 So I'm offering one and welcome to today's webinar presented by the Learning Policy Institute, New America Education Policy Initiative at the University of Michigan. I am Hannah Melnick, Senior Policy Advisor at the Learning Policy Institute where I co-lead our early learning team. We're really excited to be here with you today. And before we kick off our webinar, I'd like to start with some housekeeping. Everyone, except for our presenters, has been muted. We'll take questions through the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. If you may write in your questions at any time throughout today's webinar, if you'd like to engage in discussion, please use the chat button at the bottom of your screen. And if you have any technical difficulties, please call Zoom support. This webinar is being recorded. The video recording will be emailed to you in a few days. The slides are currently available in the link in the chat box. For today's one hour, we have a very packed agenda. We're going to start with a welcome from Linda Darling-Hammond. We'll move to opening remarks from members of Congress and the administration. I'll give a brief presentation on the current ECU and landscape. And in the bulk of our time today will be spent in panel discussion and Q&A before closing out. To kick us off, I'd like to introduce Linda Darling-Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. Thank you so much, Hannah. It is a pleasure to be here. What a wonderful topic for us this morning. Thanks to all who are joining us today and our co-hosts, New America and Education Policy Institute at the University of Michigan. We're here today to talk about a critical topic, how to assure that all students, all children have access to high quality early learning and their way to becoming students. Research shows that nurturing early experiences are crucial for brain development, for learning, and for the ability to form relationships. Research also shows that gaps in access to early childhood education, which are opportunity gaps, turn into achievement gaps by the time children enter school. This moment has been a crisis for childcare. Despite the clear benefits of early care and education as a nation, we have not made the investments in building a system that provides those resources for our young children. During pre-pandemic, affordable early care and education were scarce. Only 54% of three and four year olds in the United States participate in any preschool. Parents struggle to find care. Over half of the people in the United States live in what the Center for American Progress deems a childcare desert. As programs existed, staff have been far underpaid given their qualifications and the importance of their job. We all know that early childhood caregivers are often having to access government assistance in order to survive on the wages that they receive. Parents have struggled to make ends meet with what parents can afford to pay. During the pandemic, the status quo became absolutely untenable. According to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, we lost 20% of our early learning workforce in just the first six months of the pandemic. We are in a situation where for many providers with all of the extra costs of cleaning supplies and the other costs of creating a safe environment in the pandemic, that early learning programs were no longer financially viable. 56% of providers surveyed by the National Association of Education for Young Children in December said they were losing money every day. As a result, families, particularly women, have been giving up their jobs to care for their young children. Most importantly, young children are losing critical opportunities to learn. This has struck dramatically during the pandemic, and this was especially true for children from families with very low incomes, who most need the resources that early care and learning provide. President Biden's administration has been very responsive to these needs. In just over a year, Congress appropriated over $50 billion in recovery funds for childcare and early learning, and this includes $39 billion in the American Rescue Act. The federal investments in early childhood totaled less than $20 billion in 2020. This response is truly historic. It has more than doubled the federal investment. It will be used to increase access for families, compensation for educators, and the supply of childcare. We're here today because we cannot stop at this rescue package. We have an opportunity now to build a system that is better designed, in which the complex array of programs and funding streams are integrated in a more coherent way, a system in which educators are better prepared and better supported, a system that is easier for families to navigate, and one that reflects what we know from the science of learning and development about what children need. We're honored to be joined today by three amazing leaders who are committed to expanding federal support for early childhood education and are helping us to chart a path forward. We'll start with remarks from Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, a dear friend and chair of the Appropriations Committee. She has championed early childhood education in Congress. She's been a longtime advocate for children and families, and she played a key role in getting the rescue package enacted, and no doubt will do so for the American Families Act as well. Congresswoman DeLauro. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro representing Connecticut's third congressional district. Thank you, Linda, for that warm introduction and for your work as president and CEO at the Learning Policy Institute. Now more than ever, the work you and all of the members of the Learning Policy Institute do is critical in helping to inform smart policy decisions with evidence that reflects the real world experiences of our educators, students, and families. During the pandemic, over 2.3 million women left the workforce, and even more women and women of color are working part-time because they cannot find full-time jobs. These women are not opting out of the workforce. They are being pushed out by inadequate policies. Part of that has to do with a lack of childcare. As chair of the Appropriations Committee, I am proud that we have been central to our response to this pandemic and provided much-needed funding to deal with the crisis, providing $3.5 billion for childcare in the CARES Act. We also delivered on that transformational $1.9 trillion package, the American Rescue Plan, which provided nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to stabilize and childcare centers at risk of closing, and an additional $15 billion in childcare aid for struggling families through the Child Care and Development Block Grant. But it is not enough. So I am pleased that the President's budget for next year requests long overdue investments like $19.8 billion for early care and for education programs, almost $12 billion for Head Start, and $7.4 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Today is a new dawn. We have the opportunity to build the architecture for the future and use this as a moment to invest in childcare as a public good and address inequities and provide a lifeline for the middle class while lifting millions of children and families out of poverty. Thank you. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Deloro. And I'm delighted now to introduce Heather Boushi, who will describe a historic proposal from the Biden administration, the American Families Plan. She is a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. She's long focused on economic inequality, employment and family well-being. She's bringing that expertise to the White House. And she'll help us understand the administration's proposals, which he's had a hand in crafting and what they will mean for young children. Thank you so much, Heather. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Linda. And thank you all for the opportunity to talk to you at this national early care and education event. I just, it can not be more of an honor to be introduced by Linda and to follow Congresswoman Deloro. I'm so happy to be with here with so many of you who work tirelessly tirelessly on this issue for so many years. You know, the last year and a half with the pandemic was just underscored in so many ways, just how critical our care economy is. It is unveiled for everyone that care is the foundation of our economy. When children don't have a place to go, parents can't get to work. It's just that simple. And it's not just about housing kids in any kind of care. It's about making sure that we're making that investment in the next generation in a high quality, early learning experiences and making sure that the childcare that families are using is of the highest quality, because that's educational as well. And that's why the Biden administration has put forward the American Families Plan, as well as the jobs plan, the American Jobs Plan. Together, these two packages are significant investment in our nation's infrastructure in all of our infrastructure, the physical infrastructure and the human infrastructure. The core idea behind the American Families Plan is the greater investment in children and young adults who are in the future yield a larger, healthier, more productive workforce. This is about the workforce of the, you know, the decades to come. How do we make those investments to make sure that the United States remains economically competitive and has a highly talented, highly skilled workforce that can drive our economy forward. And we know that when the public sector doesn't make those investments in education, just as when it doesn't invest in physical infrastructure, the private sector doesn't have that strong foundation upon which the rest of the economy sits. And while those investments are economies and our society are left with less skilled workers that the private sector can hire into good paying jobs with fewer innovators that can make those inventions that are going to drive the economy forward and we have fewer entrepreneurs. So that is why the investments in the American Families Plan are so important, and they're obviously also important to America's families. This includes investing in America's children by funding universal high quality preschool, eventually getting to every single three and four year old all across the country. It also provides direct support to families by making permanent for the next few years, the rescue plans expansion of the child tax credit which is already helping families, and will be soon helping families all across the United States. And of course, another element of the families plan is to create a comprehensive universal paid family medical leave program so that when workers need to be at home with their loved ones, because they have a child or someone is seriously ill, they're able to do that and not lose much needed income, because that's a critical piece of the puzzle as well. Getting children access to better care services is good for kids and it's good for families and it's good for the economy. There's a lot of education for that child and that can help close achievement gaps across children and across different communities. It can help parents do their jobs effectively knowing that their children are being well educated and well cared for makes those workers more productive, and that, you know, makes our economy more productive. And, you know, of course, these investments that we make today in America's children are going to drive our economy down the road. So nothing could be more important than the kinds of issues that you all are going to talk about today and the work that you all have been doing. So I hope that you're as excited about the families plan as I am, and I hope that we continue to engage on how we can make it better and how we can make sure that it becomes the law of the land. So thank you so much for your time and back to you Linda. Thank you. Thank you so much, Heather and thanks for all the work that you are putting in into making sure that this becomes a reality in our country. And now I'm going to introduce a Senator Patty Murray, who is ranking member of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. She has recently reintroduced the Child Care for Working Families Act, and she was gracious enough to record remarks for our event today. We so appreciate the Senator's long-term efforts on behalf of our children. Senator Patty Murray. Hi everyone. I'm Senator Patty Murray. I want to start by thanking everyone at LPI, New America, and the team behind Cradle to Kindergarten for your advocacy and research on this important issue. Your hard work is so critical because right now working parents across the country and in particular women of color are struggling to find or afford child care. Too many child care workers can't make ends meet because they make poverty wages, and children are not getting the early education that can help them thrive. To me, it's clear. We need child care infrastructure in this country. That's why I introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act to establish a child care and early learning infrastructure that ensures working families can find and afford child care. That workers get the pay that they deserve, and children can get an early education that they need to thrive. This is not only the right thing to do for working families, but it's a smart investment in our children, our future, and our economy. And I'm fighting hard to get it across the finish line. So thank you again for your incredible work on this important issue, and know you will always have a proud partner in me in the Senate. Great. Thank you so much to Senator Paddy Murray, to Representative DeLauro, to Heather Boushey, and to Linda for your opening remarks. Again, I'm Hannah Melnick, Senior Policy Advisor at the Learning Policy Institute. I'm going to talk a little bit now about the early learning landscape what our system is before the panel picks up on next steps for federal policy. So the vision, as we heard a bit from our opening speakers about is that all children were through elementary school have access to affordable, integrated, and inclusive programs that offer high quality learning experiences with a workforce that is well qualified and well supported. And that's part of a system that is coherent and easily navigated for families and providers. The reality is that we are far from this vision. Instead, we have a patchwork of underfunded programs. These programs are overseen by multiple agencies, starting at the federal level with the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. And that complexity is then passed down to state and local administrators and ultimately to providers and the families who have to make sense of the web of funding and requirements. Each program in this graphic, they're the colored lines represents, has their own income eligibility requirements, their own quality standards. And some programs that you're going to hear from a family childcare provider later today from Josie are trying to blend and raise these funding streams to make a more cohesive experience for children and families, but our regulations make it very challenging. So I'm going to play a clip from Lily Marcus, a parent who spoke last month at parent voices California webinar to illustrate the impact of this system on parents and want to thank Lily for sharing this video. Six years ago, I was a full time working professional in higher education. And I did that for 10 years. I was blessed to become a mother of six of a mother six years ago to a boy and I was able to work part time, even after my maternity leave. Everything was great. Until I became pregnant with my second child which was not planned. But it was a blessing. Unfortunately for me, my job valued me so much that I had a lot of flexibility with my work schedule. But even still, I couldn't work without childcare for my daughter. I wasn't able to find care for my two babies. So I made the hard life decision to give up my career. I gave my notice to quit my job, I sold my home, I moved to another city. And I even moved in with my husband's family to make ends meet. The lack of affordable accessible and available childcare was a reason for me becoming a stay at home mom. Imagine having to sell your home, move to a new city and share a two bedroom home with two disabled elderly family members and two babies. The stress of our living situation started to impact my mental health. If only childcare had been available and affordable. We could have avoided making the sacrifices. I just want to thank Lily for sharing that story, which is unfortunately far too common and resonates with many of us who are parents. So many families lack access to care. That's one of the challenges that we're dealing with in our system. And, for example, just 17% of eligible children have access to the subsidies that can make childcare affordable. And Lily is still on the waiting list for those subsidies. Programs are also segregated. This is a problem because research shows that children benefit from learning in socioeconomically and racially culturally diverse settings. Yeah, we sort children into programs by their families income. For example, those families with the children with the families who have the lowest incomes are eligible for head start programs. Families who can afford the exorbitant cost of childcare are in private programs and so on. And not surprisingly, early childhood programs are also twice as likely to be nearly 100% black or Hispanic as a first grade classroom, despite the fact that we know our K-12 system is also far too segregated. Again, when children have access, the program of the quality they get in their subsidized program varies widely. Just as one example, a four-year-old child in California might go to a state preschool program or a head start program. In the state preschool program, the teacher might is required to have just a few college credits and has an 8 to 1 ratio. And in the head start program, that same child might have a teacher who has a bachelor's degree in early childhood and have a 10 to 1 ratio. It's not equitable and it doesn't make sense. And finally, so importantly, we are unsupporting our educators. So educators who are disproportionately women of color get little to no professional development, they're chronically underpaid, and this leads to inequity, is not just inequitable, but it leads to rapid turnover, which is a problem for providing quality care. I'm going to show a chart that briefly illustrates this problem. This shows two things. First of all, our preschool teachers and childcare workers are grossly underpaid. And then second, there's this discontinuity where a child turns from four to five and goes to kindergarten and suddenly their teacher is compensated at a completely different level. It doesn't make sense again, and even this is also within a field of education that is overall underpaid. So what is the path forward? The Learning Policy Institute, our partners at New America and the authors of Cradle to Kindergarten have all developed complimentary recommendations for a path forward towards the vision that we laid out earlier. We all agree that there needs to be federal support for early childhood, significant federal support for childcare where the federal government already plays the lead role, but also federal support to state to expand upon the progress that they're already making towards universal preschool. What I hope that you take away from our panel is that what we don't need is yet another new program to add to the tangle we saw earlier. Instead, we need programs that are going to be high quality. And that's for all children, no matter how they access the system. Programs that are integrated socioeconomically, linguistically and racially. And this means allowing families to access programs, no matter their family income, whether you through universal programs or sliding C scale. Programs that are inclusive of children with special needs. The children can access care in the environment that is right for them and have services from birth through the early elementary years that are going to be seen less. We want to ensure that programs are easily navigated so that parents like Lily who currently have to go from place to place to figure out what they can access and what they're eligible for have a better experience. And finally, this is all going to require that programs be coordinated, and that starts at the federal level, and I believe that AJ and Miriam will speak to that on our panel. So now we're going to turn to our panel discussion, which where our panelists will speak to some of the challenges and what that looks like at the provider and the state level, and then what federal policymakers will need to keep in mind when developing a new system. So I'd like to introduce Laura born friend, director of the early and elementary education program at new America or co host for this webinar. And Laura will introduce our other panel. Thank you, Hannah. And thank you to the other insightful speakers we've heard from. And thank you to our audience joining us today in the report that Hannah reference supporting early learning in America policies for a new decade. We embedded in our recommendations themes of prioritizing equity, focusing on local child and building stronger connections between systems that address children's learning and development and family well being. The federal government plays an important role in encouraging and enabling states and local communities to enact policies and practices in those areas. And in our report we also specifically called on the federal government to promote efficiency and coordination to improve child outcomes across the B to eight birth to eight continuum. Emphasize continuous improvement and ensure predictable, sustainable and increased funding. While our new America team published our recommendations for the new decade pre pandemic, they're perhaps even more important now, as we think about how to take hold of this time of crisis and reimagine a new bolder vision for early childhood education. And during this last year, we know too many families and early care and education providers and educators have been harmed by the fragility inadequacies and inequities of our existing policies and system. As Hannah said in her remarks to create an easy system that works for children, families and providers it must be one that is integrated inclusive high quality coordinated aligned and easily navigable. I now have the privilege of moderating and discussion about what we need to get us there. Thank you to our esteemed panel for joining us today. First, we have Miriam Cateron, deputy assistant secretary for early learning at the US Department of Education welcome Miriam. Next, AJ Chaudhury, professor at New York University and former deputy assistant secretary for human services policy at the US Department of Health and Human Services. Josie Emrick, the owner and operator of loving beings, childcare, loving beginnings, excuse me, childcare and preschool and Christina Weiland associate professor at the University of Michigan. Welcome, and you can read more about them at the link in the chat. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here and Chris. Let's get started with you and start with a question about quality. For years you've studied what high quality early learning looks like. Can you tell us about the most important components to support an early childhood education program. Great question. So we always want to ensure not just access, but also access to really high quality programs. So there are many active ingredients that go into a high quality program for young children. So I will focus on kind of the big three. So one of those is the teacher is at the center. Right. So that's really our most important ingredient in the classroom is the teacher. That's the person who's going to deliver on the high quality instruction and interactions. They're going to build young brains and get kids ready to thrive beyond the link to the program. And what we need to do to actually support our teachers is to pay them well. As you saw from Hannah slide, we are woefully underpaying our early educators, which is leading them to be much more stressed than they need to be and then impacting the quality of the care in the classroom. So they need to be compensated, paid fairly. And in addition to that, we need to ensure that they have access to high quality professional development. Now the most proven version of that that we have is in classroom coaching, in which there's a supportive mentor teacher who helps the teacher target anything in the classroom that he or she is struggling with. And that needs to be paired to with high quality early childhood curricula that are based on what we know about the scope and sequence in which young children learn play based intentional interactions are pretty much universally acknowledged across the field is really important for supporting young children's development and getting them ready to school. And so, you know, encouragingly those sort of big three around paying our teachers well, supporting them well through professional development like coaching and then having proven high quality curricula are actually the big three that you see in the Biden preschool program. Thank you, Chris. So, Josie, you have blended and braided different funding streams in your family child care program. Can you tell us what it takes to meet the high level of quality that that Chris has described with public dollars. Well, first of all, I started working with the different programs because I was trying to to provide a continuity of care for families. And that was not happening because parents were not able to pay privately for the kind of care that they needed. And so I started working with the early head start child care partnership, which was really helpful. I had access to a lot more resources through that program specialist coaching a lot of the things that that the speaker was just talking about. And, but what was happening was, was children were aging out of the program and then they couldn't find care after they left because the program is zero to three. And so children then would not be able to find an alternative placement and they were in a child care desert. So they couldn't find anything and they couldn't afford private child care. So then I started a partnership with the state funded preschool promise program. And, and that was wonderful. I was able to provide services for kids from early head start all the way through the time that they needed to go to kindergarten. One was, is that the paperwork and the rules and requirements between all the different programs became overwhelming. And I almost needed to hire a person just to do paperwork and be administration. I didn't want to be an administrator that's not why I came into this I have a master's degree in early childhood inclusive education. And I wanted to be with kids, but I was finding myself like sitting in the office, doing paperwork all the time and, and spending nights and weekends and doing all to meet all of the requirements and both, both programs. I was also on the receiving subsidies for childcare related date, employment related childcare subsidies. And so that's a whole nother contract that I had to deal with. And it was too much. I loved the resources. It was amazing to have the coaches and the mentors and I got pay increases. So for the first time I had access to pay time off, which was amazing. But I was so burnt out. And I, I couldn't continue on like that. So I ended up letting go of my early head start contract this last winter. And it just became too much of a challenge for me to be able to work with all of the programs. And I was heartbreaking because I had been working with these children for a long time. And, and I really enjoyed having birth through kindergarten. So it's, it's a lot to have to manage different programs. And if the services were more integrated, it would certainly have allowed me to continue on with all of the programs and be able to serve families in a more cohesive way. Thank you, Jesse for providing that real world example about the challenges of, you know, doing this blending and braiding at the program at the program level. And yeah, that sounds really daunting. Miriam, you've had experience with public dollars and provide, you know, providing early childhood education as well at both the public school level in DC and most recently in Oregon. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges at the state and local levels and ensuring high quality early learning with federal dollars and, you know, just reflect on also what what can be easier. Sure. Thanks, Laura. First, I just want to thank LPI in New America for including me. I'm in this conversation. I am just really excited to bring everything that I've learned from my experiences as an administrator, especially at the state level in these past 15 months to my new role at the department at a time as Dr. Boucher talked about when the president is called for such transformational investments in early learning. You know, I think what I found most challenging is, I think as Josie was talking about is like what all of those different funding streams really mean is that they kind of perpetuate these consistent inequities in our field that show up for children, families and providers, for example, you know, sometimes families, you know, when you're sitting here looking at all these funding streams, sometimes that means families pay copays and sometimes they don't for the same services. Sometimes, you know, it means children experience different environments have different experiences and programs that means families on the ground mean they have different ways of enrolling in the programs. So educators have different work conditions, different compensation levels that are kind of entirely different driven, not just by whether a program has private is entirely private pay but baked into, you know, different public funding streams right because of differences in the way we reimburse and how we set reimbursement levels. So, you know, I think that we just have this huge opportunity with the size and scale of the investments that the administration and the president is calling for in the American families plan to, I think, transform the way we finance birth to five systems and states, and finally really kind of build in that coherent that equity and kind of coherence across all of the different funding strengths so I do think that this is a moment not to just think about additional funding streams but really how do we you know bring that kind of equity across all of the current and existing funding streams with the size and scale I really do think this is a moment. Thank you, Mary, I'm AJ I want to talk to you about so we know we have these complex disconnected systems we've had them for a really long time now. How can federal agencies work together to really bring more coherence to all of these different programs and bring that coherence to the at the state level as well. Great question. Thanks Laura. I do want to step back in his first I can just say how important it is to understand what we have now that's going to serve as our foundation to build on, and why we have the mix of programs that we do and to what degree is that productive, and how do we make them fit together. Every kindergarten landscape, as you've been hearing, you know, especially from how Lily described it is complex, and there is not nor could there be one best system that for meeting the care development education needs in the first five years. You know, we're trying to meet a range of child development goals, families context very so much. When families want care and education they wanted to occur in homes as well as centers, and they want fluidity across the years. As most of the audience knows, but it's good to emphasize we have several largely separate components pieces in early care and education, each of which is really small right now in scale relative to the service needs of American children so as Hannah pointed out and Lily said, you know, Lily is in the majority, you know, 83% of people who are eligible do not get childcare assistance. And we have, you know, we, I think it's also important to mention the Head Start program so Head Start funding from the federal government goes directly from the federal government to program grantees. And as focused on supporting the development and learning opportunities for young children from disadvantaged families and communities, and includes both early learning and a comprehensive health and social services support so that's one purpose and goal. Childcare subsidies, you know, flow through block grant funding to states, and it's focused largely on parental employment of very low income families when it came into scale in about the 1990s. It's a cap funding that provides minuscule support relative to the children and family who needed it's narrowly targeted, very few get served and those who do get low cost care that cannot support quality and education. Pre school was independently created at the state level, and local level and also in the 1990s and mostly, most of what we have was built between 1995 and 2005 and it's really been kind of stagnant in most places not all places since then. And then special education. It's also underfunded so special education which provides early intervention special education services for children birth to five. You know only reaches about three to 5% of all kids in the country, while it's estimated the 10 to 14% so all I think the important thing to, to realize is that all of these are so small relative to what's, what, what, what, what's needed. So, it's going to take a lot of coordinate is first of all the most important thing is growing them and building them. So these programs are actually shrinking one is not replacing the other we're not going from four programs to one. There is a lot that is valuable but as I said, each one meets different needs but we really have to bring them together and it's really going to have to be the federal government that does that, because the resources to support the kind of infrastructure that we need to go from, you know, serving just this number of kids to serving that number of kids requires increasing headstart increasing childcare increasing preschool and improving special education. So if you're a cradle to kindergarten recommend that we remake headstart to be a birth to five program that serves at least as many one year olds as it does three year olds and provides the comprehensive developmental services that were needed when it was created and are needed at a much earlier age a headstart start sooner now that subsidies become an assurance they move from a block grant to an entitlement that they are an insurance of both access affordability and quality to all working families who are eligible through the middle schools who can't afford this and that preschool serves all kids and children three to four and with assist with payment levels that support both high quality and the investments that we need in, in coaching and curriculum that that. And so from my standpoint what you need to do in terms of making the system come together is at the federal level is. This is huge this is if what we what's proposed in the American families plan was to become law or a large part of it was to become law. It's the Marshall plan moment for early care and education that we have been waiting for for decades. It's going to mean taking things and growing them by scales of three to four within a few years and but remember this federal government doesn't implement any of this. I mean except for headstart. It all has to then be coordinated at the state level and fit into that like crazy. Plumbing structure that that that handle laid out. So what we're going to need at the federal level is. And both the US Department of Education and the US Department of Health and Human Services play important roles. You know two of the funding streams I just mentioned flow out of one and two flow out of the other. And they both connect to a lot of other services like early ESE a you know elementary school and education and TANF and other programs. So both are going to be needed. What I have said is the first priority at the federal level is that we're really going to need and I hate this word on ECE czar White House leadership that really says you know we're going to be we're going to be increasing early care and education from almost little to a lot to everybody. So in the next few years, that is on the scale of what we had to do with the ACA and in fact it's it's it starts from a much lower base than what we had to do with the ACA the Affordable Care Act, which I think. And, and it crosses multiple crosses multiple agencies. So I think that's going to be really essential. In the Obama administration we had created an interdependent interdependent environmental government organization because you do also have to include treasury and labor because we're going to be adding 2 million jobs from others through this initiative, and we're going to be adding the size of the early care and education workforce. So, so I think that's important. There's a whole other question about how this then leads to governance at the state level, but I've already gone on so I'll stop there. Thanks, AJ, and we can come back to more on on about the state level and how what the federal government can can do to help, you know, really bring that coherence at the state level but there wasn't a question that came in from the audience that I want to jump into and I think that this brings up a really important point is that where do, where does support for home based providers, family child care providers come come in because they are this question notes that, you know, So that says that so they're not left behind and I think, you know, sometimes they're family child care providers much like kindergarten and first grade are often overlooked in some different ways and so, you know, how do we make sure that they're included and meet the, you know, sometimes unique needs that family child care providers have and, you know, I'm curious to get all of your perspectives on that and and Josie as well. Josie, if you're talking you're you're on mute. Give me a second. Hi. I'm not sure if you guys can hear me. I lost connection for a second. I'm sorry. I did not touch that whole question I was trying to reconnect. No worries so let me just repeat it real quick. Really it was about federal support and how do we make sure that family child care providers aren't left behind what what's needed at the federal level to better support family child care providers. I would like to see a lot more family engagement or family prior childcare provider engagement right now it seems like we're not being part of the conversation. And I think it would be really nice for people to start asking and engaging with providers and finding out what we need our needs are completely different than people that are working in centers. So I think that we're really engaging with the providers that are doing the work. Thanks Josie. Anyone else want to jump in? Yeah, I can I can jump in and share a few thoughts. I mean, I think that we have a lot of people that are working with the family child care providers. I think that we have a very strong, I'm coming from Oregon where we had a very strong family child care sector as part of our mixed delivery system they participated in private, you know, as part of our state preschool program. I think as Josie talked about, and, you know, we're about 20% of the mixed delivery system of our state preschool program so I do think that, you know, it took, although it did take a lot of intensive care. to really be able to make that happen. You know, it took at the state level, being very intentional about the grant award process, transparency, doing grant award applications, you know, to really be able to make that happen. You know, it took at the state level, being very intentional about the grant award process, transparency, doing grant award applications in multiple languages, thinking about grant review committees. So that's just sort of just the tip of the iceberg thinking about what how professional development is delivered thinking about networks. I mean my experience though is that quality and standards and all of that can be just as as robust and family child care. So I just think, you know, we need to, you know, think about the way it is supported, and how that looks different, and think about and challenge some of the ways in which, you know, our award processes and our competitive grant processes need to be effective and tailor to the family child care context and process because they are not, you know, large organizations with sort of infrastructure, and some of those pieces but so I think you just have to be intentional about it but I think it is, I think it is really important. And we also were, well I'll stop there in the interest of time and we need to move on but I, you know, and recently in looking at some broader data, I think most states are moving in general in a direction to think about family child care at least as part of preschool systems and we know they play already a big role in, in, in subsidy, so. Yeah. I think, I think given over the last year we've, that's become even, even more, you know, present the important role of that family child care plays. All right, so in the interest of time, I'm going to ask two questions for that build on each other. First part for Miriam, second part for Chris, so Miriam, what can the federal government do to help states bring universal programs to scale, even where they are now, and then Chris I'd love for you to just talk briefly about the research that really backs that to a universal approach. Sure. I think I'll sort of say, I think two things here. One is, I think it's time to sort of for us to shift and thinking about answering this question of, will it be a mixed delivery system, I mean I think we're moving towards, you know, we, we are, we're, we're, we've learned coming out and it is a care and education system. I think AJ said this so elegantly, you know, we are moving towards their two purposes right this is the purpose of children's learning and development and supporting families and women going back to work. These purposes come together around, and they are equally upheld and important as we build these birth to five birth to eight systems right for children because we've all learned after COVID that K 12 helps families work as well right some of us and have known and understood that for a long time so within that context it is a mixed delivery system so we need to stop asking will it be a mixed delivery system and we need to start thinking about how we're going to build infrastructure and what can we do to build infrastructure to support consistent quality across a mixed delivery system to my point earlier, what it looks like to support quality in a family childcare environment look might look different than centers will look different than schools, the all have different challenges as AJ talked about from getting to here to right in terms of being able to meet the quality standards that Chris talked about. So I think that is part of it well, how do we build common enrollment system so that families aren't braving the market of multiple wait lists and different ways to to find and sign up so these things workforce systems workforce development systems PD systems that support a mixed delivery system and birth to five so I think that's some of what we need to start to coordinate. Again across all those funding streams that AJ talked about so shift the thing it's no longer will it be mixed delivery is how do we build capacity in states in communities to be able to support consistent quality and deliver integrated services in a mixed delivery system and I think the second thing is how you scale is especially thinking about equity is be able to help states focus on high need communities and scale programs. focused on high need communities first and being able to integrate all of those funding streams. We're not going to put all of those funding streams together but how can you integrate and align those funding streams focused on high need communities first and let states and communities identify those and build programs that way as we go from here to here as AJ talked about. And picking up the second part of your question Laura about the research behind the universality approach so you know we know that all kids benefit from universal pre K, no matter what their demographic characteristics are we can see this across the literature and we see that some kids do benefit more so children from families with no income dual language learners and children with special needs especially benefit. And we also know that when we do segregate kids by income as Hannah touched on earlier, they learn less they still learn but they learn less than they do in the universal program. So there's a lot of kinds of approaches that Miriam talking about where we try to get to universal access to high quality care and education zero to five and start with those duties where, you know, we have higher concentrations of those who can benefit most makes a lot of sense from a research and a practical perspective. So we don't have a lot to say right on zero to three universal side and that's because well we really haven't tried it in this country right so we need a lot more investment and research on that in because we know that most infants, all the adults in their, their household pre pandemic, we're working right and so there is a tremendous need for high quality care across the income sector. Thank you. All right, coming, coming back to you so assuming that federal funding is really in place to pay for universal access to pay for the quality. Early childhood education we need what should governance really look like at the federal level to ensure alignment from birth through the early elementary years. And what are your thoughts on how we could could get there. So I think this picks up from what I was saying before so I think in addition to having national leadership, I mean national leadership, administration leadership from from within the White House to move this forward in a robust way quickly. So we're going to need both the Department of Education and Health and Human Services to play, continue to play leading roles and this going to really make intergovernmental work important. But like we said there's going to be labor standards there's going to be increased pay compensation, there's going to be childcare tax childcare tax credits which we haven't talked about but which are super robust and serve even more families than the, than the assurance would. And to make that all that work you'll continue to need an intergovernmental force, intergovernmental policy agency, again reporting to the czar for the period in which I don't think you need a czar forever, I think for three to five years to get this gophing and get this on the ground you do. But I do think and I do want to say the bigger challenge is at the state level right the federal government sets the parameters and provides, and will have to provide the lion share of this funding states. Otherwise, we're going to have an even more patchwork system than we do now if it's not mostly federal. And so, at the state level, I'm more, we did a lot of work, Chris, while and Taryn Morsi and other of our co authors and I, over the last five years working with states, including the state of Oregon, and the state of Colorado, and all the states, as they're getting ready for this moment, or as they wanted to be in this moment, if it was to occur, have really come to the conclusion, I think the ones that have really thought about it, that you're going to have to have a single governance structure. So Colorado has a bill right now that's being debated supported by the governor to create a single cabinet level agency for all early care and education. And that exists within the Department of Education in a similar way, though there's still things being done in Oregon to support that being even more integrated. But I think that in order to make these, these resources work coming down from federal government at least pre school and childcare need to be integrated at the state level. So that's going to be controversial. And it's not going to be easy. But if you're not going to do it when you're here, you're never going to get there, you're never going to get to hear in a good cohesive way. That's sort of because in the plan as we lay out in cradle to kindergarten, as I see in the president's plan, you know, more than half the kids who get preschool assistance or preschool enrollment are also receiving childcare for the summers and the weekends that has to be that has to obviously half of them will be in community based programs, half of them will be in schools. That's, you know, all making all of that work is going to require integration. And I guess, you know, really joint leadership and it really should be a standalone birth to five agency that reports directly to the governor is my sense. Anyone else want to weigh in. I want to come back to you. If you, if you had an elevator ride with a member of Congress, what would you tell them is most needed from your perspective for a strong EC system. So, from my experience and education, the thing that I know is that we can't achieve full inclusion without supporting the people that are doing the work. We can increase investments in rates, wages to produce ratios, funds, mentors and coaches, robust funding of early intervention and early childhood special ed, so they can help us in our program. And while I appreciate being invited today, I am only one voice, and I'm certainly not representative to all those working in early childhood care and education. I'm not going to ask us to the conversation, but anyone who chooses the career of early childhood is undervalued under resourced and underpaid. We need to be paid well. We need to have access to mental health for ourselves and the children we work with medical dental time off access to substitutes and transparent systems. I don't know if you guys can still hear me. Okay, transparent systems that come alongside us and work for us, not against us. It's a system that's currently running on the love and passion of people like me, and that's not enough to sustain it. Thank you. Thank you, Josie. Josie. Miriam, you get the last word. What are some steps you want to take next to get to the federal vision. Well, I, I think, as AJ said, I'm really excited to build back and build back in a durable way, the, the, you know, the, the connection and the strategy and the presence of early childhood education within the Department of Education that Secretary has really strong values that align with early learning, centering families, communities, equity. We have spent has been talked about today and incredible vision and focus on early learning out of this administration. So, I think that work to, you know, coordinate across higher ed across office of special education programs and early intervention early childhood special education I think there are significant equities in the department. The title programs and discretionary grant programs and elementary and secondary ed, you know, title one, this budget calling for significant advancements and title one equity grants. There is so much within the department. I think that can be leveraged to support early childhood systems and states and communities. So, focusing on that and the work with, with the Department of Health and Human Services is, is I think a huge priority for myself as secretary, I think is needed at this moment so I really see that as as an important part of my role right until you know this our arrives. I think the field needs us to to really be not just, you know, coordinating and collaborating around program administration which has been happening and has continued to happen, even across the past four years and my gratitude to the career civil service staff at the department who have really kept that going in a really important way but I think that, you know, the policy coordination is is needs to needs to be brought back and elevated and I think especially as well the the work around the early grades if we achieve this vision kindergarten and first grade needs to look different. So, I think that's an important, important part of as well of what the, the Department of Education can bring to the table. So, thanks Maryam and I, I wholeheartedly agree. Well thanks to all of you, and I will turn it over to Hannah to close this out. Great. Thank you so much to all of our presenters and panelists today. We started today considering the crisis or early childhood skills within and what that meant for families, but also laying on a vision and what I hope that this wonderful panel has left you with is just this is an opportunity for us to rethink our federal investments in early childhood and to do something big that builds upon what we have but doesn't revert to the status quo. So I think our partners at New America, the Education Policy Initiative and authors of Cradle to Kindergarten, LPI and our partners have some wonderful resources on this slide and available to you in the chat box. A recording of this webinar is going to be shared with you as well as many of the resources we shared today via email and finally like to mention that a survey will appear in your window when you leave the webinar and we'd really appreciate your feedback. Thank you so much and we hope that you have a wonderful day.