 Hi, good morning. It's a pleasure to join you. Thank you, David, for that great presentation for your extraordinary leadership and work on these issues. And it's such a pleasure for me to be with you today to join the Learning Policy Institute and really to applaud them for the important focus on this topic. And the partners today, the Council for Strong America and the First Five Years Fund, who have been great leaders in this early education field and great partners with our administration as we've worked to try to expand access to high quality early education. I want to congratulate the authors of today's important report. I think it's a tremendous contribution to our learnings and to the advancement of this important work across our states. You know, fortunately today we are at a point where policymakers widely recognize a decades old body of research that demonstrates just what a difference access to high quality early education makes for our youngest learners in terms of their success later in school and in terms of their success later in life. We know that our children who are fortunate enough to have access to early education arrive in kindergarten more prepared to thrive. They're more likely to grow up reading, writing, doing math at grade level, more likely to graduate from high school. Later in life they're more likely to secure stable employment, to form stable families, less likely to be engaged in the criminal justice system. And we also have this tremendous set of learning from the neuroscience which continues to innovate and update its learnings for the field to help us understand and relearn just how consequential the first five years are for children's development and success and growth, right? These are the years where our children are forming the foundation for health, for social emotional development, for cognitive skills that will shape their outcomes later. 700 new neural connections in every second of a young child's life being formed in their brain. Their brain being 80% of its adult size by age three, 90% of its size by age five. So it's tremendous. And we know from that neuroscience that one of the most important factors in that scientific development is the experience that our children form with the environments around them, with the adults in their lives. Those experiences that are shaped in the home, the conditions of their communities, environments in which they spend time, shaped by their parents and families, shaped by those who care for them in early child care settings, in preschool settings. So we have policy makers from both parties at the federal and at the state level, I think, that have seized on these findings. And certainly, as David has importantly noted, we have seen growing and expanding access to preschool, tremendous growth across our states in investments in state-funded preschool. Today's report notes $7 billion that was spent in one school year, just last year alone on preschool. And since the president put forth his proposal for preschool for all in 2013, we have seen 38 states, Republican and Democratic lawmakers that have increased their funding by 1.5 billion. In fact, we have seen preschool enrollment surged by over 200,000 children, four-year-old children over the course of President Obama's time in office. So we know that access is important for all. It's particularly important for our learners from low-income households, where we know that early education is the key to helping move this stubborn achievement gap that we wrestle with in the later grades into the elementary, middle, and high school. It gets us out of the catch-up business that we're often faced with in education reform in K-12. But we also know, and this is what today's conversation is really about, that getting quality is critical. Getting quality right is critical in this space. And what we know from the research is that the return on investment in early learning is contingent on quality environments. It's contingent on making sure that we are attending to well-prepared and qualified teachers in our preschool programs who are paid comparable to K-12 staff who have access to specialists that will help their children grow and learn, not only in early cognitive growth, but also in mental health and in other important supports. It's conditional on the importance of small class sizes and appropriate adult to child ratios. It's conditional on access to rigorous and research-based curriculum and effective teaching techniques to deliver that curriculum. It is critical and contingent on guaranteed access to comprehensive health services, comprehensive related services that help our children thrive. So we will not see the impact that we hope to see unless we are also doubling down on these quality investments. And it also means that we need to attend to the important tenets of equity in early learning, making sure that our children who may need the most help and support don't end up being those children who are ejected or suspended from programs because of their behavioral or social or emotional development. This is something we have focused on relative to some of our youngest boys and girls of color who are exponentially more likely to be suspended or expelled even in their preschool year. It means making sure that from an equity perspective we are including fully our children with developmental delays and disabilities in our preschool programs, that they are learning alongside their peers in the spirit of least a restrictive environment and that they are growing and thriving in our programs. And for our dual language learners, our learners who speak a language other than English at home who are now about one in three children in Head Start and one in five children in our school-aged population. It means making sure that we are developing their home language and valuing the asset of bilingualism alongside English, which research shows is the most effective path to their growth and development. So, you know, David noted earlier that one of the most important learnings today is that this is not a one-size-fits-all approach and that's critical. We know that states will take a tailored and appropriate plan to their needs in terms of improving quality, but we do know that the work of the four states featured today is about capturing these two sometimes competing goals of access and quality, right, that I know compete in state budgets, they compete in the implementation and administration of programs in real time. And we need to make the important statement that if we are serious about child outcomes, we must attend to scaling quality and to serving additional children. And we need to really maintain the integrity to both of those goals. That is a key learning, certainly for me, from this report. There are also a few important takeaways from the report in terms of the great work underway by these states that are profiled. Let me just mention them briefly. First, for me, the importance of comprehensive services and standards and the importance of supporting the whole child, the health, social, emotional development, physical development is as important as early cognitive development in literacy, science, numeracy, and elsewhere. We have to end any false dichotomy against that. I think we know our early learning standards demonstrate across the country that this is not an either or we need to be explicit as a both and in terms of our children's development. Second, we know that we can learn about how to grow our preschool access to our preschool programs and to high quality preschool programs in part from some of the lessons that we're learning from Head Start. Its structure, its emphasis on parent engagement, family engagement, parent partnership. And most recently, if you look at the Head Start field, the way that the Head Start field has stepped up throughout the last decade to grow the number of teachers with a bachelor's degree, even from 41% in 2007 to 73% in 2015. So we learn from the report Washington has modeled their preschool program on Head Start. I think there's a lot we can learn from Head Start to help grow an advanced high quality preschool. Third, the importance of ensuring that our children get a full day in a full year of early learning and support. The duration of our programs, the amount of time that our children spend engaged in high quality learning matters greatly. And research indicates that full day and full year programs in preschool are associated highly with greater gains in cognitive and social and emotional development in school readiness. We are undertaking efforts in our administration to look at growing access to Head Start for our Head Start children and families to full day, full year. We know that we need to maximize exposure to the benefits of high quality early learning if we are to glean what we need for our children. And so we're encouraged by what we've seen, places like North Carolina where all of their children participate in a full day preschool program, places like West Virginia that have done great work in terms of 93% of their classrooms being full day. And even Michigan where we have seen really wonderful growth over a short period of time, over two years, growing the share of kids that have access to full day from about a third to over 80%, which is really remarkable. Fourth, the importance of professional learning and growth and its importance to development of our early educators. So one of the ways each of our states highlighted their work to maintain and grow a high quality workforce in preschool is through coaching. And we're encouraged to learn more about that innovation, hear more about that from today's states. We know that that works in some of our high performing districts that are implementing preschool like Tulsa in Boston. And, you know, delivering data driven assistance and capacity for our teachers and coaching, measuring teaching practices, attaining to outcomes in the classroom and preschool is critical and critically important to this goal of quality for our learners. Fourth, I want to mention the compensation of the early education workforce and of our preschool teachers because it really matters greatly. We cannot divorce this conversation around quality of services from the compensation and working conditions that we provide our preschool teachers. And for too long, we have had two separate conversations about that. These are not two conversations. This is one unified objective for our programs. Yes, we have a lot of work to do to improve the skills and competencies of our preschool workforce, but we can't get there without also attending to commensurate compensation. So consider that nationally our preschool teachers earn 52 cents on every dollar earned by our teachers in the upper grades. And consider that the median income for our early care and education workforce prior to preschool for our infants and toddlers is around $20,000. That makes that workforce eligible for public benefits in every state. And consider the statement that that sends not just about how we value the workforce that cares for our youngest learners who are in many cases paid poverty wages that are insufficient for them to provide for their own families, but also consider the value that that places on teaching and learning for our youngest children during the most consequential period of their development and growth. So kudos to those states that have attended to compensation alongside professional growth and development for our preschool teachers and our early education workforce. It is critical. North Carolina has made some headway here through teach. That's an example for some other states. We know even more can be learned. We have to do better. And then finally we realize the importance of starting as early as possible. This is also something that David mentioned. You know, development doesn't start at four. And we know from all of the science that learning begins at birth. So we need to do better by our infants and toddlers who and really strengthen that end of the continuum as it leads into preschool as we also expand access to our three and four year olds to high quality preschool. And we have to recognize that those early years those first three years are not just about custodial care for mom and dad. They are about early learning. They are about teaching and development and growth for our children. So reports like this one that's that are released today are important for us to stop and reflect on this important work around quality. I want to just again return to the bigger point as well, which is that at the end of the day, we will not make the progress that we need as a nation around access to high quality early education without greater investments. You know, if we truly want all of our children to attain the incredible benefits of what we know are possible through high quality preschool, we have to as a country step up to the plate and be serious about making the investments that are needed to to expand this work. You know, and we have to build our systems in the states. We're really encouraged by some of the work already underway there to align and better coordinate services and supports. This is why our administration launched a race to the top early learning challenge several years ago that has now over across 20 states invested a billion dollars and has translated into 400,000 low income children receiving access to higher rated and higher quality care in those states. We have to do better there. We have to expand access to high quality early learning for all of our children. Too often still, a child zip code is a predeterminate of his or her access to high quality preschool. You know, and we still remain 28 out of 38 developed nations internationally relative to access to high quality preschool for our youngest learners. That is unconscionable. We have to do better if we're going to be successful moving forward. So this is the spirit by which the president announced his preschool for all plan, a federal state partnership. And it is a bold investment. It is $75 billion proposed over 10 years. Incidentally, which could all be fully funded with a tax of a little less than $2 on every pack of cigarettes. But research tells us that if we're going to be successful here, we have to be serious about making a federal investment in supporting and partnering with states in earnest as they expand access to high quality preschool and as they attend to these important tenants around quality. We're pleased about the strong start for America's Children Act by Senator Murray and Representative Scott and Hannah in the House that has picked up the tenants of the president's plan and proposed moving them forward. We're pleased with the tremendous support in Congress for the preschool development grant program, which is a down payment on that important preschool for all plan and is now developing and expanding preschool capacity in 18 states for over 33,000 children around the country. We need to do more to continue that investment, particularly on the heels of the Every Student Succeeds Act. And we're particularly hopeful about the increased need for investments, not only in preschool, but also for our younger learners on the earlier side of that continuum. We know that the quality of teaching, learning and care for the 11 million children that are currently in our child care system is not where it needs to be. And so in order for our early education to produce the outcomes I mentioned, we also know that system has to produce high quality outcomes for children. And this is also why the president has advanced a landmark child care proposal to make high quality, affordable child care available to all working families with children under the age of four. And by infusing additional dollars in that system over the next 10 years, by expanding that system to an additional 1 million children, by doubling the average child care subsidy and raising the compensation for our child care workforce, we know that we can make progress there. So we're also tremendously hopeful and appreciative of the leadership of Senator Casey, a coalition of senators and the senators in the Senate, and Congressman Crowley and Congresswoman Frankel in the House, who have introduced the Child Care Act to operationalize and make good on the president's child care guarantee proposal. And these are big proposals. These are big ideas for how we move our country forward in terms of early care and education. But there are such necessary investments if we're going to be serious about improving opportunities and outcomes for all of our children. We also know that we can't go it alone. This is why our administration at the White House has convened public and private partners, our state leaders, our local leaders to come together to expand access to high quality early education, as we did in 2014 with the White House Summit for Early Education, to mark a $1 billion investment and to applaud the leadership while we're seeing in action in Congress on these important proposals, to applaud the leadership at the state and local level in terms of making greater gains on supporting high quality early childhood education. So I'm hopeful that we'll continue to see headway in the coming years. I'd like to just wrap up by saying we are not slowing down. You know, we have over 200 days left and each and every day we are going to work to reverse this trend in our administration to make sure that we move from 27th backup to the top in terms of our developed nations and access to high quality early education. And we're going to work on that each and every day until the last day in office. We need your help. We need your partnership in that effort. We know many of you lead this work in your respective states and communities. And we need you more than ever today to be engaged in this fight. So we've made incredible progress. We're really pleased with the tremendous leadership and progress thanks to the leadership of our state and local leaders. And we have a lot more work to do. But I am really confident that we can get there. We can one day see a day where every child gets the early start they need to truly thrive and meet their full potential through high quality early education. So without further ado, I'll go ahead and hand the program back to David. And I'm eager to hear more about the findings from our panelists. Thank you.