Bank Street College of Education

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Bank Street College of Education


Established	1916
Type	Private graduate school
President	Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner
Faculty	125
Students	1,050
Location	New York City, New York, United States
Website	http://www.bankstreet.edu

Bank Street College of Education, or just Bank Street, was founded in 1916 and is located in upper Manhattan in New York City. The college is a specialized institution offering graduate degrees in education. It operates a school for children which follows the same philosophies as the graduate school. The college gets its name from its former location on Bank Street in Greenwich Village. It moved to its current location in the early 1970s.

Bank Street was founded by Lucy Sprague Mitchell as the Bureau of Educational Experiments. (Mitchell was the first Dean of Women at the University of California, Berkeley). Its original focus was to study child development and education, but, after two years, it was clear that subjects were needed, so a nursery school was opened in 1918. This nursery school is the direct antecedent of today's School for Children. It wasn't until the 1930's that Bank Street began to formally train teachers, the start of today's College of Education.

Bank Street is known for its progressive educational approach, and is widely regarded as training grounds for the best private and public school teachers in New York. Combining current scholarship on child-centered approaches, psychological development, and practical experience, Bank Street attracts students who are interested in modern approaches to a changing world. The Bank Street School for Children, housed in the same building, is one of the most esteemed, and selective, private schools for children in the United States, capitalizing on the tremendous academic resources within.

In 1965, Bank Street developed the "Bank Street Readers" line of books, which were unique due to their featuring of multi-racial and urban people of contemporary culture. Also in the 1960's, the Bank Street faculty helped to create the federal Head Start program.