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Comprehensive Interdependence
For more information on the model programs discussed, see Links. It is important to note how all the examples of what works can be made to interrelate through a wise national policy for the inner city and the truly disadvantaged. Problem-oriented and community equity policing can help secure a neighborhood. The security can help encourage community development corporations and banking. Community development corporations and banking can generate capital and good jobs for local residents. Inner-city youth can qualify for those jobs if they have been in programs like Argus. Similarly, inner-city youth can stay in high school if they have been involved in interventions like the Ford Foundation's Quantum Opportunities program. They can get that far if they have been in the Comer School Development Plan, full-service community schools and after-school safe havens, like Centro Sister Isolina Ferre, the Dorchester Youth Collaborative and Koban, Inc. They can get that far if they have been in preschool. Therefore, what works, based on scientific studies and careful evaluations, is what Lisbeth Schorr, at the Harvard School of Public Health, calls "multiple solutions to multiple problems." The solutions are not single, narrow and categorical. The solutions are creative, comprehensive and interdependent. The public, then, is misinformed. Those who were polled nationally after the 1992 Los Angeles riot and who said that the major obstacle to doing more in the inner city was "lack of knowledge" need to learn of the successes described here. See how we can glean lessons on what works from these examples, and how the examples can form a national policy based on what works. The financing for a national policy based on what works also has been spelled out, along with a plan for communicating what works and creating will to act.
| What Works | How Do We Decide What Works and What
Doesn't | Examples of What Works | |