Cause: Improve opportunities for U.S. inner-city children

From GiveWell

The content below is out-of-date, and is not actively maintained.

We have not taken it down because it can serve as useful information on the history and approach of our project, when taken in context, but all up-to-date content can be found on the main GiveWell Site at www.givewell.net. Any views expressed on particular nonprofit organizations do not represent our current views and positions.

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Contents 1 Reviewed organizations 1.1 Children's Aid Society 1.2 New Visions for Public Schools 1.3 Robin Hood Foundation 1.4 Harlem Children's Zone 2 Overview of the cause 3 Different strategies 4 Sources 4.1 External websites

Reviewed organizations

Children's Aid Society

Full Review / Website / Donate Now Annual budget (last available): $81.8 million The Children's Aid Society is a large, long-established organization that seeks to address all the needs of underprivileged children in New York City. Its broad range of programs seems both sensible (i.e., the activities are good) and flexible (i.e., the organization is actively addressing needs rather than sticking to an agenda). Its self-evaluation process is not up to what we'd like to see in this area; its representatives have told us that this is largely due to restricted funding, and that CAS would like to evaluate its activities more thoroughly.

Overall rating: 4/5 (Guide to ratings) Strategies & activities 4/5 Fiscal responsibility 5/5 Relevance of your dollar 4/5 Self-evaluation process 2/5 Evidence of effectiveness 3/5

New Visions for Public Schools

Full Review / Website / Donate Now Annual budget (last available): $29.6 million New Visions is a young organization that systematically supports and monitors experimental approaches to improving New York City's public schools. Their self-evaluation process, while not ideal, is among the best we've seen for any organization in any cause. Evidence of their effectiveness is preliminary, and thus inconclusive, but demonstrates a positive effect on attendance rates and course completion.

Overall rating: 4/5 (Guide to ratings) Strategies & activities 4/5 Fiscal responsibility 4/5 Relevance of your dollar 4/5 Self-evaluation process 5/5 Evidence of effectiveness 3/5

Robin Hood Foundation

Full review not completed Website / Donate Now Annual budget (last available): $78.1 million (View tax form) The Robin Hood foundation is a fund providing grants to organizations throughout New York City, attempting to holistically tackle the problems of poverty and the achievement gap. It is run by former financiers with a stated focus on extremely systematic monitoring and evaluation; we love what we've read in the press2 about its highly systematic and demanding self-evaluation, but we can't get the foundation to share any of the actual results of these self-evaluations. We feel that transparency is in everyone's interest and we can't get a response from them; either they don't need the money enough to be transparent, or they just aren't willing.

Overall rating: 3/5 (Guide to ratings) Strategies & activities ?/5 Fiscal responsibility 3/5 Relevance of your dollar 1/5 Self-evaluation process 4/5 Evidence of effectiveness 2/5

Harlem Children's Zone

Full review not completed Website / Donate Now Annual budget (last available): $24.8 million (View tax form) Harlem Children's Zone is similar in design to the Children's Aid Society, with more of a stated focus on systematic monitoring and evaluation.3a We love its self-characterization, but haven't seen it follow through by providing thorough evidence of its effectiveness to donors. The general disinterest of the representatives we worked with, combined with the phenomenal press3b it has received, make us suspect that it may simply not need new funds.

Overall rating: 3/5 (Guide to ratings) Strategies & activities 4/5 Fiscal responsibility 3/5 Relevance of your dollar 1/5 Self-evaluation process 3/5 Evidence of effectiveness 1/5

Overview of the cause

Broadly, this cause addresses disadvantaged children in the urban developed world: children whose poverty, dysfunctional and dangerous communities, and a host of other interrelated problems represent huge barriers to their becoming what they can be. One of the most visible manifestations of this general problem is the "achievement gap": the consistency with which certain ethnic groups underperform others in school.¹ Note that this gap remains even after adjusting for income, although it is also a function of income; disadvantaged groups' problems aren't limited to income. The gap's presence tells us that even in the wealthiest cities of the world's wealthiest nation, there are real obstacles to equality of opportunity: there are whole communities whose children barely have a chance to succeed.

Of all the causes GiveWell currently covers, this is probably the most difficult to trace the true causes of, and therefore the most difficult in which to translate money into results. Underperforming children suffer from a host of interrelated problems, from poverty to inadequate nutrition and health care to poor quality schools to a lack of family emphasis on education to violence and drugs in the community. There are many theories about the best order and methods for attacking these problems, and no single solution that has proven itself the most promising.

GiveWell's understanding and coverage of this cause is currently extremely limited. We have focused for now on organizations in New York City that attempt to address the comprehensive needs of communities (as opposed to providing a single service such as health care or after-school activities). Because the problems of these communities are so complex and interrelated, it makes the most sense to us to try to address them all at once.

This cause doesn't provide nearly as much concrete, tangible "bang for your buck" as something like fighting malaria: since the problems are so complex, it's hard to make the connection between dollars spent and lives changed. A lot of money has flowed into public school systems without seeming to generate any results. This makes it all the more important to spend wisely, seeking out the organizations that are able to innovate and form models for others. Funding these organizations can have a levered impact and make a huge difference in solving a thorny problem.

Different strategies

Strategies vary wildly within this cause; the strategies listed below are classified extremely broadly.

1. Improving schools

Schools that do a great job engaging and educating students could be the key to creating equality of opportunity. Many school programs aim to be active in the community, form active relationships with parents, and provide activities outside school hours, as well as providing a rigorous education; we find this holistic approach to be more promising than that of simply trying to improve teachers and classes.

2. Providing extracurricular activities

Extracurricular activities simultaneously keep kids out of gangs and other dysfunctional activities, give them something more positive to focus on and derive self-esteem from, and provide a chance to educate them (in business, in computers, even in the same subjects as their classes).

3. Providing health services

Many low-income children lack access to or knowledge of basic health care. We don't believe it is wise to focus exclusively on this problem, but health problems are one of many things that can interfere with a child's education.

4. Providing food

Food banks and other organizations attempt to make it easy for parents to feed their children well. As with health services, we find this strategy worthwhile as long as it isn't pursued in isolation.

5. Providing housing

Low-income people often have cramped, unsanitary housing that hurts family dynamics as well as making it hard to concentrate on schoolwork. As with health services and food, we find this important to address, but not in isolation.

No single strategy has been demonstrated to be the key to closing the achievement gap. #1 and #2 are the toughest to assess, and there is very little consensus on them; it should be easier to measure the importance of #3-5, but we don't have studies available at this point. Knowing what we know, we believe the most promising approach is to focus on organizations that look at the community as a whole, trying to address all the needs of a smaller group rather than serving many people in limited ways.

Sources

External websites

• 1. National Center for Education Statistics: Trends in the Achievement Gaps
  • A broad overview, at the national level, of the achievement gap between white and minority students. We plan to get a more succinct source showing what we want to show, but for now you can confirm our claims by hunting through this.
• 2. Forbes article on the Robin Hood Foundation
  • An overview of Robin Hood's philosophy and fundraising prowess. If their self-evaluation process is as described, we highly approve, but we can't get our hands on any of its results.
• 3. Harlem Children's Zone home
  • 3a. Harlem Children's Zone: Evaluation and Data
    • The words are great, but we can't find the data.
  • 3b. New York Times article on the Harlem Children's Zone
    • Presents HCZ as a businesslike organization trying to come up with solutions, not just do incremental good.