The Urban Assembly

The Urban Assembly was founded in the 1990s by builder Richard Kahan. Under Kahan's leadership, the Urban Assembly partnered with the New York City Department of Education and New Visions for Public Schools to create the Urban Assembly Bronx School for Law, Government, and Justice in 1997.

Over the next decade, the UA opened more than 20 small, career-themed public schools and worked with hundreds of public, private, and non-profit sector partners to enhance educational opportunities for public school students and close the opportunity gap for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.

Today, the Urban Assembly is a school support agency that develops academic, social-emotional, and postsecondary readiness learning tools and programs that enhance student growth and school performance. As an Affinity partner of the NYC DOE, the Urban Assembly has a network of 23 high-performing schools that outperform other schools citywide, with a higher graduation rate (91% vs 81%).

As a model provider of school support services, the Urban Assembly has influenced citywide education programs and initiatives in New York City and partnered with schools and districts in California, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington D.C.

The Urban Assembly Social-Emotional Learning Team builds schools' capacity to ensure that all staff and students in the UA network receive relevant experiences and purposeful instruction to develop the social-emotional competencies that impact students’ success in school, work, and life.

SEL accomplishes its goals through its work in the following programs:

 

Resilient Scholars Program: This program is a guided implementation model designed to support schools and districts to organize their systems and structures around the principles of Social-Emotional Development. The Urban Assembly Resilient Scholars supports the implementation, integration, and sustainability of Social Emotional Learning programs and supports. ( The program has been recognized as a reflection of SEL best practice in an urban environment that can serve as a replicable model for NYC schools and other districts throughout the United States.

 

Social-emotional learning supports early college and career readiness by helping students build on their resiliency, develop prosocial behavior, and take part in positive experiences beyond the classroom. These experiences are essential for students to become strong candidates as they apply to college, and give them cultural competency as well as transferable meta-cognitive skills to succeed after their transition from their high school to a post-secondary institution.

 

Working across schools with key school staff, including principals, deans, social workers, teachers, and counselors, the Urban Assembly Social-Emotional Learning Team employs the following key strategies:

• Develop and Establish Behavior Support Systems
• Develop and Establish Social-Emotional Learning Programming
• Monitor and Enhance School Culture/Climate