Educators, policy makers, community leaders, and students came together to honor Dr. James P. Comer and Dr. Edmund Gordon for their outstanding contributions to education at the 2nd Annual Achievement Gap Forum co-sponsored by the New Haven Public Schools and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). The event was held on May 4, 2012 at Metropolitan Business Academy (MBA), a regional magnet high school in New Haven. SCSU professors, Dr. Norris Haynes and Dr. Carlos Torre, co-chaired the forum.

L to R: Dr. Carlos Torre, Dr. Norris Haynes, Dr. Edmund Gordon, and Dr. James P. Comer

"Dr. James P. Comer and Dr. Edmund Gordon have both had enormous influence on educational policy and practice for decades, especially on how we factor in the influence of development, culture and social experience on structuring teaching and learning experiences for students," said Dr. Haynes.

Dr. Comer, the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine, has directed the School Development Program since 1968. Dr. Gordon, one of the founders of Head Start, is the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at Yale University. He is also the director emeritus of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Principal Judy Puglisi welcomed the audience to MBA. "We are ecstatic to have two legends from education talk about the achievement gap and other important issues in education that affect all of our children every day." Dr. Torre read letters and citations from Yale President Richard C. Levin, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Joseph Lieberman, and Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor.

President Levin wrote that he has "been personally inspired by Dr. Comer and Dr. Gordon and knows that the same is true for many others in New Haven. The Citywide School Change Initiative launched by Mayor DeStefano and Superintendent Mayo and the engagement of Yale through the New Haven Promise draws from the wisdom and insight of these two scholars. We are all in their debt in New Haven and Yale alike and are proud that we count Dr. Gordon and Dr. Comer as friends and leaders."

Dr. Michael Sampson, who at the time was the dean of SCSU School of Education, said that both men "have impacted education not only in the U.S. but in the world. When I think of what they've done and the difference they have made in hundreds of thousands of lives it just staggers me. That's why I am in awe of just being in the same room with these two men."

The event had deep personal and professional meaning for Dr. Haynes and Dr. Torre. "Both of these outstanding gentlemen have served in some capacity as my mentor; therefore for me their presence on the same stage discussing this most important educational issue of our time was a particularly emotional and intellectually powerful moment," said Dr. Haynes.

As the former Director of Research and Evaluation for the School Development Program, Dr. Haynes documented the effectiveness of Dr. Comer's development-focused school improvement model and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters with Dr. Comer.

"These two eminent scholars have had a great deal of positive influence in my academic and personal life. Drs. Gordon and Comer have been my de facto mentors and guides. To collaborate to bring them together to converse about their hopes, dreams, experiences, and ideas, was a major, unique milestone in my life," said Dr. Torre, who chairs the Curriculum Committee of the New Haven Board of Education. He and Dr. Gordon were both on the faculty of the Psychology Department at Yale University.

Same values, different strategies

In his opening statement Dr. Gordon said that for most of the time he and Jim Comer have been "plowing the same field guided by the same values." He said they were in "a distinguished lineage" that extended back to psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark and forward to Dr. Norris Haynes and Dr. Carlos Torre.

Dr. Comer said that like Dr. Gordon, he has been interested in the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation and how important it is. "I was telling him before we started that I was at the National Institute of Mental Health when Ed came to visit. I was right out of my internship, and I think there was only one other Africa-American professional there. There was this great flurry of interest in this man who was coming, and it was Ed Gordon. I remember how impressed I was at the time, and I've been delighted over the years to develop a friendship with Ed."

Dr. Gordon put the achievement gap in an historical perspective. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Congress mandated a national study on educational inequality. The report, "Equality of Educational Opportunity," commonly referred to as the Coleman Report, was published in 1966. "One of the unnoticed elements of the report had to do with the fact that there was a persistent gap between the achievement patterns of Black kids and white kids, of Latino kids and white kids," said Dr. Gordon. What troubled him most was that "as you go up the ladder to academic achievement or socioeconomic status, the gap gets bigger. And nobody paid attention to it."

"The association between socioeconomics and school achievement is so pervasive that I say today that if you want to do something about the gap maybe we ought to just redistribute the resources of the society because over all the world, the richer you are, the better you do in school. And of course my friend Du Bois would remind me that you can't forget the color line. The darker your skin even in the presence of money the gap persists," said Gordon.

"Ed and I are in agreement with just a little bit of difference," said Dr. Comer. "I agree that color is a big issue and a part of the problem but it goes beyond color. It has to do with what this country has still struggles with. We have trouble acknowledging that the nation was built on some values, attitudes, and conditions that are troublesome. We've never compensated for the ill effects of that."

Dr. Comer thinks schools of education or "any place where teachers, administrators, and others in education learn their craft" can address these troublesome values and attitudes "if you can get people focused on development and its relationship to learning." He also thinks that marginalized communities must organize and function in the way they did when he was growing up. "I grew up in a community that wrapped its arms around many of us and allowed us to get through. That has to be re-established in a much more systematic way."

"They perhaps differed on one major issue: the degree of emphasis that needs to be placed on school reform compared to larger external community and societal reforms," said Dr. Haynes. "It appeared that Comer saw more potential for impact on the achievement gap with a more balanced approach, while Dr. Gordon advocated a more radical, social structural approach."

"I was struck by the foundational agreement between the two scholars that schools and teachers must address the needs of students in front of them on any given day, regardless of the social or economic sources of the needs. Teachers and school cannot attend to the students they envision or desire, only the students they have," said Stephen Staysniak, an English teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy. "This foundational under-pinning of responding to real versus perceived student needs led me to appreciate how carefully Dr. Comer and Dr. Gordon went about crafting each of their responses. With almost one hundred years of clinical practice (perhaps more) between them, they approached the topics of schooling and child development with a clear respect for the complexity of the issues. I took this as an anti-narrative to any individual, scholar, or program that claims to have found a quick or simple solution to the aforementioned issues."

Union Leader Acknowledges Dr. Comer's Impact on New Haven

During a panel discussion David Cicarella, the president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, acknowledged Dr. Comer's contribution to the city's school change efforts that have gotten national attention. Cicarella, who was recently named a Champion of Change by The White House, talked about the importance of Dr. Comer's guiding principles of no-fault problem solving and collaboration. "We get all this credit for what we've done in New Haven, not to take any credit away from ourselves, perhaps it is based on your work that our collaboration says that we just have to work at it, not blaming the teachers or the kids or the parents or the administrators. We've gotten a lot of credit for that but quite frankly we've kind of stolen your ideas."