 So, switching gears. Welcome back, Secretary French. We are happy to hear from you. And we're going to switch now to literacy. We have a new draft. You'll see another similar thing related to funding. Well, I don't know if we put that in this one. Funding, again, is something that is a little bit on the side at the moment in terms of how we do that. But we are looking for your feedback on the latest draft that we just went over today and a couple of things that you had asked for and looking for your feedback. Yeah, well, good to see you again, Dan French, Secretary of Education. And yeah, I mean, really the major piece that stood out for me was the funding. I can see a lot of hard work that went into integrating the various elements. And I think you've ended up with a very coherent draft of pulling a lot of things together, but they hang together very well. So, you know, I appreciate that the funding wasn't clear to me. So that was really my major observation, which is on page 11, line two. It's not clear to us either at the moment. I will have to say that that is something that we are sort of sorting out, but hoping that we can at least get an idea of what we're trying to create. We have an incredible infrastructure of money. Yeah, and we, you know, I'm not so sure about COVID dollars, but we have state level PD funds, you know, that have been earmarked before by the General Assembly for like 173. We certainly, and we continue to see literacy as a priority. So I would, regardless of your nudge or requirement, we're still going to find a way to allocate some federal state level dollars for that. But that those federal dollars are really not related to COVID. They're more like the Title I and Title II that we get at the state level. So that's a question of us making a priority, which we'll do. But if you had in mind some other funding source, it's not clear to me what that is from us. Yeah, we're just trying to get the direction going. We certainly know that challenges of learning to read certainly are probably affected by COVID. We know that there's a hundred million dollars going into our public schools on the line of Title I, where often we see our students who are struggling with learning to read. And I think one of the things like the questions that we have is really knowing where are the areas that really have strong literacy programs with good structures in the program using evidence-based systems? And where are the weaknesses? And then how is the best way to ascertain where those are so that we can direct resources? Yeah, it makes a good theory of action. And I think we should have at the state level is the idea of disseminating best practices. I think the point you make, though, it's almost irrespective of what a program is, per se. If it's well integrated into a system, it's probably going to be more successful than not. So in those places where people have embraced sort of an initiative, it becomes a systems-level initiative. And the PD, the time, the coordination is invested so that it deserves the attention it needs. So I think we'll find that pretty consistently across the state is where people have been intentional to put some effort onto it to get results. Well, I'm having a little trouble finding the new draft, but we had added a few things to that draft at the end of the, maybe, just if you could bring it up while I'm searching for my copy. Yeah, 3-1. Yeah, 3-1 is the version I saw on the web. In section, so in terms of the findings, to review that, let us know if you have a problem. The grant program, I understand at this point in time you're not thinking that that's the way to go, correct? Well, you know, once again, I think you've done a good job of integrating the various concepts. I think you've done, the grant piece wouldn't be a priority for us, but I understand why and how it would function. But I think you've situated it in the context of the other elements that we see being more essential. So I think it's, it hangs together again very well. Okay. And then when we get to the end, the last section, sliding by our places that say federal funds, heading on to section 5 on page 11, page 13 starts the duties of the SU board. And you would at one point have in there lexiles. We've gotten some, a little bit of criticism on lexiles. And I didn't want to take that out. But we've added in new language, adopted benchmark literacy assessment for all students in Pre-K through 3 with scores that can be reported in a format determined by the secretary. And we just put in after consulting with stakeholders in the field and outside experts in literacy. So yeah, I think that's the language we support as well. Just to underscore what that, how I would interpret that. So we're looking at a measure that could be reported at the state level, regardless of what benchmark assessment people use at the local level. So we're looking for a common measure that could be used at the state level, regardless of what the locals are using. And there's, you know, there's about five or six major bench commercial benchmark assessments. I'm sure our districts are using mostly all of them, but I'm sure there's a couple that are more prevalently used than others. So, you know, we would be looking, you know, the state's interest or what the secretary of the promulgate is looking for a common denominator. You know, I'm not, I don't want to collect this data from that district. You know, the idea of having, giving the secretary that authority is to get a single measure that would help us identify areas of equity gaps in particular. My knowledge, Lexile is the only common denominator in that area. So, you know, but I'd be interested if we can come up with some other way to do it. That's what I'm hearing from some of the experts. Yeah, it's not, you know, to the point that every, we're not asking districts to do a new testing for those districts that aren't doing your language here. It does require, I think districts don't look closely at implementing a benchmark assessment if they're not already doing that. But if they're already doing it, we will be able to get a common score out of that. The point, I know people point to Lexiles as being inadequate or what have you, but it's no more inadequate than the scores they already have because anything can be converted to a Lexile score essentially on a commercial benchmark. That's why it's so widely used. But the other piece, just to sort of flesh out a little bit what our state level interest would be, it's also the ability to connect the K-3 data to the 3-8 data aspect. So, to provide that continuum, because right now we don't have, from the state level perspective, we don't have any insight to pre-K-3, but also districts aren't necessarily able to connect their pre-K-3 through their aspect. So here too is an intersection, not the point at Lexiles again, but Lexile, we've contracted as many states have the ability to translate their state assessment scores into a Lexile. One of the compelling arguments to do that is to connect it to other data they might have so they can see a continuum pre-K-8. So that's the other aspect we'd be looking at is to connect it to the aspect data. And then we added section 6, which is the teacher preparation programs. Yeah, that's something we had in our original proposal. We think it's a good, we should start that conversation. That's a common element in the national conversation as well. I think we're in a good place to just sort of do that inventory, particularly with the context of some of the, I would say, consolidation conversations that are happening with our state college system. But, you know, those institutions are primary teacher preparation institutions as well. So we need to have a better understanding of how their, I won't say their consolidation conversation or their governance conversation will affect teacher preparation pipelines, because that's going to be a critical need going forward. But then this gives us an opportunity to look at a very specific issue, which I would also argue is directly related to Act 173 and special ed preparation as well. So it's a fruitful area. Yeah, Representative Austin. Yes, thank you. Representative Brady and I were kind of over the weekend talking about the teacher preparation. And I looked at your testimony to the Senate. And I don't know section six, I don't know if that does that is that where you talk about that the General Assembly would direct the Secretary to review teacher preparation programs and report back to the General Assembly on on to what extent these programs prepare teacher candidates to use science-based literacy materials and programs, because I like that language. And then we had thought maybe it would be helpful if you you know that you would look at pre-K in general education, K6 licensing, K6 endorsement, licensing, relicensing should also be reviewed, as well as including a teacher's skills and understanding of how to use student data to inform instruction and remediation to advance the mastery of grade level benchmarks and literacy. Because if we don't, you know, you know this, if we don't address the preparation, it seems that this is why our scores are not, we're not doing well is that the teacher is critical. Yeah, it's a piece of the puzzle. I don't see the language you just refer to in the current draft. So what's in it, what I see in 3.1 is just the paragraph, I think that's on the screen. So I don't, I don't, I don't know where the other beyond what's on the screen right now. I don't know the other pieces. It isn't. I just sent it to Representative Webb last night. I'm not sure if he had a chance to see it, but we were thinking that would be good language to add, and I just wanted to see what you thought about that. Yeah, I mean the piece just listening to what you described, two things I just caught real quick. One is we have, do have a major initiative launched on data literacy with West Ed. So we are doing a major state level, you know, PD activity that's really part of the 173 work and also COVID recovery. And that's, that's a topic that never gets old, you know, it's like, it's not like you do it and then you get done with it. So we always have to sort of, I'm just like reinvigorate our understanding of how to use data thoughtfully. So I think that piece we have. So I don't think it necessarily needs to be included here. The one piece that stood out for me, and I think what you said was doing sort of an inventory on the relicensure activities, that's perhaps more challenging for us. We do have, you might be aware of the ALIS system, ALIS, that's our online relicensing system for teachers, where we process the license things and take their information to, from their local standards boards and so forth. That system is, I'd say fragile at best, it's something we're hoping to replace at some point in the not too distant future. We don't have the really good ability unfortunately to go in and use that system to answer that question, you know, like to what extent our teachers participating in activities related to licensure. So we don't have an immediate way to query the data, if you will, to come up with an answer to this. That might be somewhat problematic. What we would probably have to do to answer that question would be to survey folks. And that might take more than just like a one shot deal. It might be like an announcement in the fall that we won by the end of the year. We want to understand to what extent people are participating in literacy. So we're going to ask you to gather data in this area through the course of the year. So if you could start to earmark your professional development if it qualifies as literacy. And in several districts use online professional development management systems. So they could establish a data record in that and then ultimately produce a report at the end of the year. Most districts I would think still are doing that manually, so it might be challenging for them to respond. The other approach would be to implement that as part of the COVID recovery, you know, that we are we are going to direct districts to look, we have those three domains or we're going to ask them to do sort of an assessment of where their students are at in those three domains. One of the domains is academic, you know, achievement and well, you know, overall efficacy in academic. So we could think about doing something there and get more of a softer indicator from from districts to answer the immediate question to what extent where districts or students harmed, let's say, from from an academic progress standpoint in the central literacy skill. So we might be able to get some read there, but it's going to be that's going to be a problematic area to get into to sort of do an inventory of what people are doing now. I mean, it would be a nice way to go, but we don't have the infrastructure configured by infrastructure. I mean, the data fields aren't organized in a way to to do that easily. So you don't think language needs to be added in addition to what you have already? I think the data piece is already covered. And all I have is what you just orally described. So I apologize for not having a clear sense of it. But I think the data thing I feel comfortable on that if that was an essential, I think you mentioned it. And then the second piece, I think the collecting data and the current practice is more problematic than doing, you know, I think the piece we were trying to address is we don't really have much on the pre-service piece. You know, most of our focus appropriately is on in service. So that's the grant, you know, the policies to look at the systems approach. But we should we should be interested in looking at, you know, what pre-service is looking like, you know, how our teacher is being developed now in the pipeline. And I think that's useful for me in a couple areas. One is specifically to this area. But then secondly, I think we are going to have to attend to some pipeline issues and education sooner rather than later, because our workforce needs, you know, are going to be pretty significant. I was I was talking with one of our state level literacy experts, if she was making the observation, she's been working in the field for many years. And she said, you know, she's worried about the pending retirements in the next five, five, 10 years. There's a lot of expertise that's going to be leaving. And I think that's true. You know, so we we're going to have to as a as a rural state, we're going to have to have a focused conversation and a very intentional conversation on pipeline development. Thank you. Representative Brady. Thank you. As a teacher who's in the process of re-licensing, I will support an appropriation to replace Alice any day. There's always something worse represented, Brady. I just want to follow up on Representative Austin's point. And maybe I'm just reiterating, but maybe drilling down a little bit more. I think what we wanted to see if there's a need for language about not just getting an understanding of what the kind of PD experiences of teachers in the field, but can we either incentivize or potentially even require for at least K6 teachers, when they go through the re-licensing process that there's a certain amount of credits that fall under literacy, of course, we have to figure out how to define that. It's possible that already sort of exists within the re-licensing framework. I'm not sure because I'm so much more familiar with the high school side. But I think that's where we wanted to make sure that we don't lose all the teachers who are already in the field in this and a potential leverage point there. Yeah. If that's your intention, I think what you'd want to do is probably direct the standards board to sort of do that because they're in charge of those regulations. I think the regulation is there. We have some pretty good regulatory language on literacy to a certain extent. We don't necessarily collect that on it, but we have some aspirational stuff in regulation. But I think the standards board would be in a position to respond to that and also give you their senses to what extent they feel comfortable with the current licensure regulations pertaining to this issue. They might have some ideas on how to improve it as well if it's insufficient. Okay. Are there any other questions or comments? I would just make the general observation. I think you did a great job of weaving together. I know there were several different elements, and this is not an easy area. So I think it has come together. I mean, I read it as a coherent whole. I didn't really get a sense of it like being chopped together kind of piece of legislation. Sometimes they don't have that feel. This kind of still kind of comes together pretty nice. It's good. And I think because this is February, what it looks like now and that's why we're sort of building in a little bit of flexibility as it moves the system. But I think the Senate's also interested in, you know, so I think there's a lot of energy and that's, you know, I was talking to a few folks and my major goal this year was just to keep advancing this concept. And I think it's gained some traction. And I think in particular with COVID, you know, we will find ways to look at this. But I think it does, particularly as Representative Brady better mentioned high school. I'm a high school teacher by background as well. I'm keenly interested in issues of information literacy and the use of nonfiction and just the wealth of information that's available as Jess was testifying to if you're remote learning on BTVLC. There's just so much information out there now. So it's, I think as a goal, it's one thing to do appropriately should focus on early literacy, but we have this larger issue of just raising up literacy period for all Vermont citizens. So it should be a major cornerstone of our education policy from pre K through 12 and up through adulthood. So a little media literacy for all of us. Yeah. Well, thank you. This is very, very helpful. I'm not sure what we're going to be able to do with the grant language at this point. It may be something that's just going to have to move through the system. And as things reveal, what's happening to the federal level that it will probably undergo some change. Yeah. And who knows what additional COVID money will look like. But right now, I don't see a direct connection to the current COVID money. You don't see a connection to literacy development using COVID money. Well, there's learning. There's a new provision in S or two around learning loss. But that was already in S or one. I mean, it can be fairly generally used. I would agree, but it's not a prioritization at the moment. We'll see how that plays out. Interesting. Well, it's hard to, it's hard to show loss when you're just starting, but where you should be probably right after this year. Okay. I think with that, Jim Dameray, do you have anything at this point or you're just listening and doing okay. I'm doing fine. I have nothing to add. I'm happy to cut the graph for you, right? Okay. Thank you, everybody. I guess with that, we can end. And that means that we're ending before 430, which means you can all go outside on this beautiful day.