About ParentCorps

For nearly two decades, a team from NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine has partnered with New York City’s Division of Early Childhood Education to develop, test, and refine the ParentCorps model. ParentCorps includes three components that help parents and pre-K teachers create safe, nurturing, and predictable environments for children:

• Social and emotional learning program implemented by classroom teachers;
• Parenting program for families of pre-K students facilitated by mental health professionals; and
• Professional development for pre-K leaders, teachers, mental health professionals, and parent support staff.

A series of rigorous studies have shown that ParentCorps has meaningful and sustained impacts on students’ academic achievement, particularly in reading, as well as mental and physical health (ParentCorps reduces emotional and behavioral problems and helps prevent obesity). ParentCorps also improves both teachers’ and parents’ capacity to promote children’s social and emotional well-being.

Scaling Up

In 2014, New York City launched Pre-K for All, which rapidly expanded the number of children in free, full-day pre-kindergarten. Shortly after, the City also rolled out ThriveNYC, a mental health initiative with a strong focus on young children and families. NYU’s ParentCorps team collaborated with the NYC Department of Education to scale up ParentCorps’ professional development, practices, and tools across the Pre-K for All system, serving 70,000 four-year-olds annually. The Research Alliance for NYC Schools provides support for the project by advising on the research design and analyses, linking project-specific data with administrative records, and constructing longitudinal data files to assess implementation and impacts.

For more information, see www.weareparentcorps.org. 

Project Team

Laurie Brotman, Co-Principal Investigator

Spring Dawson-McClure, Co-Principal Investigator

Demy Kamboukos, Co-Investigator

Sabrina Chung, Data Manager

Heliana Linares Torres, Project Director

James Kemple, Research Alliance for NYC Schools