Is the Harlem Children’s Zone a waste of money?
August 8, 2010 at 1:25 pm | Posted in childcare centers, education, geography, neighborhoods, organizational networks, social service agencies, youth | Leave a comment
Geoffrey Canada’s effort to transform the lives of low-income children in Harlem by providing a comprehensive array of services within a 100 block area has convinced many skeptics, produced a top seller, and inspired a presidential effort. A new controversial report by the Urban Institute suggests it may have been a waste of money, at least with respect to its effects on education. After comparing the test performance of children in the Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy to those in other New York City charter schools, the authors conclude, rather uncharitably, “that the HCZ Promise Academy is a middling New York City charter school.” Canada responds, calling the report “wrong-headed,” for, among other things, misunderstanding the point of the HCZ. Whitehurst and Croft promptly reply, standing their ground. Considering that Obama has requested $210 million for the initiative inspired by HCZ, and that Congress seems reluctant to provide it, we really ought to get the story straight.
Mario Small publishes book on networks of mothers in urban childcare centers
June 5, 2009 at 12:26 am | Posted in barbershops, beauty salons, childcare centers, churches, grocery stores, neighborhoods, new books, organizational networks, poverty, social capital, what to read | Leave a comment
Mario Small has published a new book, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everday Life. From the book description: Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? Unanticipated Gains argues that the answer lies less in people’s deliberate “networking” than in the institutional conditions of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare centers, schools, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely. The book illustrates and develops this argument by exploring the experiences of New York City mothers whose children were enrolled in childcare centers. Relying on scores of in-depth interviews with mothers, quantitative data on both mothers and centers, and detailed case studies of other routine organizations (from beauty salons and bath houses to colleges and churches), Unanticiapted Gains shows that how much people gain from their connections depends substantially on institutional conditions they often do not control, and through everyday process they may not even be aware of. Click here for more information and an excerpt.
Joe Galaskiewicz receives NSF funding to study Phoenix organizations and their impact on the urban community
May 21, 2009 at 7:34 pm | Posted in amenities, barbershops, beauty salons, churches, grocery stores, neighborhoods, news, non-profits, organizational density, organizational networks, social service agencies, supermarkets | Leave a comment
Joe Galaskiewicz at the University of Arizona recently received $162,274 from
the National Science Foundation to fund his project, “Organizations and their
Impact on the Urban Community.” This funding helps Joe continue his research on
the distribution of organizational resources across the Phoenix metropolitan
area, their effect on what children do in the free time on the weekends, and
how organizations migrate across the metropolitan community in response to
demographic shifts, changes in zoning laws, and competition among
organizational providers. The research looks at a broad range of
establishments that serve community residents including parks, recreation
centers, churches, retail outlets, restaurants, bowling and fitness centers,
barber shops, department stores, malls, theatres, and many, many more local
establishments. For some of Joe’s preliminary results, go to:
http://www.childresearch.net/RESOURCE/RESEARCH/2007/GALASKIEWICZ.HTM
New paper finds that vertical ties among organizations needed for economic reform
January 15, 2009 at 12:16 am | Posted in neighborhoods, non-profits, organizational networks, poverty, what to read | Leave a commentIn “Collaboration Is Not Enough: Virtuous Cycles of Reform in
Transportation Policy,” Margaret Weir, Jane Rongerude, and Christopher K. Ansell analyze the vertical and horizontal networks of development organizations in Chicago and Atlanta. From the abstract: “Over the past two decades, a burgeoning literature has touted the promise of regional collaboration to address a wide range of issues ranging from economic development to poverty and sustainability. This article challenges the premise that horizontal collaboration alone can empower regional decisionmaking venues. By analyzing the organizational networks that emerged in Chicago and Los Angeles in the wake of federal transportation policy reforms in the early 1990s, we show that vertical power is essential to building regional capacities. Only by exercising power at multiple levels of the political system can local reformers launch a virtuous cycle of reform that begins to build enduring regional capacities.” Forthcoming in Urban Affairs Review.
New paper finds that non-profit organizations sustain immigrant mobilization
November 28, 2008 at 5:42 pm | Posted in immigrants, neighborhoods, non-profits, organizational networks, what to read | Leave a comment“Voting With Their Feet: Nonprofit Organizations and Immigrant Mobilization,” by Hector Cordero-Guzman, Nina Martin, Victoria Quiroz-Becerra, and NikTheodore, looks at the role of immigrant non-profit organizations in social movements. Reacting to the series of marches in 2006 for immigrant rights throughout the United States, the authors question the idea that the marches were “spontaneous outburst of frustration.” Instead, they argue, the marches were “in large part the result of long-standing cooperative efforts and networks of immigrant-serving nonprofit organizations. Immigrant-serving organizations were at the forefront of organizing public education campaigns, advocacy activities, and community mobilization efforts leading up to the demonstrations.” Based on survey on 498 nonprofit organizations in Chicago and New York conducted in 2005. In American Behavioral Scientist.
New paper suggests that organizational networks may help explain inconsistent MTO results
November 27, 2008 at 10:49 am | Posted in childcare centers, neighborhoods, organizational networks, what to read | Leave a comment“Why Organizational Ties Matter for Neighborhood Effects,” by Mario L. Small, Erin M. Jacobs, and Rebekah P. Massengill, argues that experiments such as “Moving To Opportunity” may have failed to consistently find that neighborhood poverty affects wellbeing because they tend to ignore the role of organizational connections . Based on original qualitative and quantitative data on New York City childcare centers, they find that centers often connect parents to resource-rich organizations throughout the city, that these connections tend to be important to wellbeing, and that centers in poor neighborhoods are not, in fact, less well connected than those in non-poor neighborhoods. In Social Forces.
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
