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New York City
May 2003

Deans Series:
Dean Jon Snyder, Bank Street College

Talk about speed and interdisciplinary reach! It’s been only a little over a year since Education Update caught up with the then relatively new dean at the Graduate School of the Bank Street College of Education, Jon Snyder, but in this short period of time, the energetic administrator has moved on three new initiatives. And what is more, he manages somehow to discuss them all the while also making dinner for his 13-year old son. Nothing, however, causes the confident and fast-talking ex-Californian to miss a beat, even as he excuses himself for a few seconds “to take a tortilla off the grill.” He knows that in New York education is the real hot spot.

He is “really excited” about the three new programs Bank Street has instituted, thanks to generous funding, and sees each making an important contribution to the “evolution” of better teaching and assessment. Thanks to philanthropic efforts at the Carnegie Corporation, Bank Street is now embarked on the “serious stuff” of gathering evidence about teacher education programs. The dean emphasizes the difference between such evaluation and previous studies that have focused on assessing and revising courses. The Carnegie grant is a program-level study: what evidence can be found for how curricula and embedded assessments work? He calls this initiative “curriculum-linked assessment” and notes that it also takes into account the relationship between instruction and standardized test scores. The purpose of the study is not to create a model of what works but to present evidence about policies “that make a difference to the kids” and ensure that the policy-makers provide support. By “kids” he means the children in Bank Street’s own school, ages 2-3 and those in middle-school. The Carnegie makes it possible for “teams of Bank Street “candidates” (students) , recent grads, and senior exemplary teachers to go into classrooms for from 3-5 weeks to observe.” Prior to the visits, teachers and candidates conduct pre-interviews about goals.

More particular in its educational mission is the initiative funded by the Kerlin Foundation which will allow Bank Street to train teachers in science for the middle schools. This year the program takes the form of a Summer Institute at Bank Street which will be devoted to teaching college-level physics. A discipline-centered program, the Kerlin involved “interviewing the best college physics teachers in the state” and determining that Richard Steinberg, of The City College of New York, Professor of Physics, would guide the instruction, along with Bank Street teachers, recent Bank Street grads and public school teachers—a deliberate “heterogeneous mix,” Dean Snyder emphasizes. Onsite visits will take place the following summer and the hope is that a “network of people” will emerge who will positively affect the teaching of science.

The third prong in the Bank Street 2003 initiatives is a forum funded by Goldman Sachs “to convene educators and business leaders” for discussions on “how to enhance teaching quality.” The forum will be co-chaired by Mayor Bloomberg’s appointee to the Department of Education, Diana Lam, Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning. The good dean would go on, but as John Steinbeck would say, Tortilla Flat calls.#

 

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