School Development Program

Developed by child psychiatrist Dr. James P. Comer and his colleagues at the Yale Child Study Center in collaboration with the New Haven Public Schools, the School Development Program (SDP) is a research-based, comprehensive K-12 education reform program grounded in the principles of child, adolescent, and adult development.

First introduced in two low-achieving schools in 1968, over the years the School Development Program has been implemented in hundreds of schools in more than 20 states, the District of Columbia, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, England, and Ireland.

The SDP provides the organizational, management, and communications framework for mobilizing teachers, administrators, parents, and other concerned adults to support students’ personal, social, and academic development and achievement. The SDP also helps educators make better programmatic and curriculum decisions based on students’ needs and on developmental principles.

While the School Development Program helps bring change to one school at a time, it has been used as a framework for system-wide reform, providing mechanisms by which school boards and district central administration can coordinate and support the reform work at each school. more...