Conducted by Carolyn Nguyen

Dr. James P. Comer, Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center, is the founder of the Comer School Development Program, which promotes the collaboration of parents, educators, and community in childhood education. He advocates a focus on child development as a way of improving schools.
 

The Institute for Higher Education Policy released its annual report on the state of American secondary schools and colleges, reporting that despite many improvements, there remain systematic barriers preventing immigrants and students of color from entering college. The most chilling projection is that in less than ten years, the United States will no longer be able to retain its powerful status in the global market. What do you believe is the cause for this, and what can be done to reverse these trends? Has affirmative action failed its stated purpose?

Affirmative action is too little, too late. It has been carried out in a way that missed its very purpose. What we are trying to create is equal opportunity that takes into account many factors, not just numbers. We were not searching for a way to have certain percentages of marginalized individuals in certain careers or schools. Yet affirmative action did not create that focus. What we should have done was create programs that enable marginalized families and schools to help prepare children to participate in mainstream society. There needs to be a systematic effort to connect marginalized students into the mainstream, an effort that today is almost nonexistent. The natural connections that mainstream students have do not exist for their less fortunate counterparts, who often struggle to make ends meet. Through the manner affirmative action was implemented, there have been incredibly negative responses on both sides.

For example, my son, who is African American, was walking to school with his two blond friends one day when one of them took his hand and told him plainly to stay away from the black kids heading towards them because they fight. At the time, the three children were about six or seven years old, too young to know any better. Yet, my son’s friend was describing her reality, but she was also talking about a class, style, and developmental experience, although she would not have known that. Her teachers didn’t understand it either, or they would have created another kind of school. This is the kind of problem that has created a backlash to integration and affirmative action. What makes this even more disturbing is that this doesn’t occur just among little kids; it is throughout our system. This is why it is important to enable and empower marginalized people to help them overcome these sensibilities.

At this year’s American Educational Research Association annual meeting in April, Ernie Pascarella, author of the seminal How College Affects Students, observed that the study of higher education seemed to be moving toward anecdotal research, away from traditional theory, causing a decline in the quality and potential usefulness of the findings. To what extent do you believe this is becoming an issue, and what influences, political or otherwise, account for this shift—if Mr. Pascarella is correct—in other contexts, such as the reports regarding No Child Left Behind?

Mr. Pascarella implies that traditional research or theory was high quality and had useful findings. In my view, some did and some did not. In the first place, theory should be suggested and grow from practice. Anecdotal information is useful in that regard in that it suggests questions and issues that we can do for research. It’s not one replacing the other, but both need to be used appropriately. No Child Left Behind distorted empirical research while ignoring other bodies of research. If one focuses only on statistical research and, in particular, test scores, one will not have a complete and accurate picture of the findings. It is necessary to have qualitative research at the same time. We need to have insight into the factors that go beyond the classroom and focus more on what children will need to work and function in society—and this requires anecdotal evidence. I would agree that No Child Left Behind made too many claims with evidence that had to do with quantitative findings and experimental research findings. These researchers chose to ignore findings that have grown out of expert observation. Sometimes isolated incidents can be very powerful and equally important. Stating that one form of research is necessarily better than another for finding the truth is troublesome.

Since its creation, the No Child Left Behind Act has caused nothing short of a maelstrom of controversy in its methodology, with some suggesting different growth models of measuring achievement. What aspects do you believe are pivotal in ensuring that program meets its goals of leaving no child behind? In its current form, how successful can we deem NCLB?

No Child Left Behind has been a double-edged sword. It has forced people to pay attention to disparities and to marginalized children and those who are underperforming. Furthermore, it holds the school responsible for giving them the opportunity they deserve. In that sense, it is good. The program’s problem is that it has selected incomplete standards—namely standardized test scores—as an indicator of achievement. These scores are an inadequate predictor of academic achievement and, more importantly, development. What it does is distract from the complexity of school improvement. The focus on test scores acts as if there is one simple way to deal with the issues facing our schools. It implies that the schools, as institutions, are fine, but that someone is not working hard enough to make things happen. Too often the blame falls on children, parents, and teachers. Someone here is not working hard enough and, furthermore, it gives the impression that someone may not be smart enough.

My 40 years of working in this field tell me that this is not the problem. First of all, education is far more complex and for many reasons. There are complicated problems because we have a conceptual understanding and a resultant way of carrying out schooling that is inadequate—to the point of being wrong. Learning that will prepare you to do well in school and in life is not a simple cognitive process. If that were the case, we could have a mechanical model of delivering information, and students, if they tried hard enough, would learn. In this scenario, there is no need for a school. Why not just purchase everyone a computer to deliver the information? What this case misses are the foundation skills—such as reading—that students need. In order to learn to read, students need social interaction with those who are teaching to be successful. A better model to consider is a social interactive model, which depends on the quality of relationships. Mature adults had to, at some point, learn to use certain words in certain contexts. My grandson claps when he does something right because his parents clap. Learning contains social, emotional, and psychological aspects to be successful. Students also need exposure on an ongoing basis to increase and build upon their learning. Yet this is not traditional education, and is not being carried out. It’s not because teachers don’t want to; it’s because of the lack of training they have received in this area. The same goes for school administrators. For this reason, they fall back on the mechanical model to try to help kids learn, even when that approach is not how most kids learn. Kids who are able to learn in this manner are the ones who have had good development and support at home or who have the capacity to tolerate the social context they find themselves. However, these kids belong to the minority, and this is what is wrong with NCLB—it ignores what is really needed, and that is child development. Children at greatest risk—those who are going to drain the system the most and draw the most resources—are the marginalized, underdeveloped children. This is the biggest downside of NCLB.

A recent report by the federal government describes a trend of creating more vocational programs for students who may not see college as the right choice for them. Should U.S. schools focus on pragmatic job training or on sending more students to liberal arts colleges?

There has to be a balance. We need to give enough students the four-year experience that really opens them up to what will come along in the information age. Students cannot be trained without the proper experience. Regardless of the schools that are out there, there is a need for the proper education that can manage regardless of the nature of the economy. We need to prepare all students to go in whatever education path they desire. There is a threshold development between professional and academic decisions.

The Comer School Development Program (CSDP) is a success in hundreds of school across the U.S. and the world. Its premise revolves around the cooperation of three teams—the school planning and management team, the student and staff support team, and the parent team. What aspects make the Program different from other school support groups? What do you believe has made it a great success in many different environments?

The Comer School Development Program went into chaotic schools and soon realized that chaos was coming from various aspects of the organization and management of the schools, or lack thereof. Coming from the fact that adults were not relating to each other, in a way that they could be successful, it came as no surprise that there was difficulty in focusing on the development of the students. All of their focus was on passing information, and they couldn’t even do this because of the chaos. Yet, this is where the critical interaction has to take place. A child looks up to the adults—not just the teacher, but the custodian, the cafeteria worker, and administrators—for guidance and for role models on how to act. Every behavior, attitude, and expression from the adults can impact the child and, especially, the culture and climate of the school.

CSDP is different in this aspect—it provides methods in organizing and managing the school in a way that allows all of the adults to develop interpersonal relationships, helping them interact with the children in a way that supports their development along all the critical pathways necessary to make them successful in school and in life. We have identified seven aspects of learning and have sought to find ways to address them. They include physical, social interactive, psycho-emotional, moral-ethical, linguistic, and intellectual-cognitive. The constant focus on these aspects for development distinguishes us from other programs. However, no program model, not even ours, will fix all of the problems in American education, but the principles in ours and the delivery system that becomes institutionalized are necessary for schools to improve the American educational system for all children. I went to visit one of schools that had participated in the CSDP in North Carolina and met a father there. He told me he had heard a lot about the Comer program, yet he couldn’t figure out what made the program unique, since this is what all schools should be about. He’s right. This is what schools should be about, but most aren’t today. Many schools are overwhelmed with problems and relationship difficulties that created negative forces throughout the environment that impeded the development of children. Some will say for poor kids only; but this is not the case. I once spoke at one of the nation’s foremost prep schools. I asked the headmaster why she had invited me. Her response was that what I had been pushing for was what all children need, not just the poor. The CSDP creates a culture that allows the adults to provide support for development, for when children develop well, they will learn well. The two are intrinsically linked. After all, academic learning is a part of overall development.

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