New Perspectives in Social Policy Seminar Series

2009–2010 Seminar

Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Close the Achievement Gap? Evidence from the Harlem Children’s Zone (tentative title)
Roland G. Fryer Jr., Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and CEO, Education Innovation Laboratory

Respondent: Carolyn Heinrich, Director of La Follette School of Public Affairs, Professor of Public Affairs and Economics, and IRP Affiliate, UW–Madison

Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 4:00–5:15 p.m., location to be determined (check back on this Web page)

Roland G. Fryer Jr., Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and Chief Executive Officer, Education Innovation Laboratory, will deliver the 2009-2010 New Perspectives in Social Policy lecture on May 4, 2010. Professor Fryer will discuss his evaluation (with colleague Will Dobbie) of the Harlem Children’s Zone, an innovative community-based organization offering education, social-service, and community-building programs to children and families since 1970. Carolyn Heinrich, Director of the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, Professor of Public Affairs, Affiliated Professor of Economics, Regina Loughlin Scholar, and IRP Affiliate, UW–Madison, will serve as the respondent.

Economist Roland Fryer and colleague Will Dobbie recently conducted an empirical evaluation of the Harlem Children’s Zone—the much-discussed innovative approach to improving the educational outcomes of disadvantaged students that President Barack Obama has sought to replicate in other high-poverty, low-opportunity U.S. cities through his Promise Neighborhoods Initiative. Fryer and Dobbie’s findings, published in April 2009, state unequivocally that “Harlem Children’s Zone is enormously effective at increasing the achievement of the poorest minority children.”

There have been many attempts to close the achievement gap—from Head Start to school busing to school choice, from smaller classrooms to mandatory summer school to merit pay for teachers, principals, and students—none of which has been successful. The lack of progress has left unresolved the debate as to whether schools alone can close the achievement gap, or whether the issues children reared in poverty bring to school cannot be overcome, even by the best educators.

The unique Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) approach takes on the whole child and the whole community, from Baby College for expecting and new parents and their infants through college graduation. HCZ’s comprehensive approach, pioneered by HCZ founder and CEO Geoffrey Canada, combines charter schools with community services that seek to ensure success. Services include after-school programs for each schooling stage; asthma and obesity initiatives; housing assistance that helps tenants turn their city-owned buildings into tenant-owned cooperatives; and youth development through the arts.

Abstract of Fryer’s evaluation: “Harlem Children’s Zone® (HCZ) is arguably the most ambitious social experiment to alleviate poverty of our time. We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ on educational outcomes, with an eye toward informing the long-standing debate whether schools alone can eliminate the achievement gap or whether the issues that poor children bring to school are too much for educators to overcome. We implement two identification strategies. First, we exploit the fact that HCZ charter schools are required to select students by lottery when the demand for slots exceeds supply. Second, we use the interaction between a student’s home address and cohort year as an instrumental variable. Both approaches lead us to the same story: Harlem Children’s Zone is enormously effective at increasing the achievement of the poorest minority children. Taken at face value, the effects in middle school are enough to reverse the black-white achievement gap in mathematics and reduce it in English Language Arts. The effects in elementary school close the racial achievement gap in both subjects. Harlem Gems and The Baby College®, the only two community programs in HCZ that keep detailed administrative data, show mixed success. We conclude by presenting three pieces of evidence that high-quality schools or high-quality schools coupled with community investments generate the achievement gains. Community investments alone cannot explain the results.” —Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie (The evaluation is available online at http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/hcz%204.15.2009.pdf.)

Past New Perspectives in Social Policy Seminars

Charles Karelis, Research Professor of Philosophy, The George Washington University, and author of the book The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor (Yale University Press, 2007), delivered the 2007–2008 lecture "The Persistence of Poverty," April 3, 2008. Daniel M. Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, UW–Madison, served as the respondent.

Martha Albertson Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory Law School, and Director of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, delivered the second lecture, "The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency," October 19, 2006. Joe Soss, now Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and IRP Affiliate, responded to Fineman’s talk.

Charles Murray, W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, delivered the first New Perspectives in Social Policy lecture, "A Plan to Replace the Welfare State," May 5, 2006. Robert Haveman, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus, and IRP Affiliate, responded to Murray’s talk.