Leave No Child Behind: Preparing Today's Youth for Tomorrow's World

Ebony, Nov, 2004

Education is in trouble, and people everywhere are calling for "accountability" in our schools, more challenging curricula, higher standards and higher test scores.

In his new book, LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND: PREPARING TODAY'S YOUTH FOR TOMORROW'S WORLD (Yale University Press, $28.00), pioneering psychiatrist and educator James P. Comer, M.D., explains how we got off course in education and how we can change course. Comer, who is Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center and associate dean at the Yale University School of Medicine, argues that the problem is a lack of support for proper development of our children--psychological, ethical, cognitive, linguistic, social and physical. The pioneering Comer School Development Program marks its 35th anniversary this year and brings together teachers, parents and administrators to create a new school environment that builds relationships and supports development.

Drawing on his experience growing up in a supportive, low-income African-American family, Comer says inadequate development stunts learning and life success and that good development make learning and good behavior possible for almost all students. He says broad changes in society have left many children without family and community support for solid development and that our educational system can and must step in to provide that crucial support. The book features a foreward by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The author of the "Leave No Child Behind" slogan, Marian Wright Edelman, says the book is "a key addition to the current debate over how our wealthy nation can create a school system that truly prepares every child to learn and succeed."