Creating Coherence: Central Office to Teacher Teams and Their Students

Bank Street Education

Investment Banking Education / February 24, 2017

Education CenterMoving School Systems Forward. With Educators. For Students.

The demands on educators have never been greater: higher standards, increased responsibilities to meet all students’ needs, and evolving testing, evaluation and accountability policies. School systems need partners that can develop and support teachers and other leaders to meet these challenges at scale, while always keeping students and their families at the heart of the work.

Bank Street College has created the Bank Street Education Center ("Ed Center") to provide school systems—districts, states, and other education management organizations—and philanthropic foundations with guidance and services to develop and spread strong teaching practice across classrooms.

The Ed Center combines Bank Street’s deep understanding of how children develop emotionally, socially, and cognitively, and how adults learn best, with hard-won lessons learned in stakeholder engagement and project management from instructional improvement work within the nation’s largest urban district. This marriage of the College’s institutional capacity with the recent addition of seasoned school district leaders uniquely positions Bank Street to support systems level change to impact classrooms.

The Ed Center has access to Bank Street faculty and alumni, affording comprehensive and targeted partnerships with school systems in a variety of content and policy areas.

We believe that to shift teacher practice at scale, there must be a throughline of teaching and learning that connects every layer of the school system.

Bank Street Education Center uses an approach to systems-level instructional improvement that builds a coherent throughline from the central office and pedagogical supervisors to teacher teams and their students. We create lasting change in our partner systems as each adult learns their way into new practices that support better teaching and increased student success.

This approach shapes the Ed Center’s key services, including strategic planning and implementation, professional learning across the throughline, tools and resources for scaling high quality classrooms, and feedback loops for adjustment and reflection.

Source: www.bankstreet.edu