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‘Poor children are having the worse educational experience of their life right now’: Geoffrey Canada

Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children's Zone President, joins Yahoo Finance’s Sibile Marcellus and Jen Rogers to discuss the state of schools and virtual learning amid the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of charter schools as an option in the educational system, and the challenges President Biden’s administration faces re-opening schools across the U.S.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Welcome back to A Time for Change. President Biden wants to spend $130 billion to reopen the nation's school. Now, that massive sum would come with the Senate's approval of his $1.9 trillion financial relief plan. But not everybody is on board. Many teachers are pointing to the slow rollout of the vaccine as a reason why schools should not be reopened.

JEN ROGERS: So where does all of this leave at risk kids, the ones who were already vulnerable before the pandemic even started?

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And joining us now is Geoffrey Canada. He's the president of the Harlem Children's Zone. Now, Geoffrey, because of the pandemic, we've seen public middle schools be closed that are reopening later this month. But there's no date yet on when high schools are going to reopen. Now, are public schools being given a pass by choosing not to reopen during the pandemic, like it's OK to give up on at risk kids?

GEOFFREY CANADA: So, you know, this is one of the most complicated issues I think we face in education for a couple of reasons. Number one, close to half a million Americans have died. And this virus, this epidemic that we're going through right now is the worst sort of cataclysmic event and healthwise in my lifetime. So people are scared. And teachers are scared, and schools don't quite know what to do. So that's one issue.

The second issue is the sort of help for schools has been haphazard. We have not had a national response with folks that have talked to educators in a way that has built confidence. Essentially, what folks have said is you guys figure it out. Each state, you do it. Each school system, you figure it out. And the information is somewhat scattered in terms of I think how we should proceed. So we're going to put that on one side.

On the other side, we know poor children, in particular Black and Brown children, are having probably the worst educational experience of their life right now. And they are losing not just academically, they are losing socially and emotionally. We think there are going to be lots of mental health challenges from this. So job number one for President Biden and Secretary of Education has to be to get these schools open as quickly as possible.

Now, how we do it safely, how we build confidence, how we say to educators, this time, we're actually going to protect you and the children for real, that becomes the challenge.

JEN ROGERS: So, I mean, you talk about this approach. You guys have really had to step up. Harlem's Children Zone, you've distributed nearly 2,000 learning devices here in New York, more than 1,000 headsets, 400 hotspots to students. And I think as we look at this virtual or hybrid learning where technology is important, if students have the instruments of technology-- and I know that's a big if, but let's say they do and you get it to everybody-- does virtual learning level the playing field, or does it exacerbate inequality?

GEOFFREY CANADA: Oh, I wish it leveled the playing field. That would make this conversation we're having so much easier to just have. Unfortunately, what we find is the most disadvantaged students struggle the most with remote learning. But when you think about it, it's so clear.

First of all, you've got to have an environment that is conducive to learning, which means the housing, the crowdedness that families face who are poor, the fact that parents are often working and they don't quite know how they're going to make sure their children are really tuned in and stay tuned in to what's happening on a screen, all of those things impact poor children more so than they impact middle class children.

Every parent right now-- if you're a parent and you have a child learning remotely, you know you are playing teacher. You are spending time with that child. But what if you have to work? What if you're exhausted because you make a minimum wage, and you're terrified about getting COVID and you come home. How are you going to provide the same support for your child that other parents are able to provide for their children, which, again, just heightens this inequality.

And the third thing that we have to deal with is the fact that so much of this instruction is not by live individuals. They are just there for a little period of time. And if you think it's hard for poor kids to learn at the same pace when they're in the classroom, it's twice as hard for them to learn at the same pace when they're at home without that teacher there supporting them, encouraging them, and guiding them all at the same time.

So in my opinion, this year has been a disaster for poor children in this country. We should just face that fact. And what I would say to educators is we can't wait for vaccines to happen, which we need to vaccinate all the teachers. I just believe that should be-- we should treat them like hospital workers so that we can open up these schools.

But after that happens, we can't go back to business as usual. Because what has happened, we're going to have to accelerate the learning for poor children over the course-- and this is not going to be just, like, six months or a year-- over the course of the next few years to try and make up for this lost year.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Geoffrey, how have you been helping kids specifically at the Harlem Children's Zone survive this pandemic? Because I know that you can take it so personally, right? You like to be in these kids' lives. So how are you doing now?

GEOFFREY CANADA: Oh, I will tell you it has been a real challenge for our team and our staff. But this is what we've done. Our teachers work a full day. Our school day work ran from 8:00 to 4:00 before the pandemic. It runs from 8:00 to 4:00 right now. Our children are in a Zoom with a live teacher. Those who don't on in school, there's actually a live teacher teaching them for the entire day.

So what we decided was, we need to have that contact. We have to be able to look those children in the eyes. We've got to make sure that they have turned on that computer and they're paying attention. And that calls for extraordinary effort.

Now look, I have to say our teachers have lives themselves. They have their own children. So this has not been easy. But they have decided that they're going to make the sacrifices necessary, so that our young people can make sure there is a live human being talking to them on the other end of that screen, who's actually paying attention to their needs.

And we're trying to support their families and their parents in every way humanly possible, so that this experience, although we know it's going to be detrimental, we're trying to mitigate against the harm. And we're running school on Saturdays. We ran them over the holidays. And we're preparing to run school in the summertime to make sure our children who are falling behind, that we get a chance to catch those children up.

JEN ROGERS: It's really incredible all that you have been able to do. And I know there's still a lot of debate. I mean, we can all agree the current system fails too many children. I mean, you are doing incredible work. But there is this ongoing debate over whether charter schools are helping or part of what the NAACP has called this hodgepodge of opportunity. Obviously, you're providing incredible opportunity. Has the last year of the pandemic changed your thinking at all on charter schools?

GEOFFREY CANADA: So here's one of the things people don't understand about the Harlem Children's Zone. Yes, we've got about 2,200 of our kids in our charter schools. But the vast majority of our children are in traditional public schools. And we have always supported our public schools.

What we do with our charter school is try to push the envelope, is to try to give examples of, if you want to eliminate the achievement gap between Black and Brown and white children, this is what we think it takes. We think it takes an extended day. We think it takes working 11 months out the year.

We are trying to say that there are answers, but not in the traditional way that schools run, and that we need to rethink how education happens if we're going to take advantage of all of this sort of research organizations, like the Harlem Children's Zone has done and trying to eliminate the achievement gap with children.

So my sense is, I am as committed to traditional public school as I've ever been. I have been arguing that these kids need devices. They need connectivity. And I've not been arguing for charter schools. I'm a big believer in charter schools, but most of our children will always be in traditional public schools. And those are the schools that we're going to have to improve their academic performance.

And by the way, I think there's a way to do that, but not just by concentrating on the school and saying teachers have to make up for all the inequities in these children and in these families' lives. I don't think that's scalable. I think we've got to have a much more comprehensive view about how we think about education, where we're thinking about how we support poor families, how we help rebuild neighborhoods, how we think about out of school time for children in a much more scientific way if we're going to really tackle this issue of the challenges in working in poor communities across this country.

And these are urban and suburban, rural communities. I think all of these children have the same challenges and call for a more comprehensive view of education.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Yes, the pandemic has been a tremendous challenge for the nation's public schools, but we'll get through it. Geoffrey Canada, thanks so much.

GEOFFREY CANADA: Thank you for having me on.

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