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Comer developed a reform model in 1968 based on two premises: (1) develop theories of change from direct observations of schools, and then (2) intervene over long periods of time. He chose two inner-city K-4 schools with 99 percent black population, 70 percent of whom received AFDC. One year's observation yielded two major areas for change: (1) the schools lacked structure; and (2) sociocultural misunderstanding between home and school underlay the schools' academic and disciplinary problems.
He chronicled the deterioration of black parents' faith in schools that led him to an intervention strategy that simultaneously reduced alienation and encouraged psychological bonding to the school. This entailed: (1) overcoming staff's resistance to change; (2) reducing destructive interactions between parents, teachers, and administrators; and (3) bringing cohesiveness and direction to the school's management and teaching. School staff created a governance team peopled by parents, teachers, mental health specialists, and support staff, headed by the principal. Parents participated in three areas: shaping policy, contributing to daily school activities, and attending school events.
When better relations had been established, Comer tackled the problem of social misalignment by designing and implementing a social skills curriculum with the following subjects: politics and government, business and economics, health and nutrition, and spiritual and leisure activities. The New Haven project produced significant results, and more than 50 schools around the country are currently implementing it.
Comer describes a 10-year collaborative undertaking between a private university center, a public school system, and a community of teachers and parents. University clinicians had the opportunity to observe, record, and study children in two primary schools in Head Start settings. In exchange, the clinicians provided consultations with teachers regarding individual children, seminar discussions of child development literature, meetings focused on child-rearing patterns, and sessions on child development issues in curriculum planning. With the permission of the parents, children also received appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic care in the schools. Teachers, scholars, and parents were involved in an effort to address a crisis in education that only partly involved academic achievement. The power of the school and its community was drawn upon to emphasize importance of the moral, social, and psychological development that young children need to receive. This lays the groundwork for academic achievement in both the near- and long-term future.
This review makes recommendations similar to Comer's (see Comer, 1988) with its emphasis on parent and community involvement as a critical factor in the improvement of education for black children. It also raises the issue of social distance between the culture of the school and that of black children. Black community organizations--churches, fraternities, social groups--must enter into partnerships with the educational system to provide a full range of social services to children.
Concluding recommendations to educators interested in quality education for black children fall into three categories: (1) central emphasis on human relations and personalization; (2) eliminating barriers to effective teaching and learning, including recruiting more black teachers and developing sensitive curricula; and (3) mobilizing physical and political resources to address issues such as pervasive unemployment, low levels of literacy among black adolescents, and structural isolation of low-income youth from more successful adult figures and jobs.
The author, who is both a parent and a teacher, presents a manual explaining why collaboration between the home and school is difficult to achieve and how barriers to involvement can be overcome. She views teachers, who traditionally have lower status and less community support today, as natural allies with parents, who themselves are increasingly facing difficulties such as divorce, isolation, unemployment, and troubled children. Some of the barriers to effective collaboration include limited time for parent-teacher communication, communicating only during crisis situations (which puts all parties on the defensive), and parent and teacher personal histories that can hinder genuine trust. The author suggests two basic ways to promote parent involvement: increasing the quality of contacts by creating varied opportunities for parent-teacher contacts and increasing the number of parents who interact with the school by making more of an effort to find out what parents want and need from the school as well as involving parents in solving problems and making decisions at the school.
[Curriculum Reform]