Famed Psychiatrist Continues to Push for Education Reform - Higher Education: Forty-five years after Dr. James P. Comer launched the School Development Program at the Yale University School of Medicine Child Study Center, the famed psychiatrist continues to speak authoritatively about the nation’s schools and K-12 education reform. At an age when many of his peers have retired to the sidelines, the 78-year-old remains a towering figure who is widely sought for his ideas and insights.
Known principally for the School Development Program (SDP), Comer continues to push for education reform that puts children’s social and emotional development at the center of practices and philosophy for improving schools. With SDP taking root initially in the New Haven, Conn., city schools, the program grew to train thousands of teachers and administrators from around the nation by the 1990s. The SDP training efforts reached a peak in the late 1990s when “whole” or comprehensive school reform movement programs enjoyed notable support from foundations and the federal government.
However, with the advent of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation and its emphasis on high-stakes testing in the early 2000s, school districts retreated from the whole school reform programs and focused their energies on prepping students for standardized tests that measure yearly progress in reading, writing and math.
