early Childhood Education is a major issue in Washington and it sounds as though Washington is going to make a major investment in Early Childhood Education.

Reference:

G. Canada (n.d.)  Winning the War on Poverty Through Education retrieved from http://www.hcz.org/images/stories/pdfs/legaccy_op-ed.pdf