CEHD News

“Education works best when parents, teachers, other school employees and the community pull together to make it happen,” says James Comer, winner of the 2007 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Education.

Federal law mandates instruction for all children but overlooks the need to help them become successful adults, James Comer, a Yale University child psychiatry professor, argues in his winning 2004 book, “Leave No Child Behind: Preparing Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s World.”

Collaboration among the people in a child’s life can improve education in ways that testing and accountability can’t, he says.

In a program Comer developed, teachers, parents, administrators and others at more than 600 low-performing U.S. schools are making decisions by consensus to improve the educational experience for students. The level of student achievement has gone up at many of the participating schools.

Comer, winner of the 17th Grawemeyer education prize, was selected from among 32 nominations.

The Grawemeyer Foundation at UofL annually awards $1 million — $200,000 each for works in music composition, education, ideas improving world order, religion and psychology. The Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion is given by the university and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Awards founder Charles Grawemeyer, an industrialist, entrepreneur and UofL graduate, wanted to reward powerful ideas or works in the sciences, arts and humanities.

Four of the five 2007 Grawemeyer winners are being named this week. The music composition award winner will be named March 8 at Carnegie Hall in New York at an event celebrating the School of Music’s 75th anniversary.

See the streaming video of Dr. Comer’s Grawemeyer address [ASX].