School Development Program Effects: Linking Implementation to Outcomes |
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| Abstract: | James Comer's educational philosophy and his ideas for school reform place child development and human relationships at the center of school change. These ideas, and the School Development Program (SDP) that he founded in 1968, have had considerable influence on school reform and school improvement strategies in the United States and abroad. The notion of creating and maintaining a caring and supportive community, in which the climate of the school supports the total development of the child, is fast becoming a universal aspect of school reform. Many schools across the country are now placing a greater focus on the nature and quality of their climate and on changing climate factors to enhance the development of their students. The result of this progression is that traditional evaluations comparing Comer SDP schools with other schools as non-SDP controls are no longer effective as an approach to studying SDP effects. A more meaningful and practical form of evaluation must now be utilized to pay closer attention to the quality of SDP implementation, the relationships between faithful replication of the SDP process and intervening and distal outcomes, and the varied contextual factors that can facilitate or restrain implementation. |
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