Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

Page name and link: Bank Street College of Education and School (Fast-Tracking FYI on its 100 year Progressive, Experimental Laboratories involving Young Children, History) [published April 30, 2017] with case-sensitive short-link ending “-6Em,” about 7,700 words.

Pages on this blog, unlike posts, do not automatically appear on the “main street parade” of the blog week by week, chronologically as published.  Pages can be accessed from either a link to them from some post, or if I put a link on the sidebar, or if for some reason, a general internet search on something I’ve reported about may call them up.  I blog topics, or aspects of topics often under-reported, so sometimes searching a topic, one of my own blog pages will come up.

I haven’t yet decided how or how much to publicize this page, so if you like it, or hate it, bookmark and Tweet, forward, mention, link to it or otherwise raise the discussion.

The page was also written in stages, so there may be some unintentional repetition across the sections.

Where this page came from:

I have been looking at [scrutinizing….] activities and relationships around the “Annenberg Public School Challenge,” especially in the Chicago area, one intermediary organization out of 18 named projects, the Form 990PF filer- “Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Inc.” and its original leadership, including the future Senator and United States President Obama, and the well-known Bill Ayers.  Bill Ayers’ (retired Sept 2010? from UIC — University of Illinois Chicago) personal background included interest in alternative school systems (Summerhill) and Bank Street College of Education.

Wiki on Bill Ayers, #1 of 2[Image# refers to the first placemt of an image on the blog, not necessarily all uses of the same image and caption]

Image 2 of 3 from Annenbrg Fndtn website

Image 3 of 3 from Annenbrg fndtn website inside the 2002 “Lessons Learned” pdf; shows reliance on the AISR at Brown and (right side) how, coincidentally Ted Sizer’s CES (not referenced that this was also originally housed at Brown) happened to share the same philosophy!

This page came from this recent (late April 2017) post: Challenge Fund Circuitry (Anyone ELSE want to look up $52M worth of Challenge Grants from Annenberg Foundation Year 2001?) with case-sensitive short-link ending “-6Db”  [Link and title will be repeated below.]

IF you got through that recent post all the about-20,000-words way, you may notice an extended middle section starting with a strange attribution of a nearly $1 million donation from “Annenberg Foundation” to “CPEF” as from an address in Evanston, IL (greater Chicago area) connected with Kenneth B. Rollings, which address led me to exploring a website labeled “Community Learning Partnership” (some images included here also), and its “national partners”…

That large middle section in my post from which THIS page was started as an intended footnote, brings up that the concern for re-education at urban levels for some closely parallels a concern for radical activism along “equity” and demographic lines, with an unfortunately corresponding lack of concern for rules, laws, and transparency of the flow of finances through the networks, resulting in combinations of real, apparently real but maybe not, and fiscall-sponsored named websites with “DONATE buttons connected to paypal.  Reminder:  a website domain name does not a business entity make.

Example: A hypothetical “PublicPurposeFantastic.org” may or may not be a legitimate corporate or government) entity, and without further admissions from the site, and verification OFF-site of WHO is “PublicPurposeFantastic,” donors probably do not know where their donations went. One thing’s for sure though, if they have an active Donate page, they are soliciting for someone. (Disclaimer on this blog’s DONATE buttons — which FYI are rarely used! — I am not a nonprofit, donations are not tax-deductible; any funds donated there come to yours truly, me, a.ka. “Let’s Get Honest”).

Reminder:  Famous people and organizations can fake being legitimate entities ALL THE TIME, and the more the merrier (and the more colorful), the better the spin of an appearance of grassroots demand or otherwise more widespread endorsement of a cause than really exists.  A simple analogy — finger-puppets.

What’s more entities can start real (file legitimate), and through failure-to-renew (or “failure-to-file”) become status-revoked easily, as Coalition for Essential Schools, Inc. in Rhode Island did within a few years of incorporating, during which time it simply moved to California registered there (likely as a foreign entity) and hoped no one would notice.  Which, apparently, no one did, or if they did, then CES skipped back to Rhode Island, made amends (it took a special legislative action apparently in 2012), all was (inappropriately in my opinion) forgiven with NO penalties, and status reinstated “just as if” it hadn’t been revoked.  Did this lead to reformed behavior from then on?

No.  CES then got warned again, redeemed itself again, then relocated (as to its address anyhow) to Maine or New Hampshire (I forget which offhand), in association with at least two other nonprofits in the area (some, at the same address) (Great Schools Network, Sen. George J. Mitchell Institute for Education Research or similar title), and then voluntarily dissolved.  I have already posted on this, putting readers on notice, this IS the “Public School Reform”crowd, as seen from the Secretary of State records, not their own self-promotions (or their colleagues)!

Analogy:  Child-like, easily-entertained (and/or distracted) viewers don’t even try to figure out how many all come from one hand or two hands on the same business person, but remain fascinated and entranced by the waving action figures.  Also, unlike human beings, corporate entities can have more than 10 at a time….

Other viewers, such as myself, while focusing on the situation and seeking to untangle it into a semblance of accountability on the cashflow between and among (a) business entities in different states, including migrating from one to another at times, (b) business entities who are private Form 990-filing universities!) and © tax-exempt foundation sponsors, including large ones whose multi-million-dollar lists of grantees are sometimes not even presented legibly, and (d) where these intersect with government entity sponsors at a variety of levels, not to mention (e) fees to subcontractors, including investment managers paid directly PLUS investment manager fees (which can be substantially larger), can get a little pissed off at the effort necessary to even get a more objective look at the larger picture. Requiring this much effort is not consistent with representative government and accountability at the local level to those governed, or affected by lack of it where some government restraint of criminal acts is necessary for life itself.  Again, I learned this the hard way leaving abuse as a mother with minor children in one of the supposedly most progressive (implying also respect for women’s rights) metropolitan areas in the country.

CLICK HERE to see Sched B grants TO Chicago Annenberg-Challenge Successor, CPEF (EIN#36-4279013) Yr2000 Form 990 SchedB Excess Contribs, p5 TOP (Image 2 of 5)

“CommunityLearningPartnership” ℅ Ken Rolling, at street address previously reported as “Annenberg Fndtn” (re: CPEF donor FY2000)

Community Learning Partnership (website) “Our Impact” lists the categories.

The intent of these school/education reform networks in general is connecting to the sources of revenues for public school systems, and often, in the process, turning the school systems into community “social service centers,” which can be significant access to other revenues, such as from HHS, DOJ (etc.) and of course, referrals to programming in the private sector.  Between the Ayers/Obama and (it comes up below) Mayor Rahm Emmanuel connections to some of the organizations and appointees, it would seem they are primarily progressive radical, but this isn’t entirely so. A few points (references from my “Challenge Fund Circuitry” and another blog page) reviewing the bipartisan aspect:

SEVEN paragraphs and link to a related Page on the “bipartisan” participation in this Annenberg Public School Challenge (I’ll number them, ONE, TWO, THREE…) before getting down to the actual subject matter of this page’s title Bank Street College of Education. and how it fits into this mix.   Keywords:  ECS, NASDC, AIR for Behavioral Research, David Kearns, Senator Lamar Alexander.  Under “ECS” see also the NGA with its previously blogged heavy involvement in pushing “responsible fatherhood” federal fundings, and out-come-based custody proceedings.  The significance of this type of activity and organizing patterns on the character of the USA today cannot be overstated and should not be ignored. It is an ongoing reality, under-reported except for those involved as sponsors and/or participants.   

ONE. I also showed on that post that this was not an exclusively progressive trait, in the inclusion of a voice for Republicans too, in the form of ECS (Education Commission for the States), NASDC (New American Schools Development Corporation) and David T. Kearns, which connected through his professional background at the federal level (USDOE) to current Senator Lamar Alexander.

TWO. Looking more closely at “NASDC” or what appears to be two related versions of it (see extended list of screenprint images, annotated, at the bottom of the post), I found how this connected to a global set of related entities and major social science research organization, AIR (American Institute of Research in the Behavioral Sciences), as well as a name-changing NASD previously called “Education Entrepreneur Fund” from Alexandria Virginia.

THREE.  I have no images here for that sector, but like groups such as WestEd (a Joint Powers Agency, that is a government entity which crosses state lines, set up under California’s Joint Power Act), ConnectEd: The California Center for Career and College (an incorporation-post-poning nonprofit with big-bucks foundation backing), [I posted on this Q42016, see the last 3 posts of the year] the Education Commission for the States referenced in the Annenberg $500M Public Education Challenge as a primary advisor and/or player, formed as a Colorado nonprofit in 1967 to implement a Dec. 1965-signed Education Compact among the states (as in United States of America and territories).  One feature of its leadership is being chaired by a Governor of alternating political parties, I believe it’s every two years (see site to check).

FOUR.  A previously existing “instrumentality” of government (with its own nonprofit also, to implement its great ideas), the NGA (National Governors’ Association), was essential in publicizing and convening leaders to plan and sign this Compact, a “great idea” by former President of Harvard (during and briefly after World War II, that is 1933-1955) James B. Conant.   In looking through my pages (for this one), I ran across an earlier page on the NGA which had remained in draft.  I updated and recently published the page.  Look for the light-yellow background-color for an introduction to and alert to the role of the Education Commission on the States, from my “layperson” perspective.

FIVE.  It’s been said of the Roman empire, “all roads lead to Rome.”   Well, in my years of blogging on significant violations of human rights associated with the family courts, and attempts to regionalize, nationalize and internationalize the public education (while maintaining a separate but unequal private system paralleling it), a whole lot of roads lead to Harvard, whether Harvard-Kennedy School of government or, in this case, Harvard Graduate School of Education (not to mention, Harvard Business school — the Harvard/Bain/Bridgespan model which I blogged). Plenty of roads also lead to Yale, Princeton (Brown), Columbia and other places, but when it comes to the Annenberg Challenge of the turn of the 20th to 21st century, and the ECS formed mid-20th century, we can see that plenty of them come from and go through Harvard School of Education.

Link to that page:

SIX. As a woman, a mother (and investigative blogger, etc.), and (I’ll refrain from repeating my story and how it interacted with the insatiable insistence that above-grade-level children wherever possible be forced into traditional, large-classroom, large-schools, UNDER-educating scenarios when other, more expansive, more effective, and less expensive/abusive to the children forms ARE, all around, available to those NOT forced through family court case-churning around control of the kids and boundaries situations, year after year),  I am getting tired of seeing “government by Ivy-League associations rotating in and out of political office, and the aggrandizement of the professionalized field of “education” for population control, particularly by class and gender — while the same proclaim their sensitivity to the same (see that 1964 book review I referenced in yellow-background section just above for an example).

SEVEN. That “Do You Know Your NGA…?” page will explain, in hindsight seeing all the setup for easy systems of fraud and racketeering in the gaps between public and private networking, how some of the worst “bright ideas” around came from men in positions of power at a historically male-only college in, here, the Boston area. It also sets up population control making it hard for people to do as some of the historic corporate wealth itself did — actually live an “American Dream” without taking down America through greed and tolerance of slavery and worse, in the process.  The “Education Commission for the States” as I am seeing it (a) involved with the NASDC and AIR and (b) as originally described by its founders, intended to undermine protections built into the US Constitution — “but for a good cause,” so it’s said.  See my annotated images and that preview section above, for more details.

Seeing all this, “Good GRIEF, what’s going on here?” would be a legitimate question. Along with, “how’d it happen?” Some in-depth (not “knee-jerk”) analysis, in hindsight, is called for.  

I have the same question (although the longer and closer I look, the clearer the answer becomes on just WHAT is going on there, although that certainly doesn’t exclude other undiscovered activities).  

ONE clue may be when a Chicagoland public schools executive between 2015 and, actually, this past week was (with two others) convicted of felony fraud in the matter of steering contracts for kickbacks from just ONE or TWO of the named entities in the vast public/private reform the system network, that name being “SUPES Academy.”

So, this PAGE (not POST) intended primarily as a footnote to that specific post, and secondarily as a general footnote to the situation.  Because of its original purpose, it only references two or three groups of sources, that is:

• The Bank Street College of Education (operating as a private nonprofit in Manhattan, NY, recently passed its 100th anniversary),
• The Annenberg Challenge (Chicago-area), two or three organizations (Chicago Annenberg Challenge, its successor Chicago Public Education Fund) and one of the CPEF sponsored entities, “SUPES Academy,” and
• because the current President of Bank Street College of Education biography (bio blurb) referenced his training 2008 at a “Broad Academy,” also the “Broad Center”-named entities — which include, typical of some other patterns in this network,
  • (1) a funding sponsor (The Broad Foundation — in its two versions, previous and successor!) with thus a controlling interest at least in the startup and sponsorship,
  • (2) two nonprofits versions (you got it, original and successor) entities, Broad Center for Urban Superintendents and successor, Broad Center for Management of School Systems, and
  • (3) I looked at one of the typically two or three named subcontractors (MIchigan Leadership Institute, LLC) showing up on their tax returns.

So this post provides point of reference in general for the “Annenberg Challenge / Public School Reform” topic and larger, but same general idea, other related school-reform networks that seemed to arise magically in a short time period as a sudden solution to urban school dysfunction.

That page, part of a series of posts on related topics. It is for a point of reference only and not to be considered fully-developed (which would require more posting of tax returns, for just one example, on the “Broad Academy” situation listed below, which I also looked into, and which involved a transition of 501©3s NOT identifiable at the “Broadcenter.org” website, no doubt intentionally).

Current Bank Street College of Educ leadership bio blurb (@july1, 2014)

“Broad Academy” intersects with “Bank Street College of Education” through a passing reference to the current President of Bank Street College of Education, Shael Polakow-Suransky who, as it turns out, seems to have also been mentored under Ted Sizer of Annenberg Foundation/Brown University (AISR at Brown U) also.  I drafted the material about Bank Street first, then added some of these findings on Broad Center entities (though I had a sense of deja vu on the website) later.  Possibly I should put one before the other, however, for now, I am simply going to “Publish.”

I reference this situation below, but did not image, annotate, or report specifically on it.  I simply noted it for future reference, i.e., “FYI.”  Want to know more?  Go look up the tax returns after ascertaining through a look at the website that the website is not about to provide them voluntarily!

The predecessor organization started in 2001, dissolved in 2006 and was replaced by another one under same management with same purpose (though different name and EIN#) started in 2005.  They directly fund public schools and education departments, as well as charter schools (I saw quite a bit of “Kipp” schools) in part to subsidize the “Broad Residency.” Not for this post!

It would run down the money one year, then be pumped up again (admittedly by Eli Broad Foundation, although it was not a “related entity”); one year a donation of $28,000,000 of which perhaps $23K? was non-cash, shows up in “other investments” which turns out to be a certain Drawbridge Partnership,* which then passed through $3M partnership income (not long after), etc.

[*name approximate, see tax return for exact name]

This next table of tax returns with related image just shows one of the entities, from which I pulled up its table of recent tax returns, however before that image, and having looked them up previously I’m going to also show the two “related entities” as well as one (from the start, or at least  as of year 2002) receiving $1M (and in later years, continuing) payments as subcontractor for this AND (as I’m remembering — feel free to doublecheck) successor entity.

TWO of the tables, then will have entity names “Broad” — one was dissolved, one succeeded another.  The THIRD is “Michigan Leadership Institute,” relating to a Timothy Quinn.  Meanwhile (if I post the FOURTH) Eli Broad was on the Board of earlier versions of one or more of the above, so maybe I should show the Broad Foundation current assets for comparison.

Well, it also turns out that two successive “Broad Foundation” organizations with an unusual explanation for why assets of one were poured into another around 2005, 2006, which one of the tax returns explains.

Depending on when the Michigan Leadership Institute was started (I haven’t looked so don’t know yet), it looks like most of these started AROUND the time that the Annenberg Challenge had been up and running (and distributing its millions) for about five years, and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (“CAC”) successor organization** (Chicago Public Education Fund) had gotten its first infusion of cash prior to the CAC (originally run under the leadership of a future US Senator AND President, Obama!) dissolving itself in 2002.

[**Orig. published, this word was “information.”  On a Jan. 2020 review I think must’ve meant the word “information” instead. //LGH Jan 11, 2020]

ALL of this as I will continue to point out, is post-PRWORA or shortly before it. Notable to the year 1980, federally speaking, “HEW” (around since 1953 under that name) split into the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) and the US Department of Education (“DOE”) (and I DNR what else), so even if one starts from the early or mid 1980s (with Ted Sizer at Brown University doing “Coalition of Essential Schools” unincorporated at Brown (it only incorporated in the late 1990s!), this is a time when — face it — the US Department of Education AS a separate federal department, got started.  Certain people would be well aware of that reality and primed to take advantage of it (not that federal funds for education weren’t available before then, but the creation of that new Department gave it a new emphasis).

Total results: 3. Search Again.  [the 4th/”yellow” row to an earlier return, I added manually by tweaking the url provided for more current years]  

Federal prosecutors seek 9 years for SUPES owner who bribed, defrauded CPS

[Gary] Solomon is scheduled to be sentenced later this month for his role in a corruption case that rocked Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s administration and the city’s troubled school system. The co-owner of the SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates education consulting companies, Solomon was charged in October 2015 with multiple fraud and bribery charges.  ….

He pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud last year [2016?] and admitted his role in a scheme to bribe Byrd-Bennett with a percentage of the value of contracts the then-CPS CEO steered to the education consulting companies.

Byrd-Bennett, Emanuel’s hand-picked schools chief, pleaded guilty shortly after being indicted to a single felony count of wire fraud for steering multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts to Solomon and his firms in exchange for the promise of up to $2.3 million in kickbacks

Ongoing Chicago Tribune Coverage of CPS, ex-CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett (pictured) and SUPES Academy

This time, my annotations are not just filenames. Click the above image (if needed) to read, please!

website “mileaders.com” may be reviewed if the print here is too fine.

**Yellow row, entity 20-2692176, for Broad Center for Mgmt. of School Systems: This column represents Total Assets, but I DNK if beginning or end of year, for this database.  YR2005 was Initial return for this entity, so its beginning Total Gross assets was “0” and although over $3M passed through its hands that year, in 2005 the IRS form didn’t prompt for “Beginning of year (or, for that matter, end of year) Gross assets, but here, reported EOYr NET assets, $777K.

MISSION and (Lines 4a,b,c,d) Program Activities with dollar amounts from most recent tax return, above (Page 2, Part III):

OUR MISSION IS TO RAISE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT BY RECRUITING, TRAINING AND SUPPORTING LEADERSHIP TALENT FROM ACROSS AMERICA TO TRANSFORM URBAN SCHOOL SYSTEMS

4a (Code )(Expenses$ 2,188,440. includinggrantsof$ )(Revenue$
THE BROAD SUPERINTENDENTS ACADEMY IS AN ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM THAT IDENTIFIES AND PREPARES EXPERIENCED LEADERS TO SUCCESSFULLY RUN URBAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEMS.

4b (Code )(Expenses$ 5, 556,176. including grants of $ 2, 176,488. ) (Revenue$
THE BROAD RESIDENCY IS A LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM THAT TRAINS EMERGING LEADERS FOR SENIOR MANAGEMENT POSITIONS IN LARGE URBAN SCHOOL SYSTEMS. IN ADDITION TO PLACING QUALIFIED PARTICIPANTS INTO FULL-TIME HIGH-LEVEL MANAGERIAL POSITIONS IN SCHOOL DISTRICTS, CHARTER MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS AND FEDERAL/STATE DEPARTMENTS OF EDUCATION, THE ORGANIZATION PROVIDES GRANTS TO HELP THESE SYSTEMS COMPENSATE THE RESIDENTS FOR ON-THE-JOB TRAINING.

4c (Code )(Expenses$ 1, 430,309. includinggrantsof$ ) (Revenue$
NETWORK SERVICES IS A PROGRAM THAT HAS EMERGED FROM BOTH THE BROAD RESIDENCY AND THE BROAD SUPERINTENDENTS ACADEMY TO PROVIDE SERVICES DESIGNED TO STRENGTHEN AND LEVERAGE THE CENTER’S GROWING NETWORK OF PARTICIPANTS AND ALUMNI. NETWORK SERVICES PROVIDES CAREER COACHING AND SERVICES TO HELP PARTICIPANTS AND ALUMNI FIND LEADERSHIP ROLES IN EDUCATION, PROVIDES SUPPORT SERVICES TO PARTICIPANTS AND ALUMNI WHEN THEY TAKE ON KEY LEADERSHIP ROLES, FACILITATES KNOWLEDGE AND BEST PRACTICE SHARING ACROSS THE NETWORK, ORGANIZES ALUMNI REUNIONS AND FUNCTIONAL AREA GATHERINGS, AND HELPS LEVERAGE THE NETWORK TO ADVANCE REFORMS NATIONALLY.

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Click if needed to read full-sized, (the annotations in purple is just image filename)Broad Ctr for Mgmt of School Systms (EIN#202692176 FY2012 3 Subcontractors totaling ca 0’9M [File under Bank Street College:Shael Polakow-Suransky trained here 2008?) Screen Shot 2017-04 The second subcontractor shown here (Family Financial Services in Los Angeles) apparently handles the Broad Foundation finances too.

[FY 2013 address change to:  2121 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles California; which also matches more recent address of “Family Office Financial Services” (see image to left for FY2012).]
I’m publishing this page anyhow, as it has some more information than was referenced on the original post from which I extracted the material (some more than shows up here is also on the “overlap” section there).  The next colorfully annotated image is taken from that post to show context.//LGH 4-28-2017. Challenge Fund Circuitry (Anyone ELSE want to look up $52M worth of Challenge Grants from Annenberg Foundation Year 2001?) with case-sensitive short-link ending “-6Db”

[I wrote:] See next image (link in caption to view full-sized) to see why the word “circuitry” may be appropriate.  The excerpt is labeled as representing a single year’s contributions: 2001. All the colors are just my roughly categorizing recipients by type, including naming convention for the ones named after the Challenge itself.

Annenberg Fndtn FY2001 lists $52M of grants to 15 of the “Challenge Grants (Public Education)” — paid that yr. My annotations are simply sorting grantees by category, informally, and noting that AISR as an entity doesn’t show up among them. These take time to produce — pls. read!

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This “Bank Street” page has no pretensions to being complete, authoritative or exhaustive and exists only for a point of reference in case the reference was generally unfamiliar to some of my readers.

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It turns out the current (new as of FY2014) President of Bank Street has a Brown University/Coalition of Essential Schools connection, which I also put in here.  The same individual was trained FY2008, it says, at “Broad Academy” (Broadcenter.org) and after having looked through two sets of tax returns (one was set up, then dissolved, another under the same management took over, though not technically designated a “successor” organization), I expect to incorporate that information too — which may delay publication of this page.

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Bank Street College of Education and School (Fast-Tracking FYI on its 100 year Progressive, Experimental Laboratories involving Young Children, History)

The involvement of Bill Ayers’ prior history in “small schools” movement and with the Bank Street School of Education puts some background color into the overall agenda of this movement also and makes its current (or I should say, more recent 21st century, late 20th century) behavior more consistent with those sharing similar agenda, such as progressive ideology and acceptance of using education of small children as “laboratory” experiments IN education to be combined with teacher-education at the graduate level.   It is also (as of 2016) 100 years old.

In case “Bank Street College of Education” history, philosophy and practices are not familiar, excerpts from its website (various pages) and Wikipedia, are available as a footnote on a separate page.  They are relevant, but I don’t want it cluttering up this post.

A school within a college

Bank Street is recognized as the gold standard in progressive education. The two main programmatic divisions are the School for Children, which educates children from nursery through grade 8, and the Graduate School, which prepares adults to teach and work in schools all over the world. Teachers with Bank Street degrees are in demand. The combination of the Graduate School and the School for Children in the same setting creates a unique synergy between children and teachers.

Bank Street School for Children was founded in 1916 in New York City by visionary educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell as The Bureau of Educational Experiments, a laboratory nursery school staffed by teachers, psychologists, and researchers who worked to discover the environments in which children grew and learned to their full potential, and to educate teachers and others how to create these environments.

Until 1970, the Bureau was located in lower Manhattan. It set up shop at 9 Bank Street in 1930, and remained there until 1970, when it moved to its present location, on West 112th Street. Today, Bank Street comprises a Graduate School, to train teachers; a full program of children’s services, including the famed School for Children; and many outreach programs for educators and the community at large.

Philosophy

The School for Children is an independent demonstration school for Bank Street College and a working model of the College’s approach to learning and teaching. Education at the School is experience-based, interdisciplinary, and collaborative. The emphasis is on educating the whole child—the entire emotional, social, physical, and intellectual being—while at the same time, the child’s integrity as learner, teacher, and classmate is valued and reinforced.

Briefly, the Bank Street College of Education Wikipedia also reminds us that among its partnerships are with educational media corporations, and a few more details (such as its founder having been Dean of Women at UCalifornia Berkeley), when it got $1million for mental health (appropriate to the times, 1950), and that in 1995 (only) it finally got its first woman, or black, leadership, Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner, who had existing ties to the federal USDOE, and helped raise capital.  The year 1995 brings Bank Street (in NYC) up to the time of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge incorporation.  “Leading Black Educator Chosen to Head Bank Street” (NYT 8/16/1995)

Bank Street College of Education is a private, nonprofit educational institution located in Manhattan, New York City. The College includes a Graduate School, an on-site independent School for Children, professional development and social programs, and partnerships with school districts, colleges, museums and cultural institutions, hospitals, community service organizations, and educational media corporations.

…The Bureau of Educational Experiments created the Cooperative School for Student Teachers in 1930, joining eight experimental schools for the purposes of teacher education.^[7] A joint venture between the Bureau and eight other experimental schools, the Cooperative School ran classes, seminars, and conferences for teachers on Thursday through Saturday afternoons. The student advisement process, modeled after English university practice, selected a senior member of the faculty to oversee student teachers using personal and professional evaluations.^[8] By 1946, the school offered night and weekend courses for students who lacked prerequisites for a formal college education, garnering the attendance of over 500 aspiring educators.  [[interesting, drawing in those who didn’t meet pre-requisites for college themselves!!]]

….Expansion of Bank Street College[edit]

In 1950, after certification by the Board of Regents of New York State to allow for the bestowal of Master’s Degrees, the Bureau of Educational Experiments was renamed Bank Street College of Education. Also in 1950, the National Institute of Mental Health awarded Bank Street a $1 million grant to develop studies that focused on the school’s efforts for the promotion of mental health. Four years later, the School for Children was officially founded. In 1965, Bank Street developed the Bank Street Readers line of books, unique because they featured racial diversity and urban people of contemporary culture. Additionally, in the 1960s, the Bank Street faculty played an important role in the creation of the federal Head Start program. By 1968, Bank Street was also involved in the design of Project Follow Through.

 

The current Bank Street College of Education leadership (President) is Shael Polakow-Suransky, who came there July 1, 2014, from being second-in-command just before then to NYC Public School system, and having referenced (a) being a Bank Street alum and (b) having been mentored by Ted Sizer at Brown University! Read more info on his decision, as a former Bloomberg-era person now under a new (Catherine Farina) leadership (Jan. 21, 2014 at “Chalkbeat”

…Polakow-Suransky’s shift may also portend a tighter partnership between the city and the college. As Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to hash out plans for a universal pre-kindergarten program, both Fariña and Bank Street—which has traditionally placed special emphasis on training teachers and leaders in early childhood education—said that they could work together in the future. …

Polakow-Suransky joined the city school system as a teacher in 1994 after graduating from Brown University, where he studied education and urban studies. After teaching math and history at Crossroads Middle School in Manhattan, he moved to Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School, then left to found the Bronx International High School in 2001. || He joined the Department of Education’s central administration three years later, [only 2004] first in the Office of New Schools, which oversaw the opening of more than 200 new small schools during his time there.

In other words, his undergraduate study at Ivy League Brown, while Ted Sizer was there (Polakow-Suransky is younger — b. 1972 — and Sizer supervised his masters’ dissertation).  There appears to be no PhD level in this career educator now college of education president.  The “CES” model was “gearing up” (but before CES bothered to incorporate and legitimize itself at Brown!) focused on the areas being emphasized at the time; Polakow-Suansky then taught for only about 10 years before moving into administration — with, apparently, a “Small Schools” emphasis, which also ties him in purpose to Ayers and others, as well as to the CES philosophy in general.

Current Bank Street College of Educ President bio blurb (@july1, 2014) shows predecessor position was second in command at NYCity (not “State”) DOE! Also read pp.2

Meanwhile, it’s April 2017 and Bank Street College of Education has not yet uploaded its FY2015 (which ended 6/30/2016, almost one year ago), tax return — and he’s President.  No “related” organizations are reported at Bank Street, and from what I can tell, this should not be a complex tax return to file, either.

In case this isn’t clear yet, there is a “Bank Street/Brown University (CES Sizer, Small Schools, etc.)/ AND as it turns out in Polakow-Suransky’s career path, a “Broad Academy” (as in two Eli-Broad-Foundation-funded training entities, spanning 2001-current, with the “switchout” around 2005/2006) in his executive/school leadership training also.

CrainsNY (Oct. 2012) describes how as founding principal of one of four small schools replacing a failing larger one, his willingness to be “Chief Accountability Officer” saved Mayor Bloomberg’s nomination for Schools Chancellor, a woman with no experience, whose own kids went to boarding school. With Polakow-Suransky as “Chief Accountability Officer,” the woman with no experience whose kids went to boarding school could get the position, and Mayor Bloomberg could save face.

Polakow-Suransky’s career curve, and age, make sense once his own high school experience in at Ann Arbor, Michigan’s alternative “Community School” (school without walls), and his anti-apartheid (and probably liberal) parents having come from South Africa when he was, apparently, about one year old.  In later starting the Bronx International School in NY, one requirement was that its students have flunked the English exam for entering high school, and be recent immigrants.  The high school works closely with the IRC.  There is no reference to what his parents did, or to any other siblings.

A South African native, Suransky’s parents were Jewish anti-Apartheid activists who immigrated to Michigan in 1973.^[2][4] Suransky attended Ann Arbor’s alternative Community High School.^[2][3][4] In high school, Suransky paired his fellow students with younger children in a peer-education program that promoted conversations about tolerance; the program spread throughout his school district.^[2] He spent his senior year conducting an independent study in Durban, South Africa, at the height of the anti-Apartheid movement.^[2][4]

Suransky studied education and urban studies at Brown University,^[3][4] where he worked closely with prominent educator Ted Sizer.^[4] Sizer was known for his belief in progressive education, and developed the Coalition for Essential Schools (CES), a collection of experimental schools dedicated to reforming secondary education by creating a focus on authentic student learning.^[4] Sizer advised Suransky during research for Suransky’s senior thesis, which used a comparative analysis of a South African school and a community organizing group called Direct Action for Rights and Equality to explore the intersection between education and political organizing.^{[4]  {{interesting Wiki didn’t provide a direct link to the community action group}}}

Suransky earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from Bank Street College of Education^[2][3] and graduated from the Broad Superintendents Academy in 2008.^[3][5]

 

BROAD SUPERINTENDENTS ACADEMY, et al. (see also introduction nearer top of post)

The “Broad Superintendents Academy” has a story behind it (see Eli Broad Foundation and predecessor organization in Michigan). The predecessor organization started in 2001, dissolved in 2006 and was replaced by another one under same management with same purpose (though different name and EIN#) started in 2005.  They directly fund public schools and education departments, as well as charter schools (I saw quite a bit of “Kipp” schools) in part to subsidize the “Broad Residency.” Not for this post!

It would run down the money one year, then be pumped up again (admittedly by Eli Broad Foundation, although it was not a “related entity”); one year a donation of $28,000,000 of which perhaps $23K? was non-cash, shows up in “other investments” which turns out to be a certain Drawbridge Partnership, which then passed through $3M partnership income (not long after), etc. …

I doubt if anyone exists who could (or would bother to) verify the funding TO the many different public schools or school systems, actually was delivered, while the directors are admitting relationships to each other (whether marriage, or working for the primary funder, or having hired a major subcontractor also an officer, etc.) and to various subcontracting entities.  The “Broad Academy” is a 10-month executive program.

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A quick look at Bank Street College of Education’s FY2014 return shows an organization whose assets are under $1B (about $75M), took in $45M Gross receipts this year, of which Part VIII Line 1 (Donations, etc.) were $6.5M Govt grants to $3.5M “Other” contributions, but its main income (being a school, not too surprising) was $39M tuition and other fees, maybe $6M professional development, etc., and most investments (outside of perhaps $14M in Land, Buildings and Equipment) assets being held in public-traded securities, more than I’d expect in the first four lines of Pt. X Assets (i.e., 1 cash; 2 savings; 3 accounts receivable; 4 pledges receivable) which was over $20M.

Here’s the screenprint of program services on its page 2 (you have the tax return link above).  It has a consultant from California, labeled “Pecheone Raymond” who turns out to be Stanford’s Raymond Pecheone, involved in teacher assessment standards and school redesign. He leads a 2009-launched Stanford Center focusing on school leadership, named “SCALE”

http://news.stanford.edu/expert/raymond-pecheone/ Ray Pecheone leads the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), a center launched in 2009 that focuses on  (a) the development of pre-service and teacher evaluation performance assessments for teachers and administrators  at the school, district and state levels and (b) the development of a performance-based system for student assessment to support the development of the next generation of formative and summative assessments at the district, state and federal level.  Dr. Pecheone’s teacher induction and teacher assessment program, the Beginning Educator Support and Training Program (BEST), has received national attention and received an award of excellence for educational innovations by the Education Commission of the States (ECS).  In addition, Dr. Pecheone consulted with the Educational Testing Service to design and create The School Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA).  The SLLA was constructed to provide a reliable, fair and valid assessment to measure the knowledge and skills of principals and other school leaders. Pecheone has made numerous conference presentations and published extensively on topics including human capital development, teacher quality and teacher and student performance assessment.

Bank Street College of Education FY2014 (ends 6/30/2015) Form 990 p.2, Part III.  Link is to the whole return, not just the image.  See page 2 for full-sized of this image.