• Introduction
• Biography
  

		Pedro Noguera. Photo by Nic Paget-Clarke.

Education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Debates over affirmative action, bilingual education, equal financing of schools and access to pre-school are just some of the issues that have shown the importance of education to civil and human rights in recent years. There is a lot at stake in these struggles. The state of our nation's schools will play a large role in determining the kind of country we will live in. It is also becoming increasingly clear that expanding access and improving the quality of education, especially in poor countries, will be essential to addressing larger social and economic problems facing many nations in the world.

The Education Rights section of In Motion Magazine is dedicated to providing a forum for activists, educators, parents and students who are searching for alternative ideas to the challenges confronting education today. The need for alternative ideas is clear. Educational policy in the U.S. has largely failed to address the problems confronting poor communities, and more often than not, educational research has not proven particularly helpful either.

We are looking for writers to contribute to this section who are connected to the important struggles that are occurring in education today and who can bring a fresh perspective and shed light on some of the issues that leave so many people confused and disempowered today.

We now have a law called No Child Left Behind, but we have millions of children being left behind, educationally, socially and economically. We have millions of college educated people in this country but ignorance about the world and the state of the country we live in is rampant. Now more than ever, education is a political issue that must be engaged and given the priority it deserves in struggles for civil and human rights. It is our hope that this section of the magazine can play a small role in combatting ignorance and arming those in the fight for educational justice with ideas and inspiration.

We also hope that our interactive format will encourage you to respond to our contributors.

Pedro Antonio Noguera, Ph.D.

Pedro Noguera is a professor in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University. An urban sociologist, Noguera’s scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment. Noguera has served as an advisor and engaged in collaborative research with several large urban school districts throughout the United States. He has also done research on issues related to education and economic and social development in the Caribbean, Latin America and several other countries throughout the world.

From 2000 - 2003 Noguera served as the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 1990 – 2000 he was a Professor in Social and Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of Education and the Director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley.

Pedro Noguera has published over one hundred research articles, monographs and research reports on topics such as urban school reform, conditions that promote student achievement, youth violence, the potential impact of school choice and vouchers on urban public schools, and race and ethnic relations in American society. His work has appeared in several major research journals and many are available online at inmotionmagazine.com. He is the author of The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada (Peter Lang Publishers, 1997), and his most recent book, City Schools and the American Dream was published by Teachers College Press in the fall of 2003.

Noguera has served as a member of the US Public Health Service Centers for Disease Control Taskforce on Youth Violence, the Chair of the Committee on Ethics in Research and Human Rights for the American Educational Research Association, and on numerous advisory boards to local and national education and youth organizations. Dr. Noguera was a K-12 classroom teacher for several years and continues to teach part-time in high schools. From 1986-1988 he served as the Executive Assistant to the Mayor of Berkeley, and from 1990 – 1994 he was an elected member and the President of the Berkeley School Board. In 1995 he received an award from the Wellness Foundation for his research on youth violence, in 1997 he was the recipient of the University of California's Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2001 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of San Francisco and the Centennial Medal from Philadelphia University for his work in the field of education.

The son of Caribbean immigrants, Noguera has been married for twenty-two years to Patricia Vattuone. He is also the father of four children.

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