The Bank Street Education Center supports system change at scale to help create equity in education and stronger learning experiences for children and adults. We know improvement across schools requires both engaging with educators on the ground and working with leadership who make central policy decisions. Our partnerships create successful collaboration at all layers of the system and foster reflective, learner-centered educational practices for children and families of all backgrounds. Through our work, we are building an evidence base to improve capacity-building approaches and reshape policies to address some of the nation’s deepest challenges currently hindering effective and equitable learning and teaching for all.
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Becoming a System of Professional Learning: Conceptualizing Improvement As a Throughline of Learning
Michelle L. Forman, Tracy Fray-Oliver, and Doug Knecht
This white paper introduces the “Throughline of Learning” (Throughline) 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.
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Coaching: How a Focus on Adult Development Leads to Improvements in Student Learning
Jessica Charles, Milenis Gonzalez, and Emily Sharrock
The Bank Street Education Center partners with schools and districts across the country to help improve teaching and learning at scale. 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.
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Coherent Schools, Powerful Learning: When Shared Beliefs Fuse School Culture, Structures, and Instruction
Douglas R. Knecht
Describes the evolution of a theoretical model of school quality drawn from my experiences teaching at different schools, pursuing graduate studies, leading district policy and support networks, and partnering with school systems, as I presently do at Bank Street College of Education. The model positions schools as the key lever for improvement and equity in our public system and focuses on the coherence of school culture, structures, and instructional approach grounded in beliefs of human development and learning. Using two contrasting schools as cases to explore and develop this model, I offer one as an example of incoherence and the other, Humanities Preparatory Academy in New York City, as an exemplar of how culture, structures, and instruction are fused by shared beliefs and made manifest by leveraging a set of core values. I then turn to the role of districts and state agencies, which cannot directly generate coherence in schools from the outside in. Recent research underscores the importance of school-level coherence and also indicates that the ecosystem of schools must change to foster such coherence. I end with a brief discussion of our need to shift our systemic policies and approaches away from the reductive forces of high-stakes testing and instead embrace this holistic vision of schooling to shape future school improvement and reform efforts.
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District-wide Instructional Initiative Framework
Jessica Charles, Tracy Fray Oliver, Doug Knecht, and Emily Sharrock
Describes the Bank Street Education Center's District-wide Instructional Initiative Framework, a tool that guides the Center's partnership work with school districts who are engaged in a process of instructional improvement. The Framework was developed out of research on district improvement, organizational development, school leadership, and professional learning, as well as the Center's own experience implementing large-scale district reform in the largest school district in the nation: New York City.
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Implementing NH ChILD: A Comprehensive Approach to Professional Learning to Reach All New Haven Early Childhood Educators
Emily Sharrock and Courtney Parkerson
New Haven Children’s Learning District (NH ChILD) envisions a city where all children have access to high quality early learning experiences. In order to turn this vision into reality for the 14,800 children ages 0-8 living in New Haven, NH ChILD is working to increase the number of spaces in high quality programs while simultaneously improving the quality of early learning experiences in existing programs. The following paper outlines NH ChILD’s beliefs, commitments, and plan for action with respect to NH ChILD’s citywide efforts for in-service professional learning.
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Investing in the Birth-to-Three Workforce: A New Vision to Strengthen the Foundation for All Learning
Emily Sharrock and Courtney Parkerson
This report asserts that every child—regardless of race, income, or opportunity—should have consistent access to high-quality learning experiences from birth and provides a roadmap toward change at scale, including the development of residency programs and improved compensation for the infant/toddler workforce.
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Maximizing Every Child's Potential in the First 1,000 Days of Life: A Landscape Analysis
Emily Sharrock and Courtney Parkerson
This report features a series of findings, supporting evidence, and bright spots that build a case for developing a stronger approach to supporting the diverse infant/toddler workforce.
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Schooling for and with Democracy
Douglas R. Knecht
Given the current challenges facing our democracy in the United States, the role of public schools in forming habits of democratic practice in our citizenry is as important today as ever. To explore this urgent topic, the author interviewed 13 leaders of 10 New York City public schools committed to educating for and with democracy. Six patterns of beliefs and practices emerged from the conversations, including commitments to intentionally developing informed, empathic, inclusive, inquiry-minded, confident, vocal, and involved citizens through parallel democratic structures for both adults and students. A seventh pattern was also identified; however, it took the shape of the absence of an intentional naming of democracy as it is being practiced. This raised a question for further discussion: To what degree is making this connection explicit in school communities important? Implications of these patterns are briefly discussed, and a few recommended next steps are offered for the consideration of educational leaders and policy makers. It is the hope and plan of the author to bring the group of interviewed school leaders together to discuss these patterns and dig more deeply into the work of schooling for and with democratic participation.
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Structures & Supports: Building a Throughline Approach to District Partnerships
Jessica Charles
Bank Street College is committed to collaborative, systematic district reform that supports every layer of the school system so that districts are able to thoughtfully plan and implement large-scale instructional improvement initiatives to achieve maximum impact on student learning. The Bank Street Education Center “Education Center,” has developed a “Throughline” approach to district reform, designed to support districts across the system to foster conditions that enable schools to act as units of change and embed strong instructional practices through teacher leaders and teams.
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Tracy Fray-Oliver Presents at Gates Foundation Networks for School Improvement Convening
Tracy Fray-Oliver
During the Gates Foundation Networks for School Improvement (NSI) convening on July 16, 2019, Tracy Fray-Oliver of the Bank Street Education Center presented a Year One Reflection on the center's work with Yonkers Public Schools to help more Black, Latino, and low-income students complete 8th grade math.