Nation’s ‘School Whisperer’ Offers Solutions—If Only Schools Would Listen

What is the real prerequisite for academic improvement? If you ask James Comer, M.D., M.P.H., it’s not tweaking curricula. Comer has spent decades at the Yale Child Study Center working with schools from across the socioeconomic spectrum to improve student and school achievement. Driven by his professional experience as a child psychiatrist, he has a unique view of school reform—one deeply grounded in understanding and guiding the developing child. So, what is his prerequisite for academic improvement? Social-emotional learning.

David Hathcox

“Children don’t have mature brains,” Comer told attendees at APA’s 2019 Annual Meeting at a session on the education intervention project he founded. “What gets called ‘bad behavior’ is a result of immaturity, frustration, and disappointment. I don’t know why we don’t get that as a society.”

What became the Comer School Development Program began in 1968 when Comer was asked to help reform two schools from low-income neighborhoods in New Haven, Conn., that ranked at the bottom of the city’s 33 elementary schools. After assessing the schools, Comer realized that addressing those children’s academic and performance problems required a broader, more systemic solution. “We couldn’t improve behavior and academic achievement until we could create a framework to solve the [schools’] organizational and relationship problems, and then [we could] integrate academic, social, and emotional learning [for the students],” Comer told Psychiatric News.

Comer and his team learned as they went along. Seven years later, the two New Haven schools had risen from the lowest-achieving schools—32nd and 33rd out of 33 schools—to the third and fourth highest-achieving schools in the city. The schools also boasted the best attendance records in the city.

Today Comer’s model has been used to reform schools in 26 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, England, Ireland, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago.

At first no one—not foundations, not the government—would fund the school reform concept Comer envisioned, until the Minority Center of the National Institute of Mental Health did so with the help and encouragement from black psychiatrists at APA.

Over the years, Comer and his team found that schools that participated in the Comer School Development Program faced common problems. In most cases the problems had little to do with the students: Confusion and rancor ruled. School leaders communicated poorly and did not have clear goals or plans for the future. Parents felt alienated from the school, and the staff were frustrated by the lack of parental support. Teachers, administrators, and parents were not working together, and staff development was not driven by school needs.

Comer and his colleagues learned that in each school they had to build from the ground up to re-establish a school environment focused on promoting child development using principles derived from public health, mental health, and child development. And for each school, the intervention was tailored to that school’s needs. “We wanted to promote organic self-change in the schools—not from the outside but from the inside,” he recalled. “That was considered a radical position at the time.”

For a start, that meant bringing parents and school staff together to jointly develop goals and strategies based on what worked for the children and what would address their developmental needs. The approach linked three groups: parents, a school planning and management team, and a student and staff support team. All three groups had to work together, guided by Comer’s core principles of consensus, collaboration, and no-fault problem solving. “Don’t spend time identifying who’s at fault,” he said, “because if you blame someone, they get defensive. You need a win-win situation.”

The parent team elected parents to serve on the school management team, but they did more than that. A core group learned about child-rearing skills and then helped other parents improve their own abilities to raise their children. Those collaborations also served another purpose. “The interaction among these adults became a role model for the students,” said Comer. “For the students, imitation, identification, and internalization of the adults’ cooperation made them better prepared for school and life.”

For the students, Comer focused not only on academic achievement but also on providing them with a foundation for life by incorporating real-world topics like business and economics, government and politics, health and nutrition, and social skills. “Children need good social skills to function in today’s society,” he said. “Many children today are not receiving the experiences in their families to function well in school or life.”

Comer’s program led to success but was often met by resistance. For example, in Norfolk, Va., a school in a black neighborhood went from ranking last in the city to first. But the superintendent refused to believe the results, and he canceled the program. Other times, parents and local businesspeople were the opponents, he said. They often favored highly structured or authoritarian models of education. “People didn’t know how to control students without punishment. They’d say, ‘Just do it,’ but a child must be prepared to ‘do it,’ ” he said.

Comer said that the “ultimate resistance” came from President George W. Bush’s education-reform bill, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, with its emphasis on curriculum and high-stakes testing. It was the exact opposite of Comer’s comprehensive approach to school improvement. “We’re still trying to re-establish and restore momentum toward integrating the academic and the developmental,” he said.

Another constraint on Comer’s system is the minimal emphasis on child development in teacher-training programs, which are often focused on curriculum, instructional techniques, behavior management, and assessment. “How can you run a school system with teachers who haven’t been taught anything about children?” he said. To overcome this challenge, Comer is now working on bringing his ideas to college and university schools of education.

“Many still don’t get that it’s development first,” he said. “Development, not academics, makes kids eager to learn.” ■