Parent-School Relationship Crucial, He Says : Educator Draws on His Childhood to Assist Disadvantaged Students

After more than 40 years, three boyhood friends still come frequently to mind for Dr. James P. Comer, an expert in the education of disadvantaged children.

Comer and his friends were black low-income children attending the same integrated elementary school in East Chicago, Ind. Comer, now 53, went on to medical school and national prominence in the child development field. But one of his friends died of alcoholism, a second has been in and out of mental institutions, and the third has spent much of his life in jail.

Comer, the force behind a Yale University program to help low-income minority children do well in school, says he and his four siblings were successful because they had the firm support of their parents and teachers. But for his three friends, it was a different story.

Problems in Relationships

“Something was wrong in the relationship between them and the school, their families and the school. . . . My friends didn’t want to see their parents in school,” said Comer, a Yale professor of child psychiatry and associate dean of the Yale Medical School.

“What was clear to me as a result of that experience and other experiences was that school integration alone is not the issue. . . . That quality teaching, whatever that is, is not the issue. It is relationships,” Comer said.

That insight was part of the springboard for the Yale school intervention program, directed by Comer. He says it has shown positive results in New Haven, Benton Harbor, Mich., and Prince Georges County, Md., and is taking root in Lee County, Ark., and Norfolk, Va.

“One thing Dr. Comer’s work and research have clearly pointed out is that regardless of socioeconomic background and color of skin, children can do extremely well in school,” said Gerald Tirozzi, Connecticut’s commissioner of education.

Parent-school relationships are a major focus of the school intervention program. It seeks to overcome the hostility that some low-income parents feel toward school, which they may view as part of mainstream America from which they have been excluded, Comer explains.

Parental Resistance

Comer tells of a first-grader who once told his teacher: “My momma said I don’t have to do anything you say.”

Parents and school staff must “respect each other and get the transfer of authority from home to school that existed almost automatically in a pre-1945 school,” Comer said.

Parents in the Yale program are encouraged to volunteer, and when feasible, work for pay in schools as aides. They are asked to attend and plan school social functions.

Other elements include a parent-teacher-principal school management committee, a mental health team, and curriculum and staff development.

The mental health team, made up of social workers and other professionals who may be working already in a school system, anticipates instead of reacts to problems, Comer says.

Assistance in Transfers

For example, an orientation program developed by one team helps children transferring to a new school. In another innovation, the same teacher stays with a class through two school years, to encourage close child-teacher relations that in turn foster learning.

The school management committee encourages consensus action, while staff and curricula programs address the school’s specific needs.

“We have parents, teachers and administrators working together to create a social environment in the school that promoted the development of the children. . . . Essentially, we figured out that we could systematically teach low-income children in that supportive environment,” Comer said.

The program has run the longest--about 20 years--in the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in New Haven. More than 90% of its 260 students are black, and many live with single working mothers. The neighborhood is one of New Haven’s poorest.

Before the program started, contact between the school and parents was limited. Performance by fourth-graders in reading and math achievement tests trailed the national average by 19 months and 18 months respectively.

Academic Progress

“Now, by fourth grade, they are a year above grade level,” Comer reported.

Attendance is up, teacher turnover is almost nonexistent, and academic rankings for math and language arts had risen by 1984 to among the top five of 26 New Haven schools.

King teachers Anne O’Connell and Allene Small report that their interaction with parents is good. “There’s constant communications with parents,” O’Connell said.

Cindy Bogan, a parent and school volunteer, says she didn’t see the same level of parental involvement when she was a child.

“They really gear the kids in the right direction,” she said.

In a follow-up study several years later, former King students were found to be doing better in middle schools than other children from their neighborhood, Comer said.

Social Skills Curriculum

The program is being incorporated into other New Haven schools. An outgrowth has been the testing of a social skills curriculum in the city’s middle schools, emphasizing problem-solving, decision-making and self-control.