New York City’s Pre-K for All program has more than tripled the number of children enrolled in universal pre-K classes from 19,000 to 70,000 students since it began in 2013. Amid this rapid expansion, a remarkable 94% of the city’s pre-K programs met or exceeded nationally recognized standards for high-quality pre-K education—and Bank Street College of Education played a pivotal role when the New York City Department of Education reached out for help developing and launching the initiative.
How Bank Street Supported the Universal Pre-K for All Rollout
As the city set its sights on providing free, high-quality pre-K to all 4-year-olds and their families, Bank Street President Shael Polakow-Suransky, who has held top-level positions in the city’s Department of Education, was asked by the NYC Department of Education if Bank Street could help out. He focused on the challenge of teacher retraining and told the New York Times that “the hardest thing is getting instructional quality at scale across thousands of classrooms.”