was founded in 1916 as the Bureau of Educational Experiments. Our founder, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, convinced that public schools were not serving children well, set out, with a group of like-minded colleagues, to discover the environments in which children grow and learn to their full potential, and to educate teachers and others to create these environments. From those small beginnings as an experimental nursery school staffed by teachers, psychologists, and researchers, Bank Street grew over the years, adding programs and projects, more students, both adults and children, creating materials for and about children in many media, and influencing the design and implementation of such national educational programs as Head Start and Follow Through.
Bank Street College supports the entire spectrum of education, supporting Lucy Sprague Mitchell's mission to "keep one ever a learner." To learn more about our offerings in a specific area, click on any stage of the continuum.
- A Grand Initiative to Improve Teacher Education Locally and Nationally
Teachers for a New Era (TNE) is a massive, groundbreaking, five-year, $5 million educational reform and research effort aimed at determining what kinds of teacher preparation result in great teachers.
Funded by the Carnegie Corporation, with support from the Ford and Annenberg Foundations, TNE's goals are 1) to collect solid, quantifiable data on what good teacher education consists of in today's world; 2) to use this data to better the College's own programs; 3) to prove that excellent teacher education, as well as continued professional development after graduation, creates better teachers; and 4) to demonstrate that these teachers provide higher-quality education for children.
As a nation, we are agreed that we must produce better outcomes for the children in our public schools, regardless of how we may differ on the best ways of doing so. We at Bank Street are at one with Carnegie, Ford, and Annenberg in believing that the teacher is critical to better outcomes, and that good teaching results in good learning. We are honored to have this opportunity to provide leadership in educational reform and professional accountability.
- Connecting School Improvement to Quality Teacher Recruitment, Preparation, and Retention
In 2004, the Graduate School, largely funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Transition to Teaching, began a major new project to provide better teachers more quickly to high needs schools. Bank Street and Region 9 (the Lower East Side, Mid-West Side, East Harlem, and the South Bronx), have formed a partnership and developed a plan to recruit, educate, certify, and retain teachers for high-need schools. The Partnership for Quality Teacher Preparation, Placement, and Professional Development (Partnership for Quality) will create an effective model for recruiting, preparing, and retaining quality teachers in high-need New York City public schools through a route to certification that combines the best of "alternate" and "traditional" teacher education. The retention part of the plan includes placing current Bank Street students as interns in the schools to assist new teachers. In addition, and unlike other teacher recruitment and preparation initiatives, Bank Street will work with the schools themselves as well as the Region, to make the schools places where teachers and students can really teach and really learn!
- A Better Way of Teaching Science
In comparison with their peers in other countries, American children score poorly on science knowledge and understanding. Underlying these scores is the fact that science is often badly taught, especially in the early grades, and, therefore, badly learned. Preparing elementary and middle school teachers to teach science by getting their students to act as scientists˜that is, do inquiry-based learning as opposed to rote learning˜is the aim of the Kerlin Science Institute. Its ultimate goal is to revitalize math and science teaching by changing the way these subjects are taught in the United States (particularly in the public schools). Endowed by the Kerlin family in 2001 in honor of the late Sally Kerlin ('36), a Trustee of Bank Street for fifty years, the Institute shows teachers how to guide their students in performing experiments that develop the children's knowledge of a topic. In essence, students are led to proceed very much the way actual scientists would. Research shows that children who learn in this way enjoy it more and acquire and retain a much deeper understanding of a subject.
- Using Internet Resources to Improve K - 12 Math and Science Education
The Alliance+ Project is a Bank Street collaboration with the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and several community colleges in Miami, Cleveland, and Phoenix, that has now spanned more than six years. The project's overall aim is to promote the use of Internet resources to improve K-12 math and science education.
- New Perspectives on Education Issues
New Perspectives (NP), a hugely successful, continuing professional education program for teachers and leaders, now in its thirty-first year, offers short-format, graduate-level courses, on-site and offsite, during the spring, summer, and fall semesters, to about 1,400 people. NP's course offerings are flexible, and change to respond quickly to emerging education and professional needs. New Perspectives works closely with the other College divisions, and new courses offered for credit must be approved by the Curriculum Committee of the Graduate School.
- The Making of Tech-Savvy Teachers
Training future teachers to support curriculum with technology is a major focus of Bank Street's Center for Urban Teacher Education and Technology, established in 2001. The Center's project ConTExT assigns graduate students to field placements where they can apprentice under master teachers who integrate the hands-on use of technology in their curriculum. The Center supports the efforts of current teachers and faculty, as well as teacher candidates, through a technology website. The Center has also helped Bank Street faculty explore how software programs in reading and math can aid children's learning, and how providing video equipment to students who are primarily visual or kinesthetic learners can enhance their ability to participate in class.
- Creating "Artful" Teachers
There's more to learning than standard tests and the three R's! Bank Street has worked to help bring the arts back into schools and after-school programs, and to counter the idea that they are "extras" that can be sacrificed to fiscal or time considerations without any real consequences for the education of children. Graduates of our museum education and museum leadership programs are strengthening the educational component of museums, developing exhibits that reach out to children and engage them in relating the arts to all they are learning in their schools.
Through a collaboration with the Lincoln Center Institute, students in the Graduate School are being taught how experiential investigations of the arts˜specifically the performing and visual arts˜can engage children in learning and support their development of a wide range of critical, analytic, and expressive skills. The Lincoln Center Institute's cadre of teaching artists (dancers, musicians, actors) have long been active in bringing the performing arts into the pedagogy of elementary and middle school teachers. With Bank Street, they are focusing on bringing the arts into the process of teacher education itself through a series of experiential workshops and performances. As a result, Graduate School faculty have been actively incorporating the arts across the teacher preparation curriculum. Teacher candidates now receive both a theoretical understanding of art education and the concrete skills (learned through classroom experiences) to truly integrate the arts into every classroom.
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Graduate School, which offers intensive, individualized master's degree programs every year to 1,000 aspiring teachers and school leaders, conducts action-oriented research designed to improve teaching and learning, and works with public schools in New York City and in other cities.
a School for Children and Family Center, which, together, offer unparalleled care and education to nearly 500 children.
a Division of Continuing Education, which conducts much of the College's extensive outreach work in a wide variety of schools and communities.
a Publications and Media Group, which creates innovative materials for and about children in many forms, including books, CD-ROMs, television, and websites.
