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How to really leave no child behind
September/October 2004
by James P. Comer
James P. Comer is the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, Leave No Child Behind: Preparing Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s World (Yale University Press).
My mother was born into extreme poverty in rural Mississippi. When she was eight years of age, it occurred to her that the way to a better life was through education. At sixteen, she ran away to a sister in East Chicago, Indiana, with the hope of going to school. But her sister could see no benefit in a “colored girl getting an education” and was not supportive. After several months, my mother had to drop out of school. She began to do domestic work. When she left school she declared, “If I ever have children, I’m going to make certain that every one of them gets a good education!” Then she set out to very carefully find a like-minded husband.
And so my four siblings and I were born into a family in which we were very much wanted and valued, and our parents were skillful child rearers. We went on to earn a total of 13 college degrees.
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“If you colored boys don’t want to be like the rest of us, you should not come to our school!”
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I went to school with three black friends who were as bright as anybody in my family and anyone in our school. But they went on a downhill course in school and in life despite the fact that our parents had the same level of education and similar jobs. My three friends were not so well prepared for school and did not elicit positive responses from their teachers and other adults.
In fourth grade, our teacher created a contest designed to encourage us to use the public library. The winner would be the person who took out and read the most books over a certain period. I read the most books. My three friends did not read any. My teacher was so frustrated and angry that she said to them, in front of the entire class, “If you three little colored boys don’t want to be like the rest of us, you should not come to our school!”
She was not a die-hard racist, but she did not understand. They very much wanted to belong and to be successful in school. But they were the children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of former sharecroppers and slaves. The adults in their lives were intimidated by mainstream institutions and had not been able to pass on the skills of participation to their children. Had my teacher understood this, she would have taken them to the library herself. But almost nobody understood the ill effects of marginalization back then, and not many more understand or address them now.
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Even children who have good support can have difficulties at school.
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People in and out of education speak of learning as if all students are empty vessels eagerly waiting to be filled, or just bad and unmotivated. Because of the many factors involved in one’s biological, social, and psychological makeup and the interactions of a child with his or her environment, even children who have had good support, at home and at school, can have difficulties in school. The challenge is even greater for those with the burdens of dysfunctional families and communities on their shoulders. Such children come from every socioeconomic, racial, and religious background. With limited skills, they often respond in inappropriate and troublesome ways.
When I began working in schools, it struck me as odd and unfair that social and behavioral scientists were steeped in knowledge about child development and behavior, but educators on the front line had not been provided even the elementary concepts. We do not prepare them to “read” child behavior, but we expect them to respond to it in ways that can be helpful. We do not do that to other professionals.
I am not suggesting that teachers need exactly the same kind or level of support or training as child psychiatrists. But we can provide school people with more and much better preparation and support than is now the case. More than anything else, what lies at the root of most school problems is the gap between the support for development that children need and what society provides. Schools must begin to focus on the physical, cognitive, psychological, linguistic, social, and ethical development of children.
Thirty-five years ago in New Haven, we at the Yale Child Study Center began an effort called the School Development Program. The idea was to create an effective intervention that would involve all the stakeholders—teachers, administrators, parents, students, and others in the community—and focus on school-system-wide improvements in the service of individual student development and learning. We put together a group that would work in our pilot schools, providing training and making recommendations, and then phase itself out. It is my belief, and still is, that school improvement must grow from within, from organic growth. Systemic change is best carried out by school people regularly on site, with consultation as intensive as needed from people who can help them gain system change knowledge, tools, and skills.
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Our program is one of only three that can raise students' test scores.
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Our Yale group was deliberately chosen to reflect the helping professionals usually found in schools—a social worker, a psychologist, and a special education teacher. We formed three teams within the pilot schools: a governance and management team, a parents team, and a mental health team. Our framework has been used in as many as one thousand schools across the country. An analysis of 29 comprehensive school reform models has shown that our program is one of only three that can be expected to raise students' test scores.
At the end of the first project year, our initial pilot school, King, was thirty-second in achievement by the fourth grade on nationally standardized tests, out of 33 elementary schools in New Haven. The school we began to work with at the end of the fifth year, Brennan, was thirty-third. In the eighth year, the schools were tied for third and fourth highest levels of achievement in the city; they had the best attendance record in the city; and they had no serious behavior problems.
The point of importance here is that SDP was not designed to raise test scores. It was designed to create conditions that support the development of children. When we do that, they will learn.
How does SDP work? Here is an example.
In the difficult early climate in our pilot schools, the adults in the school did not like or trust each other. There was much fault-finding, blame, and scapegoating. Teachers went into their rooms, closed the doors, pulled down the shades to the hallway, and attempted to survive. Parents either avoided the schools or came in to complain about the bad practices. Regardless of the quality of instruction or the curriculum, few students would be able to achieve at a high level under these conditions.
The task of the governance and management team was to bring all the stakeholders together in a collaborative, problem-solving way. But this does not just happen among people who do not know, trust, or like each other, even though they are professionals. Effective training was needed. By serving as an initial member of the team I was able to carry out “embedded training.” For instance, no-fault problem-solving was suggested to deal with the adverse effects of fault-finding and blame. But it had to be practiced. It was easy to slip back to the previous pattern. Our Yale Child Study Center members raised “innocent” questions that brought the team back to the school problems rather than to personal or power issues. Eventually, they did so without prompting, and we said less. When they shifted to a focus on meeting the needs of the school and the students, they gradually stopped using personal issues in the ways that had made problem-solving difficult.
As a result of this change, collaboration improved. Administrators, staff, and parents began to believe that every problem had a solution and that working together they could find it. Their hopefulness, and the guidelines that helped them work together successfully, began to permeate most activities in the building, eventually changing the school culture.
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The mental health team brought the professionals into a collaborative group.
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A similar shift took place in our parents team. The Yale social worker served a liaison role, helping parents on the team to work effectively. I sat in on a meeting after I was no longer on the team. A new parent at the school, recently arrived from New York City, angrily called for a march on City Hall because a promise made to the school was slow in materializing. I looked at the social worker with some apprehension. She whispered, “Watch.” Without prompting from her, experienced members of the team calmly explained the downside of the parent’s suggestion: “Three minutes of notoriety on the evening television news, irritated central office officials, a reputation for making trouble, resistance, and a continued problem.” Instead, they decided to send a constructive letter to the superintendent, with copies to their alderman, inviting these officials to come in and discuss the problem. The officials came, and they were appreciative of the orderly process; the problem was resolved.
The mental health team brought all the helping professionals together into a collaborative group, which proved much more efficient and effective than the previous piecemeal approach. As a team, they could sometimes simply listen to a teacher’s need and provide advice that solved a problem. During our first chaotic year, there were more than 40 referrals to the mental health team in one school during the first semester. The helpers were swamped. But when the schools began to function well, the referrals dropped precipitously, and the small number of students with significant problems was apparent. The team continued to help individual children, but shifted its focus to prevention.
One of the most dramatic incidents showing how a school can solve its own problems was that of an eight-year-old child from a warm, tight-knit community in North Carolina, who was brought to New Haven over the weekend by an aunt. On her way to work on Monday morning, she dropped him off at the school. And because there were no orientation procedures, the child was taken directly to the classroom by the principal. The teacher had had three transfers the week before; in low-income communities, turnover is very high. Her face expressed frustration. Alone in a strange place with unknown and rejecting adults, a relative he barely knew as his only support—and she was not there—he panicked. He kicked the teacher in the leg and ran out of the classroom. We thought this was a fairly healthy response for an eight-year-old in this situation, but of course the teacher did not.
This is the kind of situation where the child gets sent to the principal and receives a lecture or scolding. He is sent back to the classroom and someone might laugh or tease him. He might punch that person in the nose and be sent back to the principal. It would go around and around in aggressive, defensive, face-saving, and angry circles, with escalating acting-out behavior, until he is finally labeled disturbed and sent off to a helping professional like me to have his head fixed.
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Kids are still learning that the world is manageable most of the time.
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Instead of working on his head, our mental health team met with and asked the teachers to think about what it must be like to be eight years of age and to find oneself in a strange place without support. The teachers thought about their first trips abroad, the experience with strange money and a strange language, and the anxiety they felt. They identified with the student and began to give suggestions about how to make the classroom and the school a more welcoming place. Soon after, he was given an orientation to the school. The principal talked to him about what the school was like, gave him a tour, and introduced him to various staff members. He also talked about the activities available and how to access them, where to go for help, and how to handle any problems that he had.
The child returned to a classroom prominently displaying a “Welcome Johnny” sign made by his future classmates. There were introductions. He was allowed to talk about where he was from and where he was living in New Haven. A student was assigned to help him learn his way around. This process became standard at the school and dramatically decreased the problems related to turnover.
Kids are still learning that the world is manageable most of the time. They have a healthy self-serving perspective that is part of our human survival drive. Because they have had fewer experiences than adults, they can be more easily and more greatly traumatized and frightened if they do not receive good support. With assurances from trusted others, they can learn to wait, to forgo immediate rewards, and even to tolerate missed pleasures. Indeed, this is very much needed to prepare for the realities of life. Good support for student development from birth to maturity is a universal need, and a central school responsibility. Good development and learning can protect and promote our democracy.  |
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