Hey everybody, it's the Al Franken podcast.

We've got a great show today, you know, for a change.

And this is one that I'm especially excited about because my guest is Jeffrey Canada,

who is famous in education circles as the man who created

an incredibly ambitious social experiment in Harlem and succeeded beyond anyone's wildest

expectations.

Jeffrey Canada is the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone.

And he has changed the lives of the children in Harlem, who, when he got there, they were growing up in a war zone, surrounded by crime and drugs and violence and extreme poverty, broken families, abuse, neglect, addiction, you name it.

And he did this by pretty much throwing everything at these problems from training prospective parents during pregnancy, you know,

to read to your baby, to your toddler, to your kids, providing early childhood education,

creating the expectation that every child will go to college and graduate from college.

Providing health care in school, including mental health, both for the kids and their families.

Continuous involvement of parents, after-school programs, sports, the arts, summer programs, fun,

fun summer programs with food and food after school.

And the results have been astounding.

97% high school graduation.

That's the rate. 90 percent go to college.

Now, President Obama was a huge fan of the Harlem Children's Zone, and he and Education Secretary Arnie Duncan created promised neighborhoods, which would replicate the model that Canada

developed in Harlem. I was a big supporter of the promised neighborhood program, and I fought in

the Senate on the Health, Education, Labor and Pension, on the Education Committee,

and was able to get funding for the North Side Achievement Zone here in Minneapolis,

in the north side in a very poor, primarily African-American neighborhood here in Minneapolis.

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