Bank Street in the 1990s
The economic and educational gap between haves and have-nots widened
in the decade of the '80s, and continued to do so in the '90s, with American
children comprising the largest subgroup in poverty. Poor children in
general, and poor minority children in particular, experience a much higher
level of developmental, educational, and social risk. The high risks start
even before birth and continue through adolescence. Poor children are
less likely to achieve in school, more likely to drop out before completing
high school, and more likely to enter a premature path to parenthood as
teenagers.
All of this has resulted in tremendous challenges for parents, families,
employers, schools, and social service agencies. Early in the 1990s, every
division of Bank Street College began studying the changing needs of American
children and families – at school, at home, and in the workplace
– and devising strategies to address those needs. Central to the
work of Bank Street in the 1990s was improving the quality of public education,
early childhood education, and child care, and working with other organizations
and agencies to develop innovative programs for children, youth, and families
– especially those at high risk. These concerns are still central
to our work in the 21st century.
Our efforts to address the challenges of the 1990s were many and varied,
not only in New York but in more than twenty other cities. We recognized
the great need for well-prepared school leaders. Our Principals Institute,
in collaboration with the New York City Board of Education, produced nearly
400 school leaders in the 1990s, most of them women or members of minority
groups. The Principals Institute is now entering its 15th year of service
to the City's schools. Our Leadership Center works with new principals
and with established principals who wish to hone or refresh their skills.
We recognized the need to restructure schools to make them more responsive
to the needs of students and teachers. The Center for School Restructuring created the model adapted by New York City for its extensive restructuring of middle schools. In the early and middle years of the decade,
we undertook a restructuring of elementary schools in Pittsburgh, PA through
the Vision 21 project. And we started the New Beginnings project, a program
for restructuring early childhood education in the Newark, NJ public schools.
New Beginnings, funded by several foundations and the Newark Public Schools,
continues to work in kindergarten and third grade classrooms in Newark.
We were, and are, concerned about the disproportion between teachers
of color in city schools and their students – the vast majority of
the children are of color in America's great cities, but only a small
number of teachers and administrators are members of minorities. We coordinated
the preparation of minority teachers in ten cities in the Northeast and
Midwest through the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Pathways to Teaching
Careers program, a national effort to prepare more minority teachers.
We also aggressively sought funding from the federal government and foundations
to bring more minority students into Bank Street's programs. Currently,
nearly 30% of our students are people of color – one of the highest
proportions among members of the Holmes Group, a national association
of teacher preparation programs.
To address directly some of the issues facing children and families,
the Division of Continuing Education, Bank Street's primary outreach arm,
opened Head Start and childcare programs at Genesis/Robert F. Kennedy
Center, a housing complex for formerly homeless and low-income families.
We also operate an Early Head Start program, working with young mothers
and their infants and toddlers in their own homes. Another program prepares
women, including those who are moving from welfare to work, for careers
in childcare. The Institute for a Child Care Continuum is presently working,
in both California and New York, with the largest – but hardest to
reach – childcare community, those family, neighbors, and friends
who care in their own homes for the young children of working parents.
And our annual Infancy Institute, in the Graduate School, offers an intensive
weeklong program of professional development for child care professionals,
including directors of programs.
The Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP), initiated by the State of New
York, and partly funded by the State, is entering its 15th year at Bank Street. LPP is designed to keep disadvantaged young people
in school and to help them go on to college or into meaningful employment.
Students enter the program in sixth or seventh grade and participate in
a wide range of activities, including academic support, counseling, and
enrichment experiences, through their high school years. Over the life
of the program, 90% of students have gone on to colleges as varied as
Bard, CUNY, Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, SUNY, and Cornell.
In 1996, Bank Street's Graduate School, recognizing the profound changes
taking place in America's classrooms, undertook the first major analysis
and restructuring of its entire range of programs since the 1930s. As
a consequence of that analysis and restructuring, which is ongoing, we
have made major changes in the structure of our programs, with two principal
ends in view: to prepare teachers for the broad range of student backgrounds
and abilities in their classrooms, and to prepare them to integrate technology
across the curriculum in their schools. Several grants have allowed us
to provide our faculty with intensive preparation in integrating technology
into the Graduate School's curriculum, continuing the Bank Street tradition
of modeling for students what they are learning to teach.
Also in the 1990s, Bank Street launched several major research projects.
The First Steps Study, a federally funded analysis of the First Steps
literacy curriculum, was conducted in public schools in Worcester, MA,
and the findings of the study have been widely reported in professional
journals and at conferences.
A second major research project, the Small Schools Study, examined small
schools in Chicago over a period of more than two years, gathering a wealth
of data on the performance of students, teachers, and administrators.
The first large study of the efficacy of small schools, it was conducted
by a team of educational researchers led by Bank Street and by the former Dean
of the Graduate School, Patricia Wasley. The team included such noted
educators as Michele Fine of the CUNY Graduate Center, Linda Powell of
Teachers College, and Sherri King of the Mamaroneck (NY) Public Schools.
In 1998, in response to New York State's mandating prekindergarten classes
for all children, Bank Street founded the Center for Universal Prekindergarten.
A resource not only for New York but also for fledgling prekindergarten
programs across the nation, the Center provides professional development
for early childhood teachers, addresses policy issues, and advocates for
excellent programs for our youngest public school students.
Bank Street's Publications and Media Group developed more than seventy
titles in the Ready To Read series, published by Bantam; served as educational
consultants to the Nickleodeon preschool series, "Allegra's Window," since
its inception; developed a series of chapter books, West Side Kids, published
by Hyperion; scripted a series of videos for children based on Bible stories;
developed a series of books on controversial scientists, called Ideas
on Trial; with McGraw-Hill, produced a Pre-K Math Curriculum Guide; produced
several Pre-K through 8th Grade Scholastic Curriculum Guides; and began
serving as educational consultants to The New York Times on its Learning
Network, which provides teachers with online guidance in using the events
of the day in their classrooms. Learning Network presently reaches 22,000
schools in 72 countries.
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