Convocation: Pedro Noguera

Pedro Noguera is one of America's most important voices for healthy public education. As a leading urban sociologist, he examines how schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment. What are the challenges they face in providing safe, academically rewarding environments? What is the state of race relations, racial inequality? What is the role of diversity? What is the impact of violence, parents, and school vouchers? What factors promote student achievement? Which detract from it? What is the impact of immigration and migration? Noguera holds faculty appointments in the departments of Teaching and Learning and Humanities and Social Sciences at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Development, as well as in the Department of Sociology at New York University. He is also a part-time high school teacher, the author of several groundbreaking texts, and a regular guest on CNN and NPR. Recently, he helped launch A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, a group of public policy experts in various fields (housing, education, civil rights), and from across the political spectrum, working to break a decades-long cycle of reform efforts that promised much and have achieved far too little. The group works in areas that research shows must be addressed if we are to keep our promises to all of America's children. A dynamic speaker who translates social theory into concise, hip language with emotional impact and intellectual rigor, Noguera examines the hurdles faced in providing equal education to all — and then unveils the solutions that are already working to overcome them — in his presentation titled "Creating the Schools We Need: A Broader and Bolder Approach to School Reform."