Bank Street Education Center Publications

Access resources and other materials to help practitioners and communities shift their approach toward culturally responsive, strength-based systems and practices.

Career Pathways and Wage Ladders: A Key Opportunity for Improving Quality (pdf)
To leverage the possible opportunity the Build Back Better Act presents, this policy brief closely examines the potential of career pathways and wage ladders to serve as the foundation for transformative change for the early care and education workforce.

New York City Pre-K Leadership Study (pdf)
Presents key findings from a study of New York City pre-K leaders that evaluated how leaders support teachers and what factors help or hinder leaders’ efforts to positively impact learning for all children.

The Center on Culture, Race & Equity: A Case Study on Systemic Change (video)
Offers a look at the Bank Street Center on Culture, Race & Equity’s partnership with District of Columbia Public Schools to address educational disparities for African American boys.

Community Empowerment and Change in Early Childhood: Education diplomacy within a United States context
Discusses the importance of a child’s earliest years and the need to improve early childhood programs and services for marginalized populations.

All Hands In Interactive Resource Guide 2017 (pdf)
Provides resources to support authentic family engagement among parents, educators, and community leaders in pre-K settings. Created by the Center on Culture, Race & Equity in partnership with Highbridge Advisory Council and BronxWorks.

Launched in 2015 within the Bank Street Education Center, Prepared To Teach helps realize an important progressive vision for building sustainable teacher residency models and re-envisioning how institutions of higher education can forge deeper partnerships with public schools through the creation of integrated teacher preparation programs with extended clinical practice. In July 2023, Prepared To Teach became an independent organization. Discover reports, resources, and other materials developed by Prepared to Teach through June 2023 below or learn more on the Prepared To Teach website

A Path to Equity: Solving New York’s Teacher Turnover & Quality Challenges
Frames both the case for and an approach to addressing persistent teacher quality, diversity, and turnover challenges in the State of New York, which is based on a growing set of research and promising practice and intended to offer a high-level understanding of the complexities around how the economics of teacher preparation both drives educational inequities and can be shifted to promote educational quality and equity by investing in funded teacher residencies.

Federal Funding for Aspiring Teachers: An Investment in the Nation’s Future
Provides a high-level overview of the case for and a pathway to achieve universal residencies across the nation created to inform policy discussions at the U.S. Department of Education.

Registered Apprenticeship Programs and Teacher Residencies: Building Shared Understandings Between Workforce Development and Education
This brief is the first in a series exploring principles that Prepared To Teach has surfaced as helpful for designing Registered Apprenticeship Programs for teacher residencies to promote and support high-quality teacher preparation systems.

Teacher Preparation Programs and Teacher Candidates Supporting Staffing Needs During COVID-19 – Program Highlights
Compiles programs from across the Prepared To Teach National Learning Network that have creative staffing models that directly address staffing and substitute teaching shortages.

Money Matters in Teaching
Breaks down the potential of funded teacher residencies where students can earn while learning, which can alleviate financial burdens and recruit a more diverse, committed teaching workforce.

Beyond Tuition, Costs of Teacher Preparation: Descriptive Analytics from the Aspiring Teachers’ Financial Burden Survey
Shares analyses from the national survey of aspiring teachers carried out by Prepared To Teach during the 2019–20 school year, diving into the income sources, expenses, debt, and work realities of aspiring teachers across the country and identifying where candidates are in need of additional support.

Dollars and Sense: Federal Investments in Our Educator Workforce
Supporting aspiring educators during preparation is essential. The field is ready to embrace shifts that will make teacher preparation more uniformly strong, sustainable, and equitably accessible—investments in preparation will make such shifts possible. This report makes the case for a renewed commitment to excellent teacher preparation, made possible by federal investments.

Going Further Together: Building Ownership and Engagement to Support High-Quality Teacher Preparation
By drawing on effective, lasting collaboration among stakeholders who have not traditionally worked together—both within organizations and across organizational lines, programs can successfully identify sustainable funding sources for the long term. This report highlights programs across the country that have successfully sustained and grown the kind of commitments that ensure program development and longevity.

The Residency Revolution: Funding High-Quality Teacher Preparation
Focuses on strategies for reinvestment—one of our 3 Rs of sustainably funded teacher preparation. Provides guidance for districts to make shifts that permanently embed residency funding in local budgets. Shares ways that partnerships can identify and maximize their savings from a high-quality residency program.

Simple Shifts: Paying Aspiring Teachers With Existing Resources
Focuses on strategies for reallocation—one of our 3 Rs of sustainably funded teacher preparation. Highlights ways partnerships can redesign work roles to better support preparation efforts and to allow candidates to earn compensation during their clinical practice. Shares how districts and programs have leveraged the skills of aspiring teachers to support classroom learning.

The Affordability Imperative: Creating Equitable Access to Teacher Preparation
Focuses on strategies for reduction—one of our 3 Rs of sustainably funded teacher preparation. Shares ways universities can maximize access to financial aid sources and minimize costs associated with quality programs. Spotlights programs that have successfully implemented strategies to reduce costs to aspiring teachers.

Five Domains for Teacher Preparation Transformation
Describes the process of establishing the current Prepared To Teach theory of change, which supports national communities of practice in five domains identified by the Network’s learning agenda in the 2019-2020 school year: mindset shifts, educator roles, labor market alignment, school improvement, and deeper learning.

Aspiring for More: Deeper Partnerships for Sustainable Residencies
Shares lessons learned from 12 university/school district sites as they implemented teacher residency programs during the 2019-2020 school year. Focuses on findings from this work in six areas: sustainability, partnership development, program redesign, supporting school improvement, mentor development, and resident learning.

#MoreLearningLessDebt: Voices of Aspiring Teachers on Why Money Matters
Shares the results of a 2019–2020 survey of teacher candidates’ financial burdens at 12 institutions in seven states. Provides recommendations for practice, policy, and research to improve recruitment and retention in teacher preparation programs.

Co-Designing Teacher Residencies: Sharing Leadership, Finding New Opportunities
Focuses on the development of a teacher residency partnership between Western Washington University and Ferndale School District. Shares lessons from their process of collaboration for other university/school system partnerships interested in creating embedded residency programs.

Sustainable Strategies for Funding Teacher Residencies: Lessons from California
Highlights California teacher residencies with known financial sustainability efforts in which partners are leveraging local resources to support residents and mentor teachers. These concrete examples of creative residency funding strategies are meant to help California’s new investments in teacher residencies become sustainable over time.

Making Teacher Preparation Policy Work: Lessons From and For New York (pdf)
Shares lessons from New York’s clinically-rich preparation pilot including principles for policy to support funded teacher residencies in New York and beyond. Provides guidance for state-level policy change to help grow and scale teacher residencies.

Practice Makes Preparation (Part 2)
Highlights unique preparation programs that are working towards a better system, introduces teacher candidates, and details the weekly spending of student teachers in an effort to share more about what teacher candidates go through to become certified.

Following the Money: Exploring the Economics of Quality Teacher Preparation (pdf)
Provides an in-depth look at the economics of teacher preparation and the systemic shortcomings of current models. Explores how, with a modest investment, the teacher labor market could dramatically shift to allow more strong individuals to enter the profession and, in turn, create better schools.

Practice Makes Preparation (Part 1)
Showcases video interviews with real teachers about their preparation experiences to help elevate stories of quality preparation, identify places for improvement, and add to the conversation about what teacher training should look like. See video responses from ten different teachers answering questions about their careers and preparation.

Clearing the Path: Redesigning Teacher Preparation for the Public Good (pdf)
Draws on lessons from early innovators effectively implementing co-teaching preparation programs to present strategies for the development of strong partnerships that support funding models providing stipends for teacher candidates in full-time residency positions.

Selected Research Supporting Sustainable Funding for Quality Teacher Preparation
Outlines four persistent teacher quality challenges facing schools and districts that can be positively impacted through the establishment of funded year-long pre-service clinical placement.

Investing in Residencies, Improving Schools: How Principals Can Fund Better Teaching and Learning (pdf)
Shares a case study of an innovative charter school in California. Describes how the school’s financial model enables the funding of co-teaching positions for new teachers within the school.

For the Public Good: Quality Preparation for Every Teacher (pdf)
Identifies public funding streams to support residency program nationwide and outlines how teacher preparation providers and school districts can establish mutually-beneficial partnerships to support high-quality teacher preparation and incentivize positive change across the entire educational ecosystem.

Access Other Resources from Prepared To Teach

Explore reports, resources, and other materials produced through our partnerships with school systems and districts to improve teaching practices at scale.

Becoming a System of Professional Learning: Conceptualizing Improvement as a Throughline of Learning
This publication introduces the “Throughline of Learning” model developed by the Bank Street Education Center. The model builds on the concept of the instructional core and demonstrates how focusing on system-wide adult learning needs can help districts successfully reimagine their approach to instructional improvement.

Tracy Fray-Oliver Presents at Gates Foundation Networks for School Improvement Convening
This video shares a presentation by Tracy Fray-Oliver, Senior Associate Vice President, Bank Street Education Center, on the center’s first year of work with Yonkers Public Schools to help more Black, Latino, and low-income students complete 8th grade math.

Implementing NH ChILD: A Comprehensive Approach to Professional Learning to Reach All New Haven Early Childhood Educators (pdf)This report outlines the beliefs, commitments, and plan for action with respect to NH ChILD’s citywide efforts for in-service professional learning for adults working with children ages 0-8, which serves as a model for systems-level professional learning.

Coaching: How a Focus on Adult Development Leads to Improvements in Student Learning (pdf)
This publication documents the professional learning processes, tools, and activities used by Bank Street facilitators in their coaching work with teachers and leaders and brings to light what strengths-based, developmentally meaningful teaching and learning looks like for both adults and children.

District-Wide Instructional Initiative Framework (pdf)
This booklet provides educators with a closer look at how four school system components can contribute to supporting effective improvement strategies at scale: leadership vision and commitment, change management structures, intentional and adult learning experiences, and evidence-based at student-focused decision making.

Why Science Says School is Boring
Explores the reasoning behind the all too common consensus among children that school is “boring” and how schools and teachers can better engage students by helping them bridge what they’re learning in the classroom to their own lives and the world around them.

Structures & Supports: Building a Throughline Approach to District Reform (pdf)
Provides an analysis of the Bank Street Education Center’s work in urban districts. Provides case studies of select program partners and examines lessons learned.

New Haven Children’s Ideal Learning District 
Official website of the New Haven Children’s Ideal Learning District initiative designed to help revolutionize the city’s early care and education landscape.

A Snapshot of ECE Apprenticeship Programs
Based on data from Bank Street’s Apprenticeship Community of Practice, stakeholder interviews, and an in-depth survey of 10 apprenticeship programs across the country, this publication offers a closer look at key features of apprenticeship programs such as approaches to credentials, partnership models, funding, and how programs deliver quality mentoring and/or coaching support. Initial insights have generated a set of further questions for inquiry that Bank Street will aim to investigate as part of the new Apprenticeship Action Research Fellowship.

Opportunities for Reflective Practice in Early Childhood Apprenticeships
This resource offers insights about the components, purpose, costs and related implementation considerations needed to design a system of high-quality job-embedded support in residency or apprenticeship programs. It is intended for early childhood leaders to facilitate the design or enhancement of this critical investment for our early childhood workforce.

Cultivating Powerful Mentorship in Educator Credential Programs
This publication explores Bank Street’s approach to mentorship and lessons learned through implementation and features an interview with three Graduate School faculty members: Valentine Burr, Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning; Jessica Wontropski, D13 Residency Program Administrator and Director of General and Special Education Programs; and Cristian Solorza, Director of the TESOL and Bilingual/Dual Language Programs.

Establishing Early Care & Education As a Public Good
This brief outlines potential principles for policy design that, if applied consistently, will aid the field in identifying policy, program, and advocacy actions that pave the way for investing in early care and education as a public good. Based on insights from a dozen early childhood policy and thought leaders, the new brief also shares snapshots of possible change that center equity and access.

Designing Early Childhood Educator Residency/Apprenticeship Programs: A Guide to Estimating Costs
This guide was created to support states, cities, and communities in understanding the design and cost considerations associated with establishing high-quality residency or apprenticeship programs for early childhood educators.

Realizing the Promise of Early Educator Apprenticeships
In response to the reintroduction of the Early Educator Apprenticeship Act in the Senate and a similar resolution introduced in the House, this positioning statement outlines recommendations for rebuilding the workforce at this critical moment with quality and equity at the center through apprenticeships, which have been effective in improving K-12 school systems.

Equitable Compensation for the Child Care Workforce: Within Reach and Worth the Investment
This policy brief identifies multiple potential mechanisms for advancing early educator compensation reforms at the local, state, and federal levels, building from transition strategies to a call for bold, national reform.

Rebuilding the Early Care & Education System With Equity at the Center
To center equity in our call for reforming the birth-to-three workforce, Bank Street has developed a set of five recommendations for states and policy leaders as they redesign our nation’s early care and education system in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. This essay was published by Capita.

Investing in the Birth-to-Three Workforce: A New Vision to Strengthen the Foundation for All Learning
As politicians across the country continue to advocate for investments in early childhood care and education, this report provides a roadmap to policy reform at scale, including the development of residency programs and improved compensation for the infant/toddler workforce.

Maximizing Every Child’s Potential in the First 1,000 Days of Life: A Landscape Analysis
This landscape analysis explores four interconnected issues that need to be addressed in tandem to be able to level the playing field for all children during the first 1,000 days of life.