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April 29, 2009
What Pedro Noguera told Joel Klein — and what Joel Klein heard
Pedro Noguera and Joel Klein appeared at a panel together last month about the achievement gap, sponsored by Channel 13. (GothamSchools)
Pedro Noguera, the NYU professor and all-around authority on urban schools, had lunch with Chancellor Joel Klein the other day. The two aren’t natural candidates for a lunch date: Noguera is a co-founder of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, a national effort to rival Klein’s Education Equality Project. But they had recently spoken on a panel together and found that they agreed about a lot. So they decided to have lunch.
There, Noguera urged Klein to visit an elementary school in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, PS 28, which Noguera said epitomized his thoughts on what makes a strong urban school. Noguera said that its extended school day (some children stay until 5:45 p.m.), social services, professional development for teachers, and focus on emotional as well as academic growth have helped it become an impressive school, despite being challenged by serving a large number of homeless students.
Klein visited the school “the very next day,” Noguera told me in a telephone interview. It made an impression on him, too, and soon he wrote a memo to all principals in the city urging them to visit PS 28 (The memo was included in the April 7 Principals’ Weekly newsletter, and is reproduced below.)
But Noguera told me on the telephone that he was struck by what Klein’s memo emphasized about the school — and what it did not say. Namely, Klein talked about the importance of a strong principal and of analyzing students’ test scores, but not about addressing children’s non-academic needs, the focus of the other programs Noguera admired.
Here’s what Klein wrote to principals:
I met a leader, Sadie Silver, and a school community that is committed to showing that all children can learn at high levels. Teachers at the school use ARIS to access student demographic and assessment information whenever they need it. They also know how to use that data effectively – one of the core pillars of Children First.
The school has engaged parents and its surrounding community to an unusual extent. For example, it uses reports from ARIS to provide parents with information about their students’ progress. The principal has also created a blog on ARIS Connect to share insights on new learning to motivate the entire school community.
“He focused on the wrong thing!” Noguera told me on the telephone. “I told him to look at the full picture, all of the things that they were doing. I sat in on a session that was how teachers can respond to the social-emotional needs of kids. A lot of people are stuck on this idea that there’s only one way to go about educating urban kids: It’s the KIPP way, it’s very regimented. I mean, this school, it’s not like that at all, and it’s doing a great job.”
The school wrote its own memo, at Klein’s request, for other principals to read, which I’ve uploaded here. The memo also focuses heavily on accountability practices that Klein implemented, including the ARIS data warehouse and Acuity tests meant to diagnose students’ strengths and weaknesses.
Told of Noguera’s critique, a spokesman for Klein, David Cantor, said, “The school’s doing all kinds of great things with community outreach and engagement, but the principal told him that data-driven instruction was at the heart of her academic program.”
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April 29th, 2009 2:52 pm
Confirmation bias.
The question is not whether the principal told him that data-driven instruction was important. It’s what the principal meant by that, and what else might also have been said.
Noguera was especially impressed with things that confirmed his views of what makes a good school. Klein was especially impressed with things that confirmed his own views.
Surprise, surprise.
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April 29th, 2009 3:53 pm
The Chancellor’s fellow Queens public school grad, Paul Simon, put it eloquently in “the Boxer” when he wrote:
Such are promises.
All lies and jest.
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear.
And disregards the rest.Regardless of the Principal’s view, would one expect anything other than a pean to ARIS from any current employee who is preparing comments for public consumption?
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April 29th, 2009 10:21 pm
For a so-called “all-around authority on urban schools”, as he’s called here, the article makes Mr. Noguera sound like he needs to visit a few more KIPP schools. He says, “A lot of people are stuck on this idea that there’s only one way to go about educating urban kids: It’s the KIPP way, it’s very regimented.” What exactly he means by the KIPP way being very regimented, I’m not exactly sure, since every KIPP school is very different in how they demonstrate the core pillars of KIPP.
This begs the question, is P.S. 28, that he enjoys, NOT “very regimented”? Is he referring to scheduling, i.e. are kids basically just doing whatever they want whenever they want throughout the day at P.S. 28? What exactly does he mean be “regimented”?
I work at a KIPP school here in NYC and we have more services to meet the “social emotional” needs of our students than most schools I have seen. He seems to imply that KIPP schools put the academic needs of students above other needs. Though it certainly would be unwise to imply that this never happens, I have never seen it happen in any KIPP school that I have come in contact with. KIPP schools I know have always sought to balance out a child’s full range of needs; some succeed better than others but all are trying and some are excelling.
I’d hate to think that this were true, but is it likely that Mr. Noguera, like far too many academics today, has gotten so caught up in the bombastics and demagoguery of the imaginary and exaggerated “‘true’ progressive reform vs. the ‘KIPP way’” debate that he has lost touch with the reality of what is actually happening every day at KIPP schools in this city? I think I’m starting to understand where that ivory tower notion comes from…
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April 29th, 2009 11:42 pm
I read it differently. I thought he mean that the Chancellor’s view of the type of schools he (the Chancellor) likes was regimented, meaning Mr. Klein thinks ” there’s only one way to go about educating urban kids”. I didn’t get the idea that the KIPP schools were regimented, but that current thinking about urban education was regimented.
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