Speakers

Pedro Noguera, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Education in the UCLA Department of Education and a renowned expert on issues in urban education including education and economic and social development, race and schooling, immigration/migration, leadership and school reform, and student achievement.  He was formerly the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University, where he was Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. He has held tenured faculty appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he was named the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools and at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was also the Director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change.   

Dr. Noguera has published more than 200 research and scholarly articles, monographs, research reports, and editorials on topics such as urban school reform, education policy, conditions that promote student achievement, the role of education in community development, youth violence, and race and ethnic relations in American society. His books include City Schools and the American Dream, Unfinished Business: Closing the Achievement Gap in Our Nation’s Schools, The Trouble with Black Boys…and Other Reflections on Race, Equity and the Future of Public Education, and Creating the Opportunity to Learn: Moving from Research to Practice to Close the Achievement Gap with A. Wade Boykin. His most recent book is Schooling for Resilience: Improving the Life Trajectories of African American and Latino Boys, which is co-written with Edward Fergus and Margary Martin.

Professor Noguera appears as a regular commentator on educational issues on CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio and other national news outlets.  Early in his career he served as a classroom teacher in public schools in Providence, RI, and Oakland, CA, and continues to work with schools nationally and internationally as a researcher and advisor.  He earned his doctorate in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.

A sociologist whose scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions, as well as by demographic trends, Noguera says that schools are impacted by poverty in a myriad of ways, and that education should become a partner in systems that support poor students and families.