Pedro Noguera’s Tips for Effective Schools

Oakland Unified School District is trying to change its image. And well it should since it has a reputation for mismanaging funds. In 2002 administrators were forced to pursue a $100 million loan from the state to cover a shortfall. In addition, the district lost students to private schools and nearby suburbs, experienced an abysmal teacher turnover rate and posted poor test scores. That led to a state takeover in 2003 to clear up the fiscal disaster. When the state takeover ended in 2009, a re-empowered school board elected Tony Smith [2] as superintendent. Smith’s administration has promised to listen to the people.

The district has created several teacher-chaired task forces, including one on Effective Teaching [3]. Through a series of engagements and speaker events, this team hopes to enlist teachers in making systemic changes that affect how the district is run.

On a Thursday night, hundreds of teachers gathered at the Oakland Museum of California to hear Pedro Noguera [4] talk about how to make effective schools the norm. While Noguera has all the credits of a veritable urban education celebrity (if “urban education celebrity” is indeed possible), his roots are in Oakland where he began his career as a substitute teacher. He’s seen our schools first-hand and knows how they fit into the national landscape of education.

According to Noguera, effective schools are collaborative. They treat teachers as “intellectual workers.” They do not assign new teachers to the hardest classes. As Noguera listed these qualities among others, my colleague and I turned to each other and said, “It’s like he’s talking about our school.” In fact, I’m lucky enough to work at one such collaborative school in Oakland where we regularly refer to “our students” and gently correct each other when someone says “my students.” We see teaching the entire student body as our collective and collaborative responsibility. This  drives other decisions at our school.

We do, as Noguera suggests, “ask why some teachers get better results than others without placing blame or pointing fingers.” At our school, where the average age of our teaching staff is 31, our veteran teacher, now on the verge of retirement, is willing to ask his colleagues for help in a real way. We spent several hours during our school’s on-site professional development analyzing student work samples, looking at the original assignment and discussing ways to modify it and improve student success. Sadly, such open dialogue is rare in a climate where teachers are being blamed for all of the failings of public education. But at our small school we learn from each other. What’s more, with only 250 students we each know every student and can dig deep when we find a student who succeeds in one class but fails at another. As Noguera put it, “It’s when we are accountable to each other that real change happens.”

Noguera didn’t sing the praises of small schools in particular at this engagement, though he has advocated for them in other venues [5]. In our district, as it is state-wide and nationally, small schools are controversial [6]. While some see them as fiscally unsound or unsustainable, it is because of our small school that we are able to do many of the things Noguera promotes.

School reform, Noguera points out, rarely asks the question, “What are we doing well?” But it should. In fact, he’d like to see effective schools across the country designated as professional development sites. He’d like to see educators visit these schools, ask questions, and take home what they learned. I couldn’t agree more with Noguera when he championed Oakland. He said, “I think Oakland could be an example for the whole country, and I am hopeful that it will be so.”

With our new leadership and teacher initiatives, maybe, just maybe, what’s happening in effective schools in Oakland can lead the way.

Thomas is an English teacher in California.