Dr.
Pedro Noguera
Schools
For The 21st Century: What It Will Take to Really Leave No Child Behind.
The current direction in education is not working
and there is sufficient evidence to support this fact. According to
international comparisons there is a decline in the academic performance of
American students. A continued
persistence of high dropout rates particularly in urban areas, and a
growing number of struggling and mediocre
schools across the country—especially in communities with high levels of poverty
is still a challenge.
Students are turned off and alienated by the
persistent emphasis on test preparation and pervasive boredom brought about by
passive learning. There is an urgent
need for a new direction and a new set of policies that will once again stir
the creative minds and engage learners.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was a needed reform
which focused our attention on achievement patterns and disparities however,
policymakers and schools became fixated on standardized tests. A decade later NCLB continues to leave
millions of children behind, and does little to facilitate the implementation
of real reforms that guide schools on matters that address the learning needs
of children in poverty. Race to the Top, complicates matters even more, with
its prescriptions for evaluating teachers by student test scores, forcing
districts to institute inconsistent monitoring systems in order to capture
federal dollars.
Several civil rights organizations have supported
NCLB because they see it as a way to guarantee accountability in academic
outcomes. However, what they and others have largely ignored is the profound
inequity in learning opportunities caused by concentrating our most
disadvantaged students in racially segregated and under-resourced schools. A study conducted two years ago, regarding the
ten years of reform in Chicago( under Superintendent Arne Duncan), found that
schools lacked the capacity to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged children
Many schools in urban communities today face learning
challenges that are compounded by an insurmountable combination of hardships such as a lack of
stable housing or inadequate home support. Many of these schools serve large
numbers of children with severe behavior problems that are rooted in a history
of abuse and neglect, or children whose parents are incarcerated, or who are
being raised by grandparents who are worn out and tired and often overwhelmed
by their needs.
The schools
in these communities need to provide much more than an education for the
students they serve. They need to create supportive communities that give
students the safety and stability they desperately need and make it possible
for them to focus on learning. There are
successful models currently operating in various cities throughout the United
States and they should be commended and used as models for other
communities.
We continue to look for solutions and ways to close
the achievement gap in schools that serve a disproportionate percentage of low
income students but we fail to acknowledge and learn from the schools that have
been successful. The educational
community as a whole does not turn to these schools as models in an attempt to
discover how this success can be replicated.
The policy makers also ignore these school models as possible solutions.
A narrow reform agenda has dominated education
reform for the past decade. It is an agenda that has turned assessment into a
weapon instead of a tool for improving learning; an agenda that strips teachers
of the professional title; an agenda that refers to parents as consumers
instead of partners in the educational process; an agenda that has ignored the
development of the whole child by narrowing the curriculum and ignoring instruction
in the arts, physical education and nutrition.
Effective
coordination of school and community resources is essential at the school site.
Research shows that students will achieve when resources for addressing
students’ academic and non‐academic needs
are tailored, coordinated, and accessible. Community school coordinators
create, strengthen, and maintain the bridge between the school and community.
They facilitate and provide leadership for the collaborative process and
development of a continuum of services for children, families and community members
within a school neighborhood
Research shows a major gap between life and learning
for students in low performing schools; thus, instruction with deeper
connections to the real world and the community, done from a community problem‐solving perspective,
will be more engaging and likely to improve student achievement. In addition,
educators and staff of community partners must have the knowledge, skill, and
ability to work effectively with families, communities, and each other
We need to
create comprehensive support systems around schools in low-income communities
to address issues like safety, health, nutrition, and counseling. This should
include the expansion of pre-school and after-school programs, and extended
learning opportunities during the summer. We need to seek additional resources
beyond federal funds to support such initiative so local communities must be
encouraged to develop public-private partnerships to develop and sustain these
systems of support for children and schools.
We need a new
approach to assessment that focuses on concrete evidence of academic
performance—writing, reading, mathematical problem solving—and moves away from
using standardized tests to measure and rank students, teachers, and schools. A
number of schools in New York State utilize performance-based assessments and
longitudinal studies have found that these students are more likely to enroll
in college and less likely to take remedial courses in college than their peers
who are subjected to traditional standardized tests.
States and
school districts must undertake careful evaluations of struggling schools to
determine why they are failing to meet the needs of the students they serve
before prescribing what should be changed. We must pay greater attention to
enrollment patterns (i.e. have we concentrated too many "high needs"
students in a school?) and devise a strategy to build the capacity of schools
to meet the needs of the students they serve.
This is the
positive and constructive direction for change. We have no time to lose, time
is of the essence. It is time to change
policy and realize that education must be considered the prime resource for
helping our nation devise solutions in order to create a more just, equitable, and prosperous
nation.
