2026 CELEBRATION IMPACT REPORT
YOUR IMPACT ON EDUCATION
Dear Celebration Supporter, We are pleased to share this report on the impact of the Bank Street Celebration. I am incredibly grateful for your extraordinary support, which equips our progressive educators to stand as changemakers in our society. Because of you, we are able to foster lively intellectual curiosity and independent thinking for children to make meaning of the world around them, face new challenges with courage, and fully realize their unique potential. Thanks to your generous support, Bank Street was able to advance the critical work happening across our entire community, from teaching and caring for children in our children’s programs to preparing the next generation of educators in our Graduate School to building equitable systems and schools through the Bank Street Education Center. Through this shared commitment, our work touches thousands of educators each year and—through them—tens of thousands of children, bringing our mission to life in classrooms and communities. In the words of Bank Street founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell, “we see in education the opportunity to build a better society”. We hope you enjoy reading about the remarkable impact your generosity is making. We look forward to our continued partnership in building stronger, more equitable communities through education, and we hope to see you at this coming year’s Celebration event! Sincerely,
Shael Polakow-Suransky, GSE ’00 President, Bank Street College
610 West 112th Street | New York, NY 10025 | bankstreet.edu
A Year of Learning and Expanding Reach In Fall 2025, we welcomed 841 students to Bank Street’s Graduate School of Education, and in May 2026, we proudly celebrated the accomplishments of over 300 graduates. Rooted in the Bank Street Credo, our graduates move into classrooms, schools, and organizations prepared to bring a deeply human, relationship-centered understanding of learning to their work. In a moment when technology and artificial intelligence are rapidly reshaping education, this perspective is more essential than ever. In such a challenging time for the field of education, your commitment ensures that Bank Street remains accessible to aspiring leaders. The true impact of a Bank Street education extends far beyond our own campus; each graduate enters the field prepared to shape how children and families experience learning across the country. By investing in their preparation, you are directly elevating the quality of care and instruction in our communities and supporting the educators who will guide the next generation—the future stewards of our society.
2025–2026 Impact by the Numbers
Celebrating Our Impact: Highlights from the Past Year
Your Impact
Our Mission and Credo Mission The mission of Bank Street College is to improve the education of children and their teachers by applying to the education process all available knowledge about learning and growth and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. In so doing, we seek to strengthen not only individuals, but the community as well, including family, school, and the larger society in which adults and children, in all their diversity, interact and learn. We see in education the opportunity to build a better society. Credo Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who founded Bank Street as the Bureau of Educational Experiments over a century ago, wrote a credo that continues to define the spirit of imaginative and critical inquiry that motivates and guides our work today. What potentialities in human beings—children, teachers, and ourselves—do we want to see develop? ● A zest for living that comes from taking in the world with all five senses alert ● Lively intellectual curiosities that turn the world into an exciting laboratory and keep one ever a learner ● Flexibility when confronted with change and ability to relinquish patterns that no longer fit the present ● The courage to work, unafraid and efficiently, in a world of new needs, new problems, and new ideas ● Gentleness combined with justice in passing judgments on other human beings ● Sensitivity—not only to the external formal rights of the “other fellow,” but to him as another human being seeking a good life through his own standards ● A striving to live democratically, in and out of schools, as the best way to advance our concept of democracy Our credo demands ethical standards as well as scientific attitudes. Our work is based on the faith that human beings can improve the society they have created.
610 West 112th Street | New York, NY 10025 | graduate.bankstreet.edu