Chapter 8
Why Your Social Drives Matter More Now
The Equation
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
—Calvin Coolidge
Union City and Newark, New Jersey, are less than 10 miles apart, along I-95 just across the Hackensack River from each other. High unemployment and chronic poverty exist in both cities. Back in the 1980s, in fact, Union City's school district was at risk of a New Jersey state takeover, given how poorly its schools were performing. Union City is one of those cities with a great manufacturing history; it was once known as the Embroidery Capital of the United States.
Over the past five years, Newark got an incremental infusion of well over $100 million of external philanthropic funds into its public schools, And yet Union City is the school district that has made more gains in student achievement. More than 90 percent of the city's students receive free or reduced lunch and three-fourths speak a language other than English at home. It makes no sense. Why would the two districts perform much differently in the first place, given how similar the conditions are? And if either district were to improve, shouldn't it be the one receiving all the extra funding from outside the system?
Today, Union City has high school graduation rates near 90 percent, more than 10 points higher than the national average; 60 percent of students go on to college; and achievement scores throughout the school system far exceed what would be expected given the city's demographics and socioeconomic situation. Some of this is detailed in Professor David Kirp's book, Improbable Scholars.1
Union City hasn't implemented a massive, expensive school reform plan. Rather there was a series of seemingly mundane things that made the difference, things like full-day preschool for all children, word-soaked classrooms with a rich feel for language, immigrant kids becoming fluent first in their native language and then in English, analyses of students' test scores to diagnose and address problems, and several more blocking and tackling elements.
Connections, that is, making 1 + 1 = 3, is one of the key elements running through everything. The school system built a structure that connects effective teachers, parents, students and curriculum; there is collaboration among teachers, and an emphasis on connecting parents as vital partners in their children's education. Principals like Mr. Bennetti at Union City High School and teachers like Ms. Alina Bossbaly, third grade, make all the difference. Bossbaly is such a good teacher they've coined a term for her kind of teaching: “Bossbaly-izing” children. She is also a mentor and coach to many of her peers, one of the key success factors. They are changing lives every day, just like Anne Reece and her teachers are at White Center Elementary. As Prof. Kirp concluded, “nationwide, there's no reason school districts—big or small, predominantly white, Latino, black—cannot construct a system that, like the schools of Union City, bends the arc of children's lives.”
Nationally, the level of educational attainment at public schools in the United States in the past two generations has ground to a halt, no matter how many solutions we try or how much money we spend. And yet, there are Union Citys and White Centers to be found throughout the United States, proving that we do have solutions to seemingly intractable challenges. We clearly have a long way to go in seeing public education overall change its flat trajectory of student performance, but the biggest challenge is not a lack of solutions to the problems at hand. We have solutions.
And not only do they exist, but the biggest barrier is rarely a lack of funding. Over the past 40 years, the rate of spending per student in U.S. public schools has doubled, in real dollars, with no appreciable improvement in student achievement. All over the country, school districts and governments have rarely hesitated to increase the investment in schools, a noble instinct to be sure, but one with limited effect on children's academic performance and lives. We have funding.
The Equation
Union City is simply one more reiteration of two simple, vital facts: (1) we have solutions to many social challenges, far more than most people think, and (2) we have a significant amount of financial resources to invest in ameliorating those challenges (and more, new sources of capital are coming into play, via impact investing). Combine those two facts with the new dynamics we discussed in the Introduction about social multipliers and we now have just about everything we need to make significant social progress in the next generation.
What makes that equation add up for our communities and ecosystems? The answer is almost inescapable, and it's what this whole book has been about. The variables in that equation are like tools that people can put to highest and best use in their communities. This book is full of stories of can't-not-do people who became the leaders or one of the missing pieces that helped put this equation to work and contributes to positive social progress.
People like Jeff Carr and Eleuthera Lisch, who tackled inner city violence; and Anne Reece and Ms. Bossbaly, who pursued academic achievement; David Risher and his fight against third-world illiteracy; Lisa Chin and Jeff Tollefson, who worked to create better opportunities and lives for youth. I could go on and on. Make no mistake, every one of these people would be the first to tell you they are only one of hundreds, thousands, that make real change possible (that's why they are great listeners and connectors), but their individual impact is just as certain.
That sounds almost too simplistic in this complex world, doesn't it? Not really, because there was nothing simple in how these people you've read about made an outsized difference; it's hard work, they had to go to hard places. Sometimes it takes many years to truly distill what you are a determined optimist about and to become an active listener. Time and time and time again, what makes the difference are can't-not-do people who focus for the long term on that one cause; we just need more and more of them. That belief is the reason why Bill and Melinda Gates created www.globalcitizen.org.
What's unique today is the existence of that Solutions + Resources + Multipliers equation. The solutions and resources have been accelerating over the past 25 to 50 years and the multipliers have largely been added to the equation in the past 10 years. In short, that's why your social drive, why finding your can't not do matters more now than it ever has.
What's Possible
One of my favorite TED talks of all time is Peter Diamandis, “Abundance Is Our Future.”2 In part, he talks about the future, but he begins by taking a quick tour through progress made in the past hundred years—the average human lifespan has more than doubled, childhood mortality has come down by a factor of 10, and global literacy has gone from 25 percent to over 80 percent, and people like David Risher are working on that last 10 to 20 percent.
We've talked about teen pregnancy and violent crime declining by half in the past 40 years, and gang violence down significantly in some, though not all, cities across the United States. If you need more evidence, visit Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development (www.blueprintsprograms.com) and click on Blueprints Programs; you will find dozens of the most rigorously evaluated programs with positive effects on young peoples' behavior. All of that progress still leaves major social challenges where we have not made the same kind of progress. But if we could focus our resources and time, more can't-not-do people will put that social progress equation to work, and together we could, over the next generation:
- Bend the arc of education toward the positive. We've been stuck for nearly 50 years, but we have the solutions to implement early childhood education across all of our communities, improve reading, math, and science achievement by our students, and increase our graduation rates significantly.
- Change the foster care system so fewer kids go in, more kids get the right outcomes when they are in the system, and more young people exit the system sooner and with more positive outcomes. And we'd save untold societal costs downstream as well.
- Make homelessness increasingly rare and on its way to being a relic of the past.
- Finally start to see rates of poverty in the United States decline below 15 percent and move toward single-digit percentages. No matter what your politics, ameliorating poverty is an example of a social challenge in which we've invested trillions of public dollars, with no apparent effect.
- I could go on and on…
If any of the statements above feel implausible or unlikely to you, then think back to what people must have felt about teen pregnancy and violent crime 40 years ago, or about gang violence just 10 years ago. Just to drive the point all the way home, two more significant examples come to mind of what is possible, in spite of the odds and expectations.
Massachusetts was the first state to approve marriage equality in 2004. At that time, further progress looked like a mountain beyond Everest, the backlash was extraordinary. In reaction, a group of funders and activists launched a shared game plan, with long-term funding and collaborative messaging. Ten years later in 2015, it seems almost unimaginable that over 35 states, and counting, have now enacted marriage equality laws. It's just about passed a tipping point, much like the eradication of polio.
And for three decades, conservative political strategists have mounted an extraordinary effort to reshape public policy. The National Center for Responsive Philanthropy (www.ncrp.org) wrote a report that “documents the substantial role that 12 foundations played in developing and sustaining key institutions in the movement,”3 looking back at 30 years of sustained, unrestricted funding. It has profoundly changed American politics.
In both of those cases, from different sides of the philosophical aisle, there were a handful of people and organizations that were undoubtedly determined optimists, knew who they were at their core, were ready and willing to stick with it through the hard places. They invested in known solutions, concentrated their resources, and leveraged those multipliers to great social progress.
Today's challenges, while tough, are happening when we are wealthier, more connected, more innovative, and more amplified than at any time in human history. And we live in a world with the inspiring quantity and quality of solutions, resources, and multipliers that exist today. Each of us can now put those to use in fundamentally new and world-changing ways. It is an incredible time to find your can't not do.
The pathway to more and more people finding their can't not do is not a mystery or black hole. This book lays it out for you in a tangible, accessible way. The pathway is there for you to travel, if and when you are ready, willing, and able. The potential to tip the balance toward significant positive—or negative—change has never been greater. You can be a lever tipping that balance.
So what's your can't not do? I've already said, this is the fundamental question. It's right there for you to seize. It's not easy, but to help change the world does not require superhuman abilities or special destinies, it requires the combination of a personal drive to make a difference with deliberate reflection on some key questions, seven of them, and turning your answers into action. Drive, reflection, action. If that sounds simple, it's not. If it sounds attainable, it is.
And if it sounds universal, it truly is. When I was in China last year, I asked Jiawen Shu at SVP China if can't not do translates and she said, in Chinese it reads as “some motivation in your core to make you devote to or feel responsible for something. It's a phrase expressing stronger passion than must-do.” Stronger passion than must-do. I love that. If each of us will find that one cause that we can't not do, we will each be a powerful lever that tips the balance toward a better and better world.