Comer School Development Program

The Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) School Development Program (SDP) is a framework and process that enables educators to acquire knowledge and skills about the developmental sciences and apply them to all aspects of their practice at every level of the education enterprise—in schools, district wide, educator preparation programs, state departments of education, and legislative bodies. It began as a pilot project in two elementary schools as a partnership between the New Haven, Connecticut, Public School System (NHPSS) and the YCSC in 1968. The project [Page 412]began field testing in 1978 and widespread dissemination in 1990. It has been used in more than 1,000 schools over the years, and was in more than 200 schools in 2011. Since 1995, the project staff has increasingly concentrated on using the model to inform education policy.

The framework contains nine elements that grew out of the YCSC and NHPSS experiences in moving the two lowest achieving of 33 elementary schools in the city to near the top in academic achievement—tied for third and fourth highest—and to the top in attendance and behavior.

The project staff came to realize during the pilot study that the traditional school focuses most on curriculum, instruction, and assessment; that it usually does not pay adequate attention to preparation and motivation to learn or to student underdevelopment. Also, it became apparent that most school staffs were not prepared to promote student development and to integrate development and academic learning. The staff realized that it is the ability of adults with authority and caretaking responsibility in schools to create a good school climate and collaboratively support development that makes it possible for all students to develop and learn, and for schools to compensate for out-of-school underdevelopment.

The project assumes that building-level life in schools is an interactive process involving numerous people, programs, and activities that generate energies that are both potentially harmful and potentially useful and positive. The staff also believes that it is important for an entire school to intentionally and systematically channel and use these energies in a way that creates a positive school climate and culture. Results from research on the project indicate that these conditions result in greater efficiency and effectiveness, no matter how skilled individual teachers are when acting more or less independently.

To create the conditions most supportive of student development and learning, the project staff designed an intervention model with guidelines, teams, and operations that, operating simultaneously, helped program participants (a) organize and manage the schools in a way that creates a good environment and culture, that then (b) made an intentional focus on student development possible that, in turn, (c) made good teaching and learning possible. Without these more or less simultaneous processes the same schools can be dysfunctional, particularly when the out-of-school experience of students does not adequately prepare them for school.

The Comer School Development Program puts the student at the center of all school activity, and focuses strongly on student development. It helps school staff organize all other actions to support student development in the service of academic learning and preparation to meet life tasks. This intentional focus grew out the staff's understanding of the centrality of development to all human behavior, particularly school readiness and motivation to learn. The staff realized that all students are underdeveloped and in the process of developing. But those in or from families and communities that more often experience economic and social stress are usually more underdeveloped and less likely to reach their full potential.

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