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Pedro Noguera is a professor at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, a leading authority on school reform, and a co-chair of the task force that recently released a statement promoting "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education." As I wrote in an earlier post, the statement calls for policies to reduce the educational, economic and social disadvantages that depress the academic achievement of our most vulnerable students.

Noguera recently took some time to tell me about the content and goals of the task force's work, and to address criticisms of the statement that have been circulating through some education policy blogs: namely, that the task force is letting schools off the hook and shying away from hard-hitting education reforms.

To the contrary, Noguera argues, the task force includes robust, research-based school improvement strategies as an essential plank in its overall agenda - and many of its members rank among the most respected school reformers of recent decades. They have all come to the conclusion that schools alone cannot close achievement gaps, but none would argue that schools cannot significantly improve the lot of poor children. In his concluding comments, Noguera is careful to point out that the countries consistently beating the United States in international assessments generally attend to the social, physical and academic needs of their poorest students. Let's hope champions of the American competitiveness agenda are listening.

You can listen to highlights from our interview here (5 minutes):

Or, read a transcript:

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  What is the significance of the task force's statement, in your view?

NOGUERA:  I think the significance is that we've brought together a very broad coalition of experts and leaders in the field of education who've all come to agree that we need a more comprehensive approach to educating children in this country, that focusing narrowly on achievement as measured by test scores is not enough if you don't look at what's happening in the lives of children, particularly with respect to health and nutrition and their overall well being.

And so what we've done is we've gathered together individuals who have a track record of working on these issues to come to hopefully influence our elected officials to see the need for this bolder approach. 

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  Do you see the statement as a repudiation of "No Child Left Behind"?

NOGUERA:  I wouldn't take it as a repudiation.  I would see it as a call for substantial modification in that law in a way that reflects the broader needs of children.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  Others have argued that the task force that put the statement together is essentially letting schools off the hook.  What's your response to that?

NOGUERA:  Just look at the names, starting with the co-chair: Tom Payzant, former superintendent of Boston.  He was an early endorser of standards and accountability, and has a track record of really putting a lot of accountability on schools.  You look at my own work.  I've put a lot of emphasis on the need to improve schools.  [So have] several others who have signed the document.  I don't think anyone who knows the individuals could reasonably say that this is aimed at letting schools off the hook, by any means.
  
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  A number of people who've made that claim have argued that the actual school improvement provisions spelled out in the document aren't aggressive enough. 
  
NOGUERA:  We avoided, purposefully, getting very specific about the kind of reforms that we think schools should endorse because we wanted to keep it broad.  So we focused on after-school and extended learning time.  We focused on pre-school.  And we focused on health and nutrition and well being, because we know that there are many children in this country who lack basic access to good health care and nutrition.  The countries that are presently out-performing the United States provide access to pre-school and health care for their children.
  
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  Is this more than an accumulation of discrete programs?

NOGUERA:  It is.  The degree that we're seeing this more comprehensive approach...we're only seeing it at the local level.  For example, Chicago has about a hundred schools now that you could call full-service schools, where health services and social workers and mental health services are provided to children at the school site.  So we're seeing it sporadically.  We're not seeing it in whole cities.  For example, New York's not doing it, even though we have mayoral control.  Much less at a state level.  So we're trying to push it further, beyond this more sporadic approach.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  What do you think is the role of federal policy in addressing this broader vision?
  
NOGUERA:  One of the things that No Child Left Behind has done, which I think we are actually supporting, is it's expanded the federal government's role in education.  However, rather than merely setting the federal government up to be the policeman or the watchdog for standards, we think the federal government actually has to take the lead in expanding initiatives like Early Childhood Education.  And so that would really push the federal government in a very different direction than it's gone so far with No Child Left Behind.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  Do you have a sense of how they could take the lead in doing this?  Let's take Early Childhood as an example. 

NOGUERA:  I think it would take a partnership between the federal government and the states to expand programs like Head Start.  We have some good track records in health care and in Head Start where the federal government has worked with state governments to expand opportunities in these two areas.  I think that they could just basically take that much further.  We have models that are working that we should be building upon.  And they show us that when you take this more comprehensive approach it does actually result in higher achievement for kids.
  
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  Are there any other important aspects of the "Broader, Bolder Approach" that we haven't addressed in this interview that you think need to be addressed?

NOGUERA:  We constantly see these reports that show international comparisons where the United States is lagging behind in science, in math, in reading.  We hear politicians complaining, "Why aren't our schools doing better, why are we behind Canada and Sweden and Australia, or even Slovenia?"  And the fact is that we don't then ask the next question, "What do those countries do?"  And in each one of those countries they do more to support children and families than we do. 

One-fifth of all children in America are poor.  We have many families that are barely getting by.  The schools that serve those children need more help to be effective at meeting their academic needs.