James Comer

James Comer (born September 25, 1934, East Chicago, Indiana, U.S.) is an American child psychiatrist and founder of the Comer School Development Program, a school reform process meant to improve students’ psychological and academic development, especially in underprivileged communities.

Comer was born into a working-class family. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in 1956, an M.D. from Howard University College of Medicine in 1960, and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan in 1964. He was trained in psychiatry at Yale University and the Hillcrest Children’s Center in Washington, D.C. Comer also served in the U.S. Public Health Service. In 1968 he became a member of the medical faculty at Yale.

The Comer School Development Program was established in 1968. It was first put into practice in two predominantly African American elementary schools as a collaborative effort between the Yale University Child Study Center and the New Haven, Connecticut, public school system. Comer’s program was informed by his holistic perspective on the educational process; it stressed the importance of establishing an engaged, supportive community for students and teachers as well as the need to attend to students’ social and psychological well-being along with their academic progress. The program was structured in part around three guiding principles: collaboration, consensus, and no-fault problem solving. Comer’s program produced encouraging results in New Haven and was adopted widely in the decades that followed.

Comer’s books include Black Child Care (with Alvin Poussaint, 1975), School Power: Implications of an Intervention Project (1980), the autobiographical Maggie’s American Dream: The Life and Times of a Black Family (1988), and Leave No Child Behind: Preparing Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s World (2004).