Bank Street College of Education is a private school and graduate school in New York City. It consists of a graduate-only teacher training college[4] and an independent nursery-through-8th-grade school. In 2020 the graduate school had about 65 full-time teaching staff and approximately 850 students, of which 87% were female.[4]
History
The origins of the school lie in the Bureau of Educational Experiments, which was established in 1916 by Lucy Sprague Mitchell, her husband Wesley Clair Mitchell, and Harriet Merrill Johnson; Lucy Mitchell's cousin Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge provided financial support.[5][6] The bureau was intended to foster research into, and development of, experimental and progressive education, and was influenced by the thinking of Edward Thorndike and John Dewey, both of whom Mitchell had studied with at Columbia University. The bureau was run by a council of twelve members, but Mitchell was its most influential figure until the 1950s.[5] The name of the institution derives from its 1930–1971 location at 69 Bank Street in Greenwich Village.[7]
In 1919 the bureau started a nursery school for children from fifteen to thirty-six months old; Harriet Johnson was the director. The school fed in to the Play School for three- to seven-year-olds run by Caroline Pratt; eight-year-olds were taught in a special class by members of the bureau.[5]
In 1958, the college received a $1,000,000 grant from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for a five-year study on how schools for younger children could improve mental health development.[9]
The personal computer word processing application Bank Street Writer (1981) was developed by the college and marketed to school and home computer markets. Its brand extension Bank Street Music Writer (1985) was a music composition application.
Doug Knecht is the current Dean of Children's Programs and Head of the School for Children.[10]
The Bank Street School for Children is a privatecoedpreschool, elementary school, and middle school within the Bank Street College of Education.[13][14] The school includes children in nursery through eighth grade,[14] split into three divisions: the lower school, for nursery through first grade; the middle school, for second through fourth grades; and the upper school, for fifth through eighth grades.[15] There are 451 children enrolled as students,[15] approximately 50% of which are students of color.[16] The instructors are often current or past students of Bank Street's graduate school, which shares a campus with the School for Children—including more than half of the teachers who are alumni.[17]
The Bank Street Bookstore was an Upper West Side community bookstore that sold children's books and educational toys and games. It opened in 1970 in the lobby of Bank Street College, and moved to its second location on 112th Street and Broadway shortly thereafter. Its final location was on Broadway and West 107th Street until its closing in August 2020, due to the Coronavirus pandemic.[19] The bookstore also hosted readings, daily story time, and celebrity events, with past guests including Stephen Colbert, Julianne Moore, and author Jeff Kinney.
Fisher, Patricia, and Anne Perryman. "A brief history: Bank street college of education." (2000) online.
Nager, Nancy, and Edna Shapiro. "A progressive approach to the education of teachers: Some principles from Bank Street College of Education." Occasional Paper Series (2007) #18 online
