The Harlem Children's Zone, which serves 8,600 low-income children on 60 New York City blocks, isn't doing much new: It has smart-parenting classes; it has all-day preschool; it's phasing in a K-12 charter school. It has tutoring and mentoring and antiviolence initiatives.

The angel is in the details--in the superior way the zone delivers its programs with the help of a skilled staff, wealthy backers, and, most important, a 53-year-old executive named Geoffrey Canada, a brainy, driven leader with rare crossover appeal. "He's got the street walk and Harvard talk," says Ray Marte, one of Canada's first students. "He can talk to the block and the boardroom," says Shawn Dove, a former Zone staffer and Canada protege.

And can the man talk. Canada, at 6 feet, looks Jordanesque with a shaved head, graying goatee, and gangly build. And he sounds Clintonesque, deploying humor and outrage, statistics and stories to make his case for saving kids. "It's not rocket science we're doing here," he likes to say. "It's harder than rocket science."

Still, the Harlem Children's Zone is in many ways a success story in a field starved for them. From its headquarters at 125th Street and Madison Avenue, the program provides a full network of services to an entire needy neighborhood. It combines educational, social, and medical services, covering participants from birth all the way through college.

Canada has two key aims: to rescue large numbers of impoverished Harlem children and, in so doing, to provide an irresistible model for policymakers to adopt and fund. They are indeed no small tasks. The first requires changing the Harlem mind-set so that more than just the super-resilient few succeed, he says. "If we can get Harlem to the place where passing is the normal thing, staying out of jail is normal, guys growing up and getting jobs is normal, that, to me, is victory."

Clear vision. So far, and perhaps not surprisingly, Canada has been most successful with younger children. Large numbers of "Baby College" graduates report reading and singing more often to their children and getting up-to-date immunizations. One hundred percent of the past three Harlem Gems (preschool) classes tested "school ready." And while only 11 percent of Promise Academy's 100 kindergartners initially tested above grade level, 80 percent had reached that point by the end of the school year.

Older children have been more challenging. Of last year's 100 sixth graders, only 10 percent initially tested at or above grade level. At the end of the year, 19 percent reached that point in math, 39 percent in English. Canada, however, isn't daunted. The sixth graders may improve more gradually and at greater expense, but by 12th grade, he says, "it will be clear we can save them."

That sort of confidence informs Canada's view of leadership: "You have to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. Then you have to be able to articulate that vision so others can see it as clearly as you. . . . You must simply never give up--even if you doubt at times."