School Power: Implications of an Intervention Project

by James P. Comer

Book Overview

First published in 1980 and now considered a classic, School Power was the first book to demonstrate the positive effect of applying powerful psychological, social, and institutional forces on the performance of administrators, teachers, parents, and students. It shows how a university, a public school system, and parents worked together to move problem schools to an exceptional level of social and academic achievement. Now, reissued with a new preface...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 002906550X
• ISBN13: 9780029065501
• Release Date: September 1980
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Comer is the modern day father of school reform.

This book argues for a synergy between child and adolescent development, systems thinking, action research, and professional ethics as Comer helps us to understand how various social institutions must be connected for school reform to be comprehensive and lasting. Much of what is written about school reform fails to consider the impact of institutions beyond the school. American school reform has been like the blind men and the elephant,with pieces of the school being identified as needing reform rather than the whole system and the institutions that support it.There is a common sense about Comer's ideas that seem so obvious. One wonders why his ideas have not become standard operating procedure. Ironically, almost any of the curriculum reforms can fit under the Comer umbrella.