The Harlem Children’s Zone, a New York City initiative that combines charter schools with community services for minority students and their families, has been shown in a new study to produce dramatic gains in closing the black-white academic achievement gap, Education Week reports.

The extra services include early-childhood programs, parenting workshops, and asthma and anti-obesity initiatives. The Obama administration has touted the Harlem Children’s Zone as a model anti-poverty strategy.

The study’s co-authors, Harvard economics professor Roland G. Fryer Jr., and graduate student Will S. Dobbie, write that “either the … public charter schools are the main driver of the results or the interaction of the schools and the community investments is the impetus for such success.” The study was published as a “working paper” by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Filed under: K-12 Education News