NEW YORK

With the increase in the nation’s Hispanic population, policymakers must address the “opportunity gap” as an education challenge, says Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University.

“The opportunity gap [is] the gap in the opportunity to attend well-funded schools that can offer a good education,” he said in a recent radio interview on National Public Radio. “Latino students in this country are more segregated now than any other group and are more likely to go to schools that have very few resources, and not surprisingly have some of the highest dropout rates in the country.”

Recent data from the U.S. Census reported that the Hispanic population increased by 3.3 percent from July 1, 2006, to July, 1, 2007, and it also reported that nearly a quarter of the children younger than five in the U.S. are Latino. Statistics based on national standardized tests have shown that Latino students, like African Americans, lag behind their peers in reading and math scores, a problem educators have dubbed “the achievement gap.” Latino students also have higher dropout rates and are less likely to attend college, according to recent statistics gathered from the U.S. Department of Education.

Professor Noguera has written extensively on this issue. Noguera, whose parents are Caribbean immigrants, was raised in New York and attended public schools in Long Island. He received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brown University; and he attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his Ph.D. in sociology. He has taught in education
for about 30 years and worked as a teacher, school-board member, administrator and researcher.

In 2003, he published City Schools and the American Dream: Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education (Teachers College Press), an award-winning book that focused on the conditions of urban schools and solutions.