GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Elizabeth reported yesterday about a conversation she had with NYU professor Pedro Noguera about PS 28, a Brooklyn school that he said is succeeding despite serving a challenging set of students. In that conversation, Noguera objected to what he said is the commonly held idea that “the KIPP way” is the only way to run an urban public school.

Today, after reading comments defending the KIPP charter schools, Noguera clarified his objection in an e-mail to GothamSchools:

I support KIPP, Achieve[ment] First and any school — charter, private or traditional public — that serves children, especially poor children well. However, I reject the notion that there’s one way to educate poor kids or the idea put forward by David Whitman that you must treat their culture as a problem. I also reject the idea that schools should focus narrowly on achievement and ignore the other needs — social, emotional, etc. PS 28 does it all with a high-need population and even though children do not walk the halls in silence they still receive a good education. 

In his 2008 book, “Sweating the Small Stuff,” David Whitman lauded what he termed “the new paternalism” in urban education: The trend of highly structured schools, such as the KIPP charter schools, teaching not only academic content but a way of behaving that Whitman says represents “traditional, middle-class values.”

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. (more…)

Chancellor Klein, right, with Pedro Noguera at a panel discussion today

If Joel Klein is nervous about his future as chancellor, he wasn’t showing it this morning.

After participating in a panel about the achievement gap at a conference sponsored by Channel 13 today, Klein was swarmed by audience members who wanted to thank him for the opportunities his leadership has given them.

Three of the well-wishers I encountered were people who have risen to leadership positions under Klein’s administration: Mercedes Qualls, who in 2003 took over a failing school in Queens that has since stabilized; Jackie Boswell, currently ushering Lafayette High School through its final years; and Robert Armond, who is training right now at the city’s Leadership Academy to join his wife as a principal in the city’s schools.

Klein was all smiles and hugs as he listened to one fan after another. After hearing a particularly effusive expression of gratitude, Klein joked about his reported unpopularity. Laughing, he said, “I’m staying here next year!”

NYU professor Pedro Noguera was a guest on Leonard Lopate’s radio show yesterday, discussing the topic “Can Public Education Save America’s Kids?” In the final minutes of the interview, Noguera, a co-chair of the “Broader, Bolder” committee, found a way to wrap its platform into the conversation, which otherwise careened through hot topics such as mayoral control, No Child Left Behind, and Barack Obama. Suggesting that public education has goals beyond raising test scores, Noguera said:

Every time we do these international comparisons with other countries [ie. NAEP] … our kids are always far behind. But we never ask why — what are those countries doing that we’re not doing? … Part of it is because it’s not all on the schools. They have health care in Canada. They have preschool in Canada. They have parental leave in Canada and in Norway and in Sweden. We have to say, why aren’t our kids getting that kind of support? Why aren’t our families getting that kind of support? Because we can’t expect schools to solve all of these problems by themselves and that’s a big part of the reason why we continue to see such pervasive failure.

You can listen to the whole interview online.