Dr. Pedro Noguera, the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University, says attempts to transform public schools are missing the mark because of improper focus.
“We ask our schools to do something that we ask no other institution to do,” Noguera said during his lecture this week at UCLA, “A Roadmap for Reform: Supporting Black and Latino Youth.” “That is to serve everyone who walks in the door. Not to pick and choose, not take just the ones who are motivated and well fed. We serve them all. The children with the greatest needs tend to be the children who do the least well.
“The sad part is that we blame the schools for these failures, rather than blaming our society for setting up those schools to fail.”
Education researcher C. Rob Shorette is also on board with the need to deviate from ineffective reform strategies.
“Dr. Noguera has presented us with an unfortunate paradox in education,” Shorette said. “We have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to promote student achievement and have examples of promising practices across the country, yet we don’t seem to heed the lessons learned from those successful examples. We are not doing a good job at mirroring those strategies, especially in the schools that need it the most.”
Noguera noted that, although we have been reforming schools for a long time, approaching reforms as if they are fads is counterproductive.
