At 100 Years Old, Edmund Gordon Thinks the Key to Schooling Starts at Home

Edmund W. Gordon has been thinking about child well-being for a long time. A respected scholar, a founding father of the Head Start preschool program and expert on educational testing, Gordon has been called the premier Black psychologist of his generation. He has published 18 books and is an emeritus professor at not one, but two Ivy League schools — Yale University and Teachers College at Columbia.

Most people his age would be fully retired — or, perhaps, no longer with us. On Sunday, Gordon turns 100. This month, Teachers College celebrated his legacy with a conference that explored, in particular, the use — and misuse — of educational assessments.

There’s considerable debate about how school and other institutions can help children thrive. But at his centennial, Gordon has concluded that families, more than teachers, set the course of a child’s life.

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