Homeroom with Sal & Pedro Noguera - Wednesday, October 21

Hi everyone, Sal Khan here. Welcome to the Homeroom live stream. We have a really exciting guest today, Pedro Noguera, who is the Dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. So start thinking of your questions, putting them on the message board on YouTube or Facebook, wherever you’re watching this, and we’re going to try to get as many questions as possible to Dean Noguera about all things education, higher education, what's going on in K-12. I think all of that is fair game, whatever is of interest to you.

Before we jump into that conversation, I'll give my standard announcements. First of all, a reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. We only exist through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself, so if you’re in a position to do so, please think about making a donation at khanacademy.org/donate. I also want to give a special shout-out to several organizations that stepped up when COVID hit, and we saw that our costs had gone up because we were seeing 250 percent of normal usage, and we were trying to accelerate a whole series of programs.

So special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, Novartis, and the many other funders at all levels, including many of y'all, for helping keep Khan Academy going. We continue to need your help, so once again, if you’re in a position to do so, please think about making a donation. Last but not least, reminder for everyone about Homeroom with Sal, the podcast. Wherever you can find your podcasts, it's an audio version of some of the highlights from this live stream that you can consume safely in your car. So encourage you to check that out.

So with that, I’m excited to introduce Pedro Noguera, Dean of the Rossier School of Education at USC. Pedro, thanks for joining us.

Pedro Noguera: Thanks for having me, Sal. Great to be with you.

Sal Khan: So there is a ton to talk about. Maybe the best place to start, I mean I want to talk about, you know, given you’re in higher education, but you’re in higher education at the school of education. I think you have a really interesting lens on both higher education and K-12. Big picture, where do you think we are on the COVID crisis in education? You know, is what, what's going to be the main damage done and what are the big opportunities?

Pedro Noguera: Wow, so, so much damage. We just released a report today from USC showing the impact of virtual learning on kids just in the LA area, and there are still thousands of kids who have, you know, uneven or real total lack of access to virtual learning, and that’s not been corrected. And I’m not faulting the district because they did and have gone to great lengths to get screens to kids and to connect with the internet, but we still have lots of communities across the country, particularly in rural areas, but urban areas as well, where there's no internet service. So it starts there; there's just no access.

Then we have the fact that there are, you know, as we know, many affluent people are able to put their kids into learning pods; they get higher private tutors; they're independent schools where kids are coming back. That’s not happening for kids who are dependent on the public schools, especially in our low-income districts. So the disparities that were there before the pandemic are going to be worse after.

And I guess two questions: Is there anything we can do to help mitigate some of that damage? Or if we’re not, how do we deal with it once we normalize, whatever that might be?

Pedro Noguera: Well, you know, I start by just reminding the viewers, you know, all along several of us have been saying we have fixated on the wrong thing. We were calling this an achievement gap when we should have been always framing it as an opportunity gap. Right? That is that kids need the opportunity to learn, and that means once you frame it that way, then you start to look at the conditions under which teaching and learning occur.

Those conditions have been very uneven, and all our fixation on test scores has never addressed that. We never have made sure, for example, that kids have access to capable teachers, that they're in schools with lab equipment, and libraries, basic things that kids need. And now we have the issues of access around online learning, and again, if you’re an affluent kid and something is hard, you can get a private tutor; you can go on to Khan Academy—now hopefully Khan Academy's available to everybody. But there are a lot of kids who don’t have those resources.

So my hope is that policymakers will become much more attentive to these gaps in opportunity that are pervasive throughout American society.

Sal Khan: I mean speaking about the opportunity gap, I couldn't agree more. I mean, you know, the digital divide is the most obvious one, especially during COVID when you need that to just even be able to access your potential. But even outside of COVID, if you have even a handful of kids in the classroom who don’t have internet access at home or proper internet access, the whole classroom is not going to be able to take advantage of personalized learning tools or whatever else.

And then, you know, I was surprised—I remember several months ago reading a report that a majority of minority-majority schools don’t even offer a lot of the courses that we take for granted in high school. And when they do offer it, they don’t cover it at the same level of rigor because their expectations—arguably, whatever something's going on—they might not be having the same level equipment; they might not be having the same level of expertise among some of the faculty.

We don’t know, but these kids aren’t getting the opportunity to even engage at that level. What do you see as the major levers? You know, if you were Secretary of Education or Emperor of the Universe, what would you do to help close that?

Pedro Noguera: Well, I think it has to go beyond Secretary of Education. I think the federal government, state governments should be leaning hard on the high-tech companies. These companies are the richest companies in the world right now and have gotten richer even during the pandemic. You think about Amazon, Facebook, Google. These companies are massive; they're large. They have a social responsibility to invest in the infrastructure that allows access.

If you think about it, telephone service would not be available in rural areas if we just saw it as a cost. We recognize that there’s a basic need and right to communication and so therefore we do have cell towers and telephone service even in the most remote rural areas. We need that kind of commitment to access to basic services around the country. I think the federal government has to lean in and we might need legislation, but we’ve got to figure out a way to make that possible because it's not only about learning opportunities, but as we know, we rely on the internet for everything now. And to see so many people cut off is, I think again, a reflection of the deep and persistent inequality in our country.

Sal Khan: No, you’re absolutely right, and all of the opportunity gaps that need to be filled. I mean, the most obvious one, especially during COVID, is clearly the digital divide. And I mean, any sense? You know, we're signatories to this Connect All Students campaign that Common Sense Media is doing, and you know, my back of the envelope calculations are you could connect all the families that aren't connected in the whole country for one percent of one of the rounds of stimulus that were so—it feels like the most obvious thing in the world to do. And it economically empowers people; probably even improves their health outcomes because they'll get access to information, and what not.

What’s your view from how—what are teachers seeing and feeling and how might, you know, do you think what we’re seeing in COVID is just a COVID thing or do you think there are certain aspects of teaching or schooling that might be forever altered because of what we're going through?

Pedro Noguera: I think—I was just on a call yesterday with some teachers in Texas, in San Antonio, and many of them, their primary concern was the mental health needs of kids and the stress that they're seeing their children under. Kids who are not going outside, kids who are depressed and anxious because of the climate in the country. And I'm worried about the long-term effects and consequences of that.

You also have the same kinds of stress on teachers. Just think about the teachers who are juggling kids at home while it's expected to do Zoom instruction. So unfortunately, when you're preoccupied with those things, how do you get creative on the use of Zoom and online platforms to provide really high-quality instruction? There are some schools that are doing that; they provided the support and guidance to teachers. But I think that that’s not happening nearly enough.

And so what we’re seeing is many kids who get discouraged, they're not motivated, they’re burnt out from too many hours online, and they’re giving up. And that worries me, especially for the older students who should be preparing for college right now.

Sal Khan: No, that makes a ton of sense. I mean, what if you—you know, we have a lot of teachers who watch this; you know, what’s your, what would you tell them? I mean, as you just described, there's a lot of stressors going on and they’re trying to—they're doing heroic efforts. What advice would you have for them to kind of, you know, navigate all of this?

Pedro Noguera: I would strongly encourage them to go on to Edutopia. That’s my favorite platform because they provide very practical guidance to teachers on, first of all, how do you provide social and emotional support to kids in an online medium? How do you design good lessons K through 12 in a variety of subjects for kids that can get kids engaged and help kids to develop their skills and ensure that learning is occurring?

So you need those kinds of hands-on tools available for teachers. Many districts don’t have the resources to provide it, so unfortunately it falls on the back of teachers to figure out where can I get the help I need. But there’s help available there, and I’d really encourage you to go check it out.

Sal Khan: Edutopia. I don’t get paid, so this is a free commercial. I just think it’s a great resource.

Pedro Noguera: No, they’re a not-for-profit; that’s George Lucas's. And I'm also a very big fan of them, so we're aligned there. What do you—are there going to be some fallout? I mean, we've talked about some of the negatives that are going to happen over—that, I mean frankly, are already happening pre-COVID, and if anything, COVID’s making it worse around, you know, opportunity gaps and the digital divide.

Do you think that, you know, people have—obviously your traditional standardized state assessments have had to go on hold because of COVID. Teachers—you know, every teacher I talk to, they're thinking about how they use Zoom in a more interactive way. People are getting creative in terms of breakout sessions, you know, use of things like Khan Academy. Do you think that some of this is going to—you know, people right now are doing hybrids where even if, you know, when they are coming back to school, there’s going to be some kids that are still home. So how do you support both? Do you think any of that stuff is going to last post-COVID or do you think we’re just—we’re going to go back to what we were doing before?

Pedro Noguera: That’s a good question and something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I think ideally this disruption should serve as an opportunity to do things differently and hopefully better than we were before; that we don’t just return to schools as we knew them. For too many kids, school was not a place where they felt supported, where they felt stimulated and challenged.

We need that to be the primary focus. If you think about it—and I just did a conversation with the former Secretary of Education a few days ago—No Child Left Behind got as fixated on achievement as measured by test scores, which then directed teachers to prepare kids for tests. That, to me, was such a disservice to education because what we know is that teaching, when it’s powerful, should be creative; it should be stimulating; it should be engaging; it should be meaningful.

And, you know, as a former teacher myself, I taught in Providence, Rhode Island when I first started—I taught history and I loved history—and I knew then that my job was not simply to cover the textbook. My job was to make history come to life so that students would appreciate and want to learn more history. And that’s the message I often tell teachers. You know, we know we’re doing it right when kids want more, right? That’s the way knowledge works; you want more once you start to realize the power of knowledge.

Well, that’s what we’ve got to come back to. We’ve got to redirect the attention of our teachers; their job should be to get kids excited about learning, to focus on motivation, to focus on making it meaningful rather than simply covering material and assessing to see if kids got it. That, to me, was—I mean I get it. We needed the evidence that kids were learning; we just focused on the wrong things.

Sal Khan: And you feel that, you know, post-COVID there might be some opportunities to rethink this because some of the traditional kind of testing structures have at least been paused, and some of this ESSA—Every Student Succeeds Act—we replaced No Child Left Behind. Give states more flexibility to do things differently, to do formative assessments and performance-based assessments, so we don’t have to allow the assessment itself to be the driving factor. But what I see is that in several states, I don’t see the vision or the knowledge about how to do things differently, and that worries me.

If you look at the independent schools, they’re already doing it differently. Many of the affluent public schools are. Where we see the problems is in the schools serving low-income kids, which are over half the kids in the country today. That’s where we see the kind of kill-and-drill approach that I think leaves many kids alienated.

Sal Khan: No, makes sense. So we have a question here from a teacher, Christina Espinoza: “Good day Dr. Noguera. I am a teacher in the Sweetwater Union High School District. Currently, we are teaching 100 percent virtually and serving students from extremely diverse backgrounds. Since we see students throughout several zip codes, from a rather affluent East Chula Vista all the way down to the border, we cannot have a one-size-fits-all grading policy. How, from your experience, should we approach grading?”

Pedro Noguera: Good question and hello to the folks down Sweetwater. They have literally hundreds of kids—I think each day who, at least when schools were open, were coming across the border to go to school. Some kids getting up at three in the morning to get to school, so just want to acknowledge the efforts of those kids and the educators who serve them. I think grading all along—and I've been struggling with this as a university professor for many years—you know, what we forget is the real learning is not in the grade you earn; it's in your ability to demonstrate how much you've learned. It's the work you produce, right? So we should be using grading to give feedback to students; meaningful feedback on how to improve.

And we should be treating work in an iterative manner—that is, the real learning that occurs through the revision, right? Of getting it right or getting it improving upon the finished product. And so what always has concerned about the way we do grading in schools is kids get fixated on the grade. Some kids want the A, and so they'll aim for the A. Some kids just want to pass, and what we should be more concerned about is the learning. How much have they learned? What can they share with us and demonstrate as proof of what they've learned? That's what we should be looking at, and that's what it's—to a degree, we need to fix a grade at the end. We should grade evidence of growth, evidence of mastery, because when we don’t focus on that, what we end up with is kids who are pushed along grade by grade who have a weak foundation, who can't do very much, end up in college, can't write, can't do research, even though they passed, and that is a huge problem.

Sal Khan: I couldn’t agree more. You know, one of the things that I talk a lot about is 70 percent of kids that show up at community college have to take remedial math, which, you know, is not a euphemism for 11th or 12th grade math; it's pre-algebra. It's 6th or 7th grade math. So the whole system, to your point, year after year kids promoted; they get 20 wrong on dividing decimals, they get 30 wrong on exponents, those gaps just keep accumulating. At some point, the algebra is hard. They start watering it down for them so that they have the illusion of progress. You get to college and they're saying you're not even ready to learn algebra yet, which is really a 9th or 10th grade subject.

And those kids, all of them are capable because we get letters from them every day when they go back and fill in their gaps. They're all capable of it, but it's incredibly disheartening. And we know that's like the—weeder or the best predictor of not succeeding in college is having to show up and having to take non-credit-bearing remedial courses. You know, I mean, with that lens, how do you see—and everything that we do at Khan Academy is trying to facilitate mastery learning, so I love your view there—but what's your sense of college? You know, there's a question from YouTube, Hari Abreu: “Do you think college will change in the future because of the pandemic?”

Pedro Noguera: Ah, college is going to have to change. And the main thing that has to change is the cost. You know, it's out of reach for too many people. We have too many students that have to take on debts that they'll, you know, incur and be paying back well into adulthood because the cost of college has gone too high. So we’ve got to figure out how to reduce cost, how to increase access, but also how to improve teaching.

So it’s very easy, you know, we often—in the conversations about teaching and the critiques—we focus on K-12, but I would say some of the worst teaching I see is at the university level where the primary mode of teaching is still lecture. And lecture, even if you’re a very good lecturer, is not the most effective way for students to learn something. We need to know—real, get the evidence again—evidence-based teaching is much more interactive.

Let me just use one example: Going back to math and algebra that you gave. When I was in eighth grade, I took algebra with my teacher, Mrs. Harris, in New York City. And Ms. Harris started class by saying, “You kids are lucky because I’m the best teacher in the school.” She said, “Tell me who out there in this class struggles in math?” And very sheepishly, I raised my hand because I was finding arithmetic, but algebra was, had thrown me for a loop.

So she said, “You kids are gonna sit in front because I’m going to check on you throughout the day and every day to make sure you’re with me,” because she understood that if you didn’t get it in September, you certainly wouldn’t have it by June. She was constantly looking at her work; she wanted proof that we got it. She was inviting our questions—not to embarrass us, but to make sure that we were with her. It was interactive, and because of that I came out of that course much more confident about my knowledge and understanding of math.

When we teach that way, in that kind of interactive way when we recognize that teaching and learning are connected—and Khan Academy does this better than I think most people—then what teaching and learning becomes an exercise in acquiring and becoming and getting ownership of the information, material, the skills instead of a passive experience of sitting through lessons. And that, I think, is the biggest change at both the university and at the K-12 level that we need to bring about.

Sal Khan: No, it’s fascinating because, you know, these days you’re in COVID with everyone learning on video conference, everyone’s like, “How do we make it engaging?” because kids are going on to different video windows, and you know—and everyone’s saying, “Yeah, you’ve got to ask them questions; you’ve got to be on top of them; you’ve got to pull them out of the screen; put them into breakouts.” But, you know, it’s always like, “But, you know, by the way, that’s also a good idea when you’re in a physical classroom.”

Exactly. And your point about mastery learning, it sounds like you had a great teacher who intuitively got that you can’t let these kids have the gaps because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t know how to dribble, you can practice free throws all day; you’re not going to be a great basketball player. But somehow, you know, the system—I don’t blame the system because it’s, you know, it’s the best way we knew how to do it 200 years ago. But there’s now—anyway, to your point, your teacher was able to do it with pretty low tech.

So maybe we could have done it a little bit different. And think about it, a while ago I’m the best teacher and best teacher her meant not that she taught the best kids. Best teacher meant she could teach all kinds of kids. See? And that’s also a shift in the way we think about teaching. There are a lot of people out there who think they’re good, but they’re only good with kids who don’t need help. They only want to teach honors; they only want to teach AP; they don’t want to teach kids who struggle. And that’s part of the problem—that, you know, real teaching is about helping to make it accessible, make it, get it, help kids to get it.

So I think the shift needs to occur on both ends in how we deliver, but also how we engage students. If I could just use one analogy: If you watch kids when they’re playing a video game—a new game—if they need help, they don’t get it, they go on YouTube, they call a friend. That’s part of learning. Then they’re making mistakes because that’s part of learning too. You learn through your mistakes, and then they advance. They advance because they get better and better, and then they master the game. That’s the way learning occurs for kids, and that’s what we should be replicating in our classrooms—a version of that.

I couldn’t agree more. That’s, you know, that’s what we aspire exactly to help facilitate.

Here’s a good question here from YouTube: Nish786: “You’re widely known for your work on equity, race, and poverty issues in education. How do you see social-emotional learning fitting into those areas? If schools aren't addressing racism, they aren't fully addressing trauma. In quotes, how can schools better align their work in these related areas?”

Pedro Noguera: So, you know, one of the things we’ve known—all teachers know this—kids learn through relationships. Kids will learn from teachers they know care about them, who are invested in them. And caring doesn’t mean we have to be best buddies. My teacher, Ms. Harris, wasn’t my best buddy; she let me know that if you’re in my class, you’re gonna learn, you’re gonna work, right? She was a warm demander.

Racism gets in the way of that because it often results in lowered expectations; it results in strained relationships. And sometimes, you know, it results in teachers who don’t see themselves as being invested in the learner, taking responsibility for whether or not their students are actually learning. So, I think it’s important that we have an equity mindset, and we recognize that professional educators have a moral and professional responsibility to educate all their students. Right? And if they can’t, they need to let someone know: “I’ve got a kid in my class who’s not learning,” and they need to call for help. To do anything less, in my opinion, is a form of malpractice.

And teachers should not be complicit in allowing kids not to learn. When you see kids end up in high school or college who haven’t learned basic math, that means there were educators all along the way who saw it and did nothing.

Sal Khan: And what advice would you—you know, I think everyone agrees intellectually, but if, you know, you can imagine a—you’re a 9th grade teacher; you have five kids in your class that are, you know, barely struggling; you kind of water it down for them; they barely, you know, scratch by on a C; you know that they’re not going to be those kids who have to take remedial math if they even get to through high school and get to college, but you know that teacher’s feeling like, “Hey, there’s 30 kids here; I got to do what I can.”

I told the administration; the administration’s kind of, you know, saying, “Look, that’s the way life is.” How does someone re—you know, from a teacher’s point of view, or does it have to happen at a systemic level? How do we make sure that there are ways to support those kids?

Pedro Noguera: You know, truthfully, it’s hard for a teacher by themselves to affect system change, right? They can change what’s happening in their classroom; they can create the climate in their classroom where kids feel supported and engaged. And they—and you know the truth is, and that when the classroom door closes, the teachers have a lot of power, at least when we’re in a physical space together.

But to bring about real system change, you need leaders, principals, superintendents who understand that we’ve got to become better at intervening early with kids, better at providing—some kids, as you know, Sal, need more time than the traditional school day allows. So we need to find ways to create more time as well for the kids on subjects that take more time for them to learn.

Sal Khan: Yeah, it’s always blown my mind that slow is equated with dumb when oftentimes the kids just need a little more time. They’re really trying to internalize it, and if they have a strong foundation, they’re going to race. We see that at Khan Academy all the time in our own data, so I couldn’t agree with you more that that equation is really flawed and it makes kids even think that they’re not smart when they’re fully capable.

You know, one of the attributes that kids most frequently cite as being valuable to them from a teacher is patience—you know, teachers who are patient and giving them the chance—and teachers who are organized. Now, I remember when I was tutoring my cousins—I mean, I tell the story all the time that when I first made some of those videos for them, they told me famously that they like me better on YouTube than in person. And, you know, I think part of it—and I always try to parse what they were saying because they weren’t saying they really appreciated having me as like a real person who was invested in them, but I think the video comment was really about the patience that they didn’t feel the pressure to learn it right in that three minutes; that they could come back to it, etc. They had multiple options and then to pick it up again.

You know, that’s because again, that’s how we learn, and we all—we don’t all learn at the same pace.

Pedro Noguera: No, couldn’t agree more. So, you know, the time we have left—any, you know, we have teachers watching this; we have students; we have a lot of parents, and obviously everyone’s got a certain level of anxiety these days above and beyond what they normally would have had. You know, what advice do you have about where education is going, how people should navigate it? You know, any big takeaways?

Pedro Noguera: Yeah, I’d say right now we have to, again, use this disruption to start thinking about what kind of schools do we want to create. What kind of classrooms do we want to create? Start visualizing what the end should look like. You know, imagine schools where kids were excited about learning, where they were happy to come each day. What would it take to create those kinds of schools?

And let’s start planning for that place: heart planning schools where relationships are valued, where we are thinking holistically about the needs of kids—the academic, the social, the emotional needs of kids—because they’re all integrated. And let’s start thinking about how to really organize schools to meet the needs of our students. If we did that, then I think we would end up with very different schools than we have now.

Sal Khan: No, couldn’t agree more. And what I always stress is, you know, people view me as a technologist, but I don’t view myself that way. I always say never use technology for technology’s sake; always think about what is the goal. And 99 percent of the time, the best possible resource is an amazing in-person teacher for your child. And if technology can help unlock what that teacher can do—personalize more, fill in gaps, mastery learning—then that's all good. But technology has to be in service to the humans and in service of those goals.

Pedro Noguera: Absolutely, I agree. I couldn’t agree more.

Sal Khan: Well, Dean Noguera, thank you so much for joining. I mean this is one of those conversations I think we could continue for another several hours, but I’ll let you go for now. But thank you so much for joining; this is really valuable. And so I want to thank you for the service you provide to kids throughout the country in making education and knowledge more accessible. And I think you provided just a tremendous resource to so many, so thank you.

Pedro Noguera: No, well, it’s a lot more than me, but I really appreciate that. And I’m going to follow up with you; I think there’s ways that we can work together.

Sal Khan: That would be great. All the best.

Pedro Noguera: Great. Yep, thank you.

Sal Khan: So, thanks everyone. Thanks everyone, as always. You know, Dean Noguera was really great, and I wish we had another, you know, five hours to chat because this is obviously a really big subject. But hopefully you all got as much out of that as I did. Thanks for joining. Just a couple of announcements: we’re gonna have my next live stream—well actually, I was on this document that I was looking at, but now it disappeared—but we're gonna have that webinar with our Chief Learning Officer, I believe it is. Oh, there it goes! All right.

On seven tips for motivating middle school and high school kids during distance learning, this is going to be October 22nd at 4 p.m. Pacific Time. I highly recommend it; you’re going to really enjoy Kristen. She’s our Chief Learning Officer. Not only does she know almost everything to know about learning science, but she’s also really, really engaging, so I think y’all will really enjoy that webinar. So with that, I will see y’all at the next Homeroom live stream. Talk to y’all later!