Pedro Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University. Dr. Noguera is 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 in local, regional and global contexts. Dr. Noguera holds faculty appointments in the departments of Teaching and Learning and Humanities and Social Sciences at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Development. He also serves as an affiliated faculty member in NYU’s Department of Sociology. Dr. Noguera is the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS). From 2008 - 2011, he was an appointee of the Governor of New York to the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees.
Dr. Noguera received his bachelors’ degree in Sociology and History and a teaching credential from Brown University in 1981 and earned his masters’ degree in Sociology from Brown in 1982. Dr. Noguera earned his doctorate in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. He was 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 has held tenured faculty appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (2000-2003), where he was named the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools and at the University of California, Berkeley (1990-2000), where he was also the Director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change.
Dr. Noguera has published over 150 research articles, monographs and research reports on topics such as urban school reform, conditions that promote student achievement, the role of education in community development, youth violence, and race and ethnic relations in American society. His work has appeared in multiple major research journals. Dr. Noguera is the author of The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada (Peter Lang Publishers, 1997), City Schools and the American Dream (Teachers College Press, 2003), Unfinished Business: Closing the Achievement Gap in Our Nation’s Schools (Josey Bass, 2006), The Trouble With Black Boys…and Other Reflections on Race, Equity and the Future of Public Education (Wiley and Sons, 2008), and Creating the Opportunity to Learn: Moving from Research to Practice to Close the Achievement Gap with A. Wade Boykin (ASCD, 2011).
Dr. Noguera appears as a regular commentator on educational issues on CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio and other national news outlets. He has also received numerous awards. For Pedro Noguera's full biography, please visit
NYU Steinhardt's website.
