 Good afternoon. I'm David Jacobson and I'd like to welcome you all to our webinar series School Community Partnerships for the Whole Child. We're really excited about this webinar series. It's been a pleasure working with our partners, the School Superintendents Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principles, the Council of Chief State School Officers, New America and the National Association of Early Childhood State Specialists and State Departments of Education. A big thanks to all of them for their many contributions. And we'd also like to thank the New America Communications team for all of their support. Narmada, you can display the slides now. We have a great lineup of panelists to share their experiences. They're doing innovative work all over the country. They're going to be sharing strategies and ideas and advice that we hope will be helpful to you as you serve children and families, both during the pandemic, but also as we transition out of the pandemic. We knew that either way the election went, there would be something of a reset in DC, and that this is a moment in time to begin rethinking what a comprehensive approach to improving early childhood and elementary school education and care could look like. And we think that one of the best ways to inform that rethinking is to learn from the experiences of the communities that are at the leading edge of doing this work. A quick word about who I am. You got next slide please, Normada. I work at the Education Development Center, EDC, a mission driven nonprofit organization focused on improving education health and economic opportunity. A big part of our work is supporting early childhood and elementary school education and care, and my work focuses on the kinds of school community partnerships we're going to be discussing throughout the webinars. And now I'm going to briefly set the stage for our conversation today and over the next few weeks. And I'll begin by saying next slide please. That I think we all have the conviction that in doing this work, our aim is to address the fundamental challenges of poverty and economic deprivation and impact on young children's learning and development. 25% of US children under six live in low income families, low income children are much less likely to graduate high school and college than there are more affluent peers, and the full achievement gap is present when children enter kindergarten. There is a consensus nationally among experts among policymakers and among the public, that the best way to make significant gains in improving outcomes for children and low income families is to start early. But it's also true that our early childhood systems are fragmented. Next slide please. We have gaps between early childhood and our K-12 systems, gaps between education health and social services, and gaps between public and private programs. And these gaps constrain they put limits on the potential of early childhood programs to eliminate opportunity gaps and achievement gaps. We know from decades of research that children need consistent quality each and every year of early childhood. Next slide please. They need alignment across the age span so that each year intentionally and explicitly builds on the learning and care that took place the previous year, and they need for the education health and social services that they experience at each stage of development to be coordinated. Yet due to the fragmented nature of our programs and services, too often children experience inconsistent quality, next slide please, gaps across the age span, and a lack of coordination at each stage of development. So there are two movements underway across the United States to address this fragmentation. The first works to improve quality at each stage of development and improve alignment across the years. Next slide please. We often call this pre-K to third or P3 or B3 birth through third grade. And the second, the second movement, next slide please, works to connect schools and early childhood centers to health and social services. This is often called integrated student supports and community schools and Head Start programs are good examples of these integrated approaches. So beginning in 2017, I received a grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation in California to study communities that were combining these approaches. That is to say they were designing local systems to improve quality across the years to improve alignment and to improve comprehensive services. Next slide please. These are some of the communities I focused on, several of which I'm really pleased to say are represented throughout this webinar series. And then we also have panelists from a wide range of other innovative communities as well. And what I found when I visited these communities is that they all began with a commitment to educational equity. Next slide please. With a commitment to the idea that all children learn and thrive. The goal is to eliminate disparities by race, by income and by other cultural factors. So that's the all children part. And by learn and thrive, we're talking about whole child development and learning, including cognitive outcomes, social emotional outcomes and health and mental health outcomes. And so all children learn and thrive is one way to describe the twin themes of our webinar series, ensuring equity and whole child learning and development. In order to realize these goals, communities create partnerships. Next slide please. Partnerships that include schools, families and community organizations, including early childhood programs. These partnerships recognize the interdependence of schools, families and communities, and the idea that through their collaboration, they can all be more successful. So what do these partnerships do? I found that they implement three broad strategies which they tailor to meet local needs. Next slide please. I found first that they bring professionals together to collaborate on teaching and learning. And this includes improving the early grades of elementary school. It includes bringing pre-K and kindergarten teachers together to work on transitions and to engage in joint professional learning. And it can also include collaboration among family childcare providers or home visitors or early childhood centers. And this is the topic that we're going to delve into today and I'll introduce our panelists in just a moment. The second strategy, next slide please. The second strategy is these partnerships implement is to coordinate comprehensive services. And in our second webinar, we will explore how schools and communities are better meeting the needs of young children and their families by organizing hubs of integrated services, connecting families to these services and supporting trauma-informed practices. Laura Bornfreund of New America will moderate our second panel next week at this same time. And then in part through these comprehensive services, innovative school community partnerships significantly deepen their collaboration with families. Next slide please. They go beyond random acts of family engagement by elevating family voice, creating new structures for meaningful input and participation, and by connecting to families early through school-connected play and learn groups and home visiting. All of which are the topics of webinar number three and Gracie Branch of the National Association of Elementary School Principles will moderate the third panel on December 3, the Thursday after Thanksgiving. And finally, it is critically important that these partnerships oversee the implementation of these strategies to ensure their success. Next slide please. This involves creating leadership structures, developing focused plans, tailoring strategies to meet local needs, building the capacity to carry out these plans, and monitoring implementation and making mid-course adjustments based on impact. And it also involves growing the work to include more families and more communities, which in turn requires not only support from school and community leaders, but state support as well. And Edward Manujak, the superintendent of Dundee Community Schools in Michigan, and the co-chair of the School Superintendent Association's Early Learning cohort will moderate our fourth panel on December 10. Next slide please. I call this framework the first-hand theory of action, referring to the first 10 years of children's lives, and you can find a summary of it and other resources at first-hand.org. We're really looking forward to these conversations. And now I'd like to move to our topic today. Next slide please. Collaborating to Improve Teaching and Learning. And I'm very pleased to introduce our five panelists. Next slide please. Nicole Beard is the principal of the Vivian Riddle Elementary School in Lansing, Michigan. Sue DeRiso is the director of Literacy and Title I at the Woonsocket Education Department in Rhode Island. Jason Sachs is the executive director of Early Childhood at the Boston Public Schools. Betty Underwood is the project director for the Rewarding Educator Achievement and Performance Grant in Lansing, Michigan. And Mary Varr is the executive director of the Woonsocket Head Start Child Development Association. Thank you all for joining us. I have a number of questions for the panelists to start us off. But as we go, I'll invite you to enter your questions for the panelists in the chat, and I'll pose them to the panelists towards the latter part of our session. We'll begin by having our panelists share an overview of their work on improving teaching and learning. And I'll start with First School in Lansing, Michigan. First School is a school improvement model developed at the University of North Carolina, and it was one of the first school improvement models to focus on the early grades pre K to third, while also placing great emphasis on racial equity. So I'm really pleased to begin with Betty and Nicole and Lansing's use of the first school model. Betty, could you describe First School for us and share how it's been implemented in the Lansing public schools. Thank you so much. I'm so pleased to be here today. First School is a collaborative model between public schools and university partnerships to improve the pre K pre K through third grade experience. Developed by Dr Sharon Ritchie and her team at the University of North Carolina, the initiative originally focused on four schools in North Carolina and four schools in Michigan. This model builds the capacity of educators to address equity by questioning practices that impact children of color and those who come from less advantaged homes. Building on brain research with a focus on research based instructional practices. The project is designed to foster classroom cultures of caring competence and excellence. Educators use new lenses to view and improve their practice through a process of collaborative inquiry educators examine classroom observational data and reflect on areas of strength and areas of opportunity. The edges snap tool which identifies minute by minute experiences of students in the classroom is used to collect that data. It focuses on activity settings, child engagement and teaching and learning approaches. Childhood matters we know minutes count. We know that very small changes can make a big difference. A change of just 3% of time with spent on a focus on literacy can equal to 12 minutes a day 60 minutes a week or 5.5 days a year. That's important. By arming themselves with research and data, teachers advocate for effective practice for their students. This supports an approach to early school experiences for children that make a place, make school a place where they find themselves smart and capable and knowing that they belong. First school provided a framework for the I collaborate project and Lansing. First school came to the Lansing school district as superintendent in 2012. A district at that time that had a budget deficit, numerous schools and priority status and a lack of coherence, vision and direction. She restructured the district to integrate span cohorts pre K346 K6 and 712 based on child development with a focus on instruction and built in the first school model. In an effort to develop coherence and a common language across the district. The I collaborate initiative, which is a name that was coined by the principals in the project was born. Through the lenses of caring collaboration and excellence trust was built teachers became engaged in reflection on their own learning. I was the director of that project and I had previously worked with the first school model and saw it it born it was born in Lansing as I collaborate. Each year teachers are observed for a two to three hour time block in the fall by outside observers. We hire former teachers and principals using the edge of snap pre K3 and class four through 12 tools instructional process data from this non evaluative observation is then shared at the individual level, great and subject level and school level during a professional learning day in December. Each school has a leadership team, a principal and two teachers that leads the review of the data, a common data protocol is used to look for strengths, opportunities, and then to develop action plans for each school. This is then used to guide school improvement and professional development within each school and it within the district. Thank you so much, Betty. It's so interesting how Lansing's been able to embed these observational tools in the district's culture and I really like this idea of using it to develop a common language. So, turning to you now, Jason. The Boston Public Schools early childhood department has developed what is widely regarded as an innovative pre K to grade to curriculum that includes coaching and professional development to supported implementation in classrooms. This work began with a pre K curriculum for four year olds that has demonstrated landmark results and now has been extended to second grade. So members of our audience who may not be familiar with your department's work. Could you provide an overview of the distinct developments of the curricula that you and your colleagues have developed. Sure. Happy to. So, I think that the long punchline to this is if you create a preschool curriculum, and you don't think about kindergarten first and second grade. And so building an infrastructure within a public school district is really an important piece to this work. So imagine if you all as strong early childhood folks were sitting in a public school district and you wanted to design correction. And so our team set about to think about how to do this curriculum and I'd like to tell you that we did it pre K to second but we didn't really we designed kindergarten, then we designed first and second, then we went back and we're redoing kindergarten, and we also revised the preschool process and our goal is to submit to ed reports, the curriculum by April so that it's actually one coherent picture because these things sound very smooth but they're they're often very rocky underlying our curriculum is that it's a thematic literacy curriculum. What we do is we do social sciences, our social studies and science, every other unit, they become to the foreground in the background to kind of organize the themes underneath it are usually four to six core texts that are studying a subject. And we do a lot of explicit vocabulary phonics, small literacy group math is taught separately, although I'd love to think about doing more professional learning around integrating mathematics but it's a separate designated time. And so that that's sort of the structure of the curriculum underlying it are instructional practices that we believe make a difference for young children so we continue to have center time when they get older we call them studios. And that's because that seems to work better selling first and second. Again, we have explicit vocabulary. We have a process called thinking and feedback, which is when children are in the centers, the teacher has a process for having the child think, share what they've learned and let the kids give them feedback on that. So the curriculum is part of the distributed knowledge, we do storytelling story acting which is living in Paley's work, and we do other sort of radio inspired observation thematic work with culminating projects. So for example in kindergarten, the kids are studying what would make Boston a more fair and interesting place to live for all its citizens and so kids come up with things like hospitals for homeless restaurants for a homeless folks beach cleaners, like all sorts of interesting projects and how to make the city a more interesting place and it's also building citizens. You can find our curriculum, it's we have a website bps early learning.org and on there is the entire curriculum pre K to second and so it's free and you can have access to it. Along with it is coaching and professional development that happens. That really is the under guarding of it and design and really affects sort of all our policies because the coaches are probably 80% of our staff and so what goes on in the classroom and guides our work. So what our curriculum is we do summer school now, and we now have remote because of covert. We've gone into remote teaching guides so we can share that with you all, I think. The other thing is just like we focus on curriculum instruction professional learning but there's also been an 80 yc accreditation we've used to develop relationship with principles. We do a lot of policy changes across the school district to help support young children. And I'm happy to talk about those things and then later on the next questions can be are working community based programs so I'll, I'll get to that later. So I think that's a good enough. That's great. That's great. Thank you Jason. One thing that I like to highlight about the Boston public schools work in early childhood and particularly in pre K and K is that they've really demonstrated the feasibility of a standards aligned developmentally appropriate curriculum and that's a challenge that I see many communities wanting to address. The one, the one thing I forgot to say sorry is that we also rewrote the curriculum to focus on culturally and linguistically sustaining practices and UDL which is really to think about inclusion those are two places we did not start but then we ended up so it's forgot to say that. Great, great. Thank you Jason. So now we'll shift a bit and turn our attention to how schools and early childhood programs can collaborate to set children up for success. And my colleagues and I have been involved in Rhode Island, Rhode Island's transitions work so here I'm drawing on some inside knowledge as I asked these questions. So let's begin with how your transition to kindergarten partnership in one socket came to be. Often we think that having a history of collaboration in a community is an important indicator of community readiness, but in one socket I understand that your previous collaboration was spotty. So, for the audience how did your partnership start and how has it developed over time. I'd like to start by talking about that bumpy start because we had tried on several occasions to forge a relationship with not just Head Start but other pre K community based organizations and to say it was unsuccessful is minimizing that. In fact, it was quick. We were quick to find that Head Start often came to the table with us, other community organizations organizations did not. And yet, even when we did come together there were many differing opinions, especially about expectations. So we happen to separately decide to participate in the Department of Education from Rhode Island there summit to transition to K from pre K The first summit we sat at separate tables had no idea that one socket Head Start was in the same room with the one socket education department and it was David who noticed that and said, aren't you folks in this together, aren't you both from one socket. How about if you sit together. And that's where our partnership began. And we immediately started talking about some of the things that one socket was well known for. And they're not things that we're proud of, but they're things that gave us a common bond and some of those things are the fact that we are known for some of the racist instances of childhood neglect and abuse homelessness incarcerated parents and obviously poverty, which seems to accompany many of those things. And so we decided we didn't want to be known for those things. And so we forged a relationship that could give us an opportunity to work towards a positive outcome and be recognized for some wonderful things that we could offer our community. And so this team of individuals from from from both the one socket education department and the one socket department school department became known as the wet heads, and we developed a relationship where we actually went out to to look for members that wanted to join this very var who's also on the panel. She and I actually went and knocked on every door of every community pre K partner there was in one socket to invite them to be a part of our relationship. We also hosted community events to bring people into our library give kids library cards get give them a whole lot of knowledge about what to expect in pre K. We talked about social emotional concerns and brought in people to help support our families with that information we created welcome to kindergarten videos and we presented all types of information and flyers, and as well as pushed out community event information. That was just the tiny seed of what we did it was the beginning of our relationship because ultimately our relationship exploded when Dr Bergeron at the Office of Head Start nationally recognized us and invited us to be one of 12 districts across the United States to participate in a demonstration project that took that tiny seed and blew it up into something we couldn't imagine for our partnership and I'm going to let Mary var in in detail, just how much we accomplished together, but just so you know it was this partnership of trust and understanding, and the development of really common goals which wasn't easy to do. Forged the relationship that we continue to have today, we lean on each other. We have become more than just partners I would say we've become friends because we have a common goal of supporting our youngest most neediest learners. And in my experience, it isn't all at all unusual that school district and early childhood leaders might, you know, attend a state conference and not know each other. And I think it's inspiring for other communities that when socket has gone from sitting at two adjacent tables to a partnerships that's doing such substantive work and as you said Mario, share more about what that substantive work is in a moment. So, Nicole back to Lansing. From your perspective as a principal. How has your school use the observational data from the first school edu snap tool to improve teaching and learning and what changes in classroom practice have you seen in your building. Thanks for allowing me to speak on this so the overall drive for me as an administrator is to mitigate all circumstances, at best as I can, that would hinder children from learning and reaching their best potential. So we have found that our tool that we are using not only helps academically, but it also helps our culture and climate and I'll share that what what I mean by that. So we get our results. We do the testing. I mean the observations. And then when we get when we get our results we meet as a team. And we do some analysis from it from there we look at that compare it with last year's how we grown. Are we growing did the things that we tried or said we were going to do last year work if not, we need to fix this. From there, we make a plan. I have an instructional mentor that I really utilize that works with teachers. And they can set up additional meetings, where the teachers can collaborate in great levels and say okay, this is how I used to teach this this topic or this is how I used to approach it. I want to try something a little different here. So as an example, our oral language and collaboration comparison data from 18 to 19 shows that we're doing something. It was pretty low. So we began to try to be more intentional about how we teach oral language and improve collaboration activities. And we would do things like keep a little log of what we're working on or how many times we allow student voice to be incorporated into the instructional practices. Again, the teachers will come back together and share how it went. So we started our lessons. And from our 18, our 1819 data it shows that there's an increase in school wise student voice and providing intentional opportunities for students to talk about the content. Not just to talk during snack time but to talk about the content. We're very proud of that. So we just want to continue to grow and learn from that. So if a child is allowed to share their voice regarding content, we felt okay. We need to have the students share their opinions about other things regarding our culture and our climate so we began to do surveys, we began to ask them about certain topics that we're teaching certain things that they would like to have in the school. And it is, you know, that coronavirus it did put a put a little bit of a halt to it. But I think we've gained so much ground that when we are able to certainly face to face, but there's some things we can do online as well. Oh, thank you, Nicole. I love that example and how you use the oral language and collaboration data and, and ended up getting gains and student voice and you were able to see those in your data. So that's, that's exciting. So Mary, turning back to you. We'd love to hear more detail about some of the work that your transition team and when socket is carried out. What are some of those strategies that you've implemented. Sure. I think it's important to just kind of go back to what what Sue had said and about differences we spent a lot of time meeting together and realize that we didn't talk the same language. So to Jason's point about the curriculum for preschool you have to think about kindergarten first. We came to the realization that we spoke talked about the same thing but in a very different way so so once we got through that hurdle and worked on it together and found out we really were on the same page. We started to identify the areas of where we needed to work better on. And one of those was, you know, talking about transition forms we were always sending the school department transition forms on the children and their outcomes and everything and they actually never got to the teachers. Or if they did get to the teachers they weren't helpful the teachers didn't understand what it meant. So we worked hard on that and changing that and pulling in the kindergarten teachers and saying what is the information that you need to have what do you want to have. And so we were able to do that and then we shared that transition so that it's used by the other centers in the city so now it's it's cohesive they're getting it from the early childhood centers into the teacher's hands of meaningful information on the children that were in their programs. So we talked about that. So once we got through that, one of the biggest things that so the framework we followed was from the National Center, not early childhood development, and talking about the child school connections, the family school connections, the program school connections, the community school connections so we have this framework and we worked on different areas of that, which is why when Sue was talking about that we, you know, knocked on these childcare center doors and delivered a personal invitation to come be a part of it, to be a part of it that that that we wanted to do we wanted our families we've got the library involved and we had our transition to cave events at the library. So that so that everybody in the city where it was these are all of our children and we're going to help them succeed throughout each piece of this as as we move along. So the biggest thing that came out of our transition work was the fact that we realized we have so many children that are on IEP's in the preschool years and we the school had been unable to service all those children except in self contained classrooms. So we worked on getting those children spread out throughout our classrooms so that they were in classroom with their peers throughout their early for three year old four year old before they went to kindergarten, and so they did not have to be in a self contained classroom and our goal was to reduce the number of children on IEP's in kindergarten significantly, which we definitely didn't surpassed. So that created an opportunity for us to work closer with the school system as well. Another benefit where we use the itinerant model for special ed, and their special ed teachers are in our classrooms. They have office space in our buildings and they're they're like our staff. So they are in there they don't pull the children out of the rooms they go into the rooms to provide the services to the kids. So we've really expanded just our little group, the, the other centers in the city, and then just the other staff in the school department getting to know our early childhood staff. So that's been one of one of the biggest things for us to do is that most of our parents don't even know we're not the one socket education department they think that we're all one. One cohesive agency so which is helpful for us we talk about coven when coven happened and the lockdown happened. We immediately called up our school department friends and said, can you share your virtual learning plan we want to follow the same thing that we're doing so that our parents, when they do get back their kids into kindergarten. Next year they're going to understand the technology that you were using. We want to use the same thing and get them ready for it so it, it's given us so many opportunities to provide smoother transitions in in all areas for our families. Thank you Mary so again from, you know, two separate tables at a state conference to collaboration on inclusion classrooms collaboration on the attendant model and collaboration on your virtual learning during the pandemic. So exciting, exciting work. Mary mentioned the four types of connections and the and the documents published by the National Center for early childhood development teaching and learning. Narmada, if you wouldn't mind showing the next slide. There are two resources from the National Center that we have found very helpful in our transitions work that I thought I would share. And I think of these two documents is anchor documents for transition planning and I thought I would share them with you. New America will make these slides available for those of you who are interested. But these are useful as I say, these are the documents to help kind of guide this work. Thank you Narmada. You can stop displaying. Yeah, thank you. So a quick follow up pursuit from the district perspective, what are the benefits of Head Start doing this work. And what are your district colleagues think of the partnership with early childhood providers more generally. Has Mary had alluded to the fact that we're never seen as a separate entity anymore we've become such partners that you don't know who staff is who's the fact that Mary has classrooms in our public school now. Parents can't tell the difference between a Head Start classroom and one of our public school classrooms and the same goes true with our employees that are in her centers. You can't tell who is a one socket teacher employee or one of her staff members. We've learned a lot to lean on through leaning on each other. You know as Mary mentioned to you. Yes, we benefited immensely from having her provide more opportunities for kids that currently previously wouldn't have had preschool opportunities, but in addition when the pandemic hit and we were able to say hey here's what do you do for you let us train you on distance learning let us show you our platforms let us show you our strategies let us show you how little learners can learn electronically. So, we just kept finding and had them flow so they are welcomed part of our community. And if I were to say one way that our partnership was most recognized was that our governor in her state of state address actually recognized our partnership after having come to visit one of Mary centers and our team. And that recognized us for our efforts because 50 children in one socket a very needy community had opportunities to attend pre K last year that would not have had that opportunity, had it not been for the relationship that we forged. Thank you, Sue. No, that's a great example I didn't I think to be called out by the governor like that is a is a nice touch. Jason, turning to you along the same lines, your department has shared its pre K curriculum with community based preschools for many years. You have a lot of experience with this, while also providing coaching and professional development. Could you share with us the rationale for this collaboration how you've gone about it and what you've learned from doing it. So, we have about a quarter of our preschool now for four year olds is in community based programs. And what we did is, we knew that the staff would have back. We basically required staff to have bachelor's degrees. We'll pay them the same starting salary as a Boston public school teacher there to use our curriculum and receive coaching and professional learning. We've created a new thing called an equity fund, which is programs can apply for comprehensive service funding above and beyond what we've given them we've also given them money for family outreach coordinators and other comprehensive supports. And we're now doing a pilot where we're trying to figure out how to do special education services serving students with disabilities in community based programs to expand inclusion. I would say that it's been a long growing process we started with the pilot then we had the preschool expansion grant and then when the preschool expansion grant left the city basically kicked in trust fund money so this is all city funded to pay for these universal preschool slots. And, and the argument was a we destabilized community based programs when the public schools just said hey we're offering free preschool. And then be we found that certain families really needed 12 months of the year eight hour eight to 10 hour service and so the community based programs were offering something the public schools just simply can't do. We also got really, we ran out of room in the public schools so I think that this is sort of forced a good collaboration. I would say that, you know, we've been successful with the curriculum, the coaching when a couple things are aligned. So one is the, the community based program has to be invested and actually implementing the curriculum and often we found that like, that might be fine for a teacher but if the director is not supported, or if the director and the executive director of the agency are aligned. So we've done a lot of work we have monthly meetings with executive directors and directors separately, and then obviously we do classroom coaching so those structures need to be aligned I think we've also found that there's still even when you, you provide salary money. There's still a fair amount of turnover so we've really started focusing more on directors so that when that teacher leaves the director has the knowledge, and also just building director capacity in general, similar to principles you know early childhood. You know, observation and feedback thinking about the curriculum look for supports, those are all huge. I think another thing in community based programs that's been a challenge and an opportunity is there's no planning time in community based programs and so building an agreement with community based programs for coaching and planning time is a huge structure that needs to be thought through better. And then, you know, we really have had to differentiate our supports program by programs. The Head Start has its own system but most community based programs are small agencies and they don't necessarily have all the support so really differentiating that partnership has been a growing place for us and I would say, you know where we're going to grow more is with director supports to create the kind of space for instruction to be focused. The other thing, lastly, is community based programs weren't doing a lot less math instruction than the public schools so really thinking more clearly about you know what does mathematics instruction look like, and what the professional learning needs to be and then the support in that area. Okay, those are some highlights but there's plenty more. Yeah, I know it's clear that you've got a lot of experience this doing this and I know that other other districts considering working closely, you know with community based programs can, you know, learn from that trajectory that you just described and I also know there was a lot of interest when when you mentioned that it's the same starting salary so I'm sure we'll have some follow up questions there. So, Betty, Nicole mentioned that some of the changes that she mentioned some of the changes that she's seen in her school. Could you talk about some of what you've learned from landings use of observational data district wide. Absolutely David we've learned a lot. We, the analysis of the data at the school in the district levels has given us the opportunity to look at our instructional policies and practices, you know, such as inappropriate transitions, arbitrary rules, behavior systems and actually the way we did deliver instruction. It's guided our professional development at the school and at the both the school and the district level. Through using the edge of snap tool over the past seven years we found significant increase in two predictors of success across the district. As Nicole mentioned oral language and scaffolded instruction, which combined together provide student voice. Oral language has increased 3% or 12 minutes a day or six days a year over the course of the entire district since we began the project. And scaffolded instruction and versus this direct instruction where students are reacting and teachers are working with students has increased by 9% or 16.2 day more days per year, and we're excited about that. That when teachers are talking children are not. And as we move from a culture of silence to more talk this develops the identity and supports cognitive development of students and increases relationships between teachers and students and kids are actually more motivated. And it's at let us to ask how do we ensure that all students in every Lansing classroom have equal opportunities to a language rich environment where voice and thinking are valued. So we've made a focus on that. Two years ago we began focusing our efforts on student voice. And we know that changes and it change changes in intentional practices, cause students in the majority of our schools to get closer to the goal of them doing the talking for at least half of the time. Nicole school and several others experience that experienced this almost double the amount of student voice between 2018 observations and 2019 observations, and we celebrate these. We share these kinds of things with our central administrators, we share them with other principles with other teachers and we collaborate together. We know that this is key to the equity and closing the opportunity gap for all kids. So if all kids have access to high quality instruction, we really can close the achievement gap. So through looking at our data we found areas to connect teachers so they can support each other. And I want to go back to the pre K kindergarten teachers. As we know, there is a huge disparity as we've all talked about this right here in this webinar. In the way that activities are structured, we found, you know, whole group small group the way that content is delivered and how much choice and collaboration is happening. There's a big difference in our P pre K and K teachers work together and learn from each other. We've also made connections with our Marzano evaluation tool. We connect conditions of learning and the concepts of student voice. While the I collaborate data and the tool is not evaluative. And the Marzano tool is evaluative, they do map on to each other the elements that are evaluated and gives the teacher a method for self reflection and a way to improve. I really believe that we have truly built a culture of mutual respect and collaboration and trust in our district. We took the focus off the analysis of achievement data, and we concentrate now more on reflection on the instructional process data. Teachers have taken control of their own professional learning, and they really display a confidence to explore new challenges. This is very evident now as we're in a total screen to screen environment and have done since the beginning of the year. Um, principles and coaches have shared that teachers are collaborating together and how to improve their instructional practice practices in that Google classroom or in and in a remote setting. Thank you Betty so interesting that some of your schools have doubled the amount of student voice really impressive and one of those was Nicole's. Well quick follow up for you Nicole. What are some of the challenges of using observational data to improve teaching and learning and I'm wondering if you have advice for other instructional leaders other principles on how to overcome these challenges. I think the two areas that were posing a challenge for us would be funding and the ability to do the observation more than once a year. And the second issue would be just getting your team to be on board with it and find value in this process, because some of them will say well we're only doing it once a year. What's that going to teach us it's going to teach us a lot. We may not have beginning of year end of year but we can go year to year analysis and just the whole process of looking at the data and working together and collaborating. I can't stress enough how much that just tightens up your core of your instructional team. So that was that was my advice would be, and if you're invested in the process, give your teacher space and time to get out of their comfort zone and be patient with them because there's trust involved there's data there and when people see numbers that they don't they tend to internalize it but just remind them this is our school data. This is not a reflection on one person, and we're going to if we do this right, we can use this to build in other parts of our school. Oh, great advice, great advice. Nicole, thank you. Mary and Sue. I understand your collaboration has continued throughout the pandemic and that in some respects the work is deepening. Could you share how your partnership has responded to the pandemic. Sure. Well, we, we were fortunate enough to get head start funding over the summer to run a program for children, kind of like a ramp up program, which is something Sue and I have been talking about a couple of years. It was interesting because they had been isolated for so long and we didn't want them to have six months before they went into a kindergarten classroom. So that was one of the pieces that we were able to do and at the time. It was interesting because the schools, not in session, but we worked with providing services virtually in the classroom IP services so that was a good test run for what was going to happen. And to fall and whether we did virtual or hybrid or whatever, to see if that worked. So, so that was one of the, one of the positive things to come out of this pandemic. And another thing that we've done is we've been having on our list to do professional development to share professional development. We were fortunate in Rhode Island that the preschools were able to access training and professional development and conscious discipline. We also as an agency had got some of our staff trained in it so that we could do it. And we purchased the online the virtual training so we actually had our first joint virtual professional development in the school discipline last month, which was fabulous and and what I had learned previously before we did that was that the school department had also been providing conscious discipline professional development for first and second I believe it was. What we're trying to do again is the same message everywhere and that so we have the same language so that our children when they're three and four and five and six and seven, they're hearing the same message from all of us. We know that we have a very, very high rate of people with mental health issues in our city we have addiction and we still had mentioned some of those before. So conscious discipline is one of the ways that we felt we could come together and work together on helping those children improve their social emotional skills. This is one of them another one that we've done I'm not sure you've ever heard of Circle of Security. We wrote some grants and we have some school department staff that are going to be getting trained in being facilitators for Circle of Security so small parenting group support. And we have other community agencies in the city that have already been trained in that and had already prior to the pandemic been holding Circle of Security session so the goal is really to get the whole community involved in that we're one message and we're one big support system that that we can do this together and I think that we've made a great start with our work with with one socket education department. We love hearing about the pre KK collaboration around conscious discipline and the community wide collaboration around circles of security. So we've got a number of questions, acute up from our audience. Last one for me and this is for Jason. So Jason I know that Boston is participating in a major study of the efficacy of your pre K to second grade curriculum. I'm wondering what you've learned from any early evidence you have to date including what your teachers coaches and principles are seeing in classrooms. Sure. So yes, we are learning that when a curriculum is aligned and strong instructional practices happen much not much but some of the fade out disappears meaning that kids do better when you have an aligned curriculum. I think that's sort of the big punchline through first grade. I'm also finding that when families use the one of the things we've divided up our thinking is constrained and unconstrained constrained skills things are like alphabet knowledge phonic phonic sounds things that you know you learn how to count and that sort of it. And we're finding that more that constraints kills skills unconstrained skills are things like deeper thinking high more cognitive demand where kids are making connections, and we're finding that when teachers and families use more unconstrained activities open any questions with their kids and sustain the conversations, especially low income kids low income families, the kids do better academically. And so those are sort of two things that you know from an early childhood standpoint we support but data seem to be supporting. The other thing we're finding is that that class as a tool is awesome because it focuses on instruction but it's a fairly blunt instrument and that we need more specificity and what teachers are doing in the classroom. We've developed a fidelity tool by way that looks at the components of the curriculum and specifically the level of what the teacher is doing. At a much more fine grained analysis or our fidelity tool or something like 17 pages of observation and it takes a couple of an hour observation but it's focused specifically on the on the instrument. And so we're finding that when the curriculum is actually implemented well then kids do better so I think just having those tools are really important. So those are some of the sort of the big findings. I would say, you know, it has been great our coaches do the fidelity tools fidelity observations and we've also they don't do their own classrooms that they do one another classroom so that's really helped us build sort of a common language around what our curriculum should look like. And then just in general just being able to like find grain and get specific has been been a huge difference so I would say, do a longitudinal study. It's really important. And the data are, I think, you know, they're getting published pretty widely so that's that ought to tell the relevance for people afraid of, you know, publish in Paris can you just study real school real time. I think the answer is yes, you should be doing these research partnerships in school districts if the school district lets you do it, but I would say that's been, you know, another kind of big, big thing is like when when most are rich out at studies, they try and track kids throughout the district throughout like the state, and there's too much spread. And so it's nice when a school district can actually study itself and learn so I would say these partnerships are really important. I look forward to seeing that data, continuing to come out but it's exciting to hear about your progress and what you're seeing so far. So we've got a lot of questions are conversations generated a lot of good questions from our audience. And Nicole, I'm going to start with you and we have a question about who does the analysis of the data that you collect and the answer may be Betty but we're interested in you know who does that analysis and how's it presented to teachers, you use graphs, you know, and is it to all the teachers in your school. Yes. So, after the observers come in and do the analysis the initial analysis and Betty you can help me with this as well because sometimes I don't always know who the people are. But once once we get the data back. As a school we come together, and we look at the pieces and sometimes we have people from our department that will come and help us better analyze the data and to be thought partners with us. So it is a school wide effort and I'll let Betty talk a little bit more about the actual observation team. Sure. We have, well we have six observers that go into various classrooms, and then they use the tool, and that's that is a web based tool. And then that data is then we have a coordinator. And that coordinator then takes and the graphs are created. We work with staff through a just a snap, and we create graphs and then each individual teacher is emailed their own particular data. The data is aggregated at the grade level and at the school level and at the district level. The school level is then shared with the schools. The first week, usually the first week in December, and then our professional learning day of that particular month is devoted to working on the analysis of that data with the data protocol that we've developed. And we develop, we develop a kind of a customized PowerPoint for schools to use with basic ideas that that address the elements of that. Thank you both, Nicole and Betty. And we have a question for maybe I think may I think this is for Mary and Sue and it's our school system teachers and Head Start teachers paid the same. And our Head Start funded children and school system children in the same classrooms. I'll turn it I'll turn it over to you. Let's start with the, the payment and then Mary you can talk about how the classrooms are comprised but no we have a different teaching contract. In fact, when we first met we have lots of program implementation problems because our teachers were on work to rule. So all of the work that we wanted to do. Mary and I, and the rest of our team really had to be done very carefully. And because we, we couldn't get teachers to participate in that. So no, that that piece is different. Mary you want to weigh in about the classroom. Children, children in the car. Yeah, and I do want to say that no, our teaching staff do not get paid with what public school teachers get paid. That's one of the inequities of the early childhood field that we have to keep working on. And, but so our classrooms have children that are that the school department has identified with IEP so that one of the really cool things about our partnership that we have is that we've created agreements with our families and the school and our agency. So that when we get information about a child enrolling in one of our programs. We can share that information right away with the school. And if they have someone that is interested in enrolling for one of their preschool classrooms they can share with us. So we know right away what children are on IEP's and where they live in the city and where the best place to place them. So they're so the school department staff that are in charge of this department sit down with my staff. And they help place the children together on where they need to go. And that has just been just fabulous so they know where their children are from, you know, before they walk in our doors and is the same the same for us so so they're shared. They get their service that children that are on IEP's are in our classrooms. Really, really nice example. Jason next question is for you and it's how do you keep cultural and racial relevance at the forefront of child centered teaching within your curriculum. So I think I also typed in the answer to that but I think that it starts with the staff that you hire. If you look at our staff we have very diverse staff and we go through CLSP training ourselves. It's been a journey. It is not always been easy. So that's part of it is who your staff are and then how we function as staff, how our staff meetings are run, how voices are heard, processes and protocols to make sure that we are equitable. So that's part of it, sort of try and walk the talk. So that's part of it. I think the district has done a lot of work with is our Office of Achievement cap around using an equity tool. So it really kind of looks at who's affected who are the stakeholders where resources going so there's a whole process around that. So we have seven forms of bias which is a way of looking at your literature. So it looks for forms of bias in your literature so we've done that training. So those those are just three examples. And then I think forth right now with our benchmarks we are going to focus specifically for example on, you know, you know, MCAS by fourth grade scores specifically for African American African American and Latin X students so that we're actually I think the group is just such a horrible term but some kind of targeted kids we worry the most about and make sure that the data are driving an improvement. I think the district also has it's called the cry out tool it's a tool for looking at bias within the school. I think it's first school stuff they're looking at two kids have a voice but also what are teachers doing so I think, you know, getting kind of wearing that in and certainly in the longitudinal study we'd like to do more looking at bias and then as a as a department we constantly are trying to look at institutional bias and what programs and policies support institutional bias so I think you have to do it at every layer level and every layer of your work including the work you do with your staff. So I guess that's that would be my short answer. Yeah, really helpful I think the way that you laid it out at every level level just like you said so really interesting. The. We have some we have a question that I think could be for a couple of you and it's any. I think there's their questions around pay again another question around pay equity and Mary you address that. But do these stymie your collaboration, either, you know, either in one socket or in Rhode Island, I'm wondering if the pay equity issues have been a problem for your collaboration. Yes, in Boston you've managed to address that at least with your by paying the lead teachers in the community based preschools, more fun more funding. And I, and I think there's a question, Jason in terms of where is that, where's that funding come from. First, it's directors also can get a pay bump because you if your director is getting paid less than teacher and the assistant teachers as well so we allow the agencies to set the salaries but teacher has to be same starting salary. The funds come from the city. And once we rolled off of the preschool expansion grant, the mayor made a trust fund for about $15 million. And the idea is, we, as we grow, we spend trust fund money in year one, but then it becomes part of the general fund so it's the school's money that it gets from the city. So that's how it is and then we also build on state subsidy so if a, if a program for example and these are raw numbers so don't quote me on them but has gets about $8,000 a year from a state subsidy. We will add an additional $8,000 on top of that to cover the salaries and the comprehensive services. In addition we created this comprehensive service fund that now will be rolled into the school district budget so it starts with kind of free or to open money in the trust fund, and then it becomes general funds but again this is a city investment built upon state state dollars to your city really has to come up with dollars and again we built it off of the preschool expansion grant which is federal dollars. Jason really helpful. I, and Mary I wanted to turn to you and any further thoughts about, you know, whether that's been an impediment to your collaboration the difference in in salaries. It hasn't been an impediment to our collaboration at all. But do we lose head start or preschool teachers to public school systems in the state. Absolutely. I think that I think it's all for the most part it's what the person is looking for and what kind of a type of agency they want to work in some people are want to work more in a community based setting than they would in the school system and other people that's what they're looking for all of our teachers have the same degrees. So it's unfortunate that there is this disparity. But that is what is but we haven't had really any issues with with that it's probably because all the staff we hired know that we know each other. But no it's been okay. I have worked collaboratively to try and work with state agencies on legislation to inform pre K education and try to get more legislation around some of these concerns that Mary is addressing, you know, they're there. There is an issue that we're underpaying our pre K employees and we need to have them valued and how do we go about making that happen and you can't can we in fact work with legislators to support us in that area of need. So two things. One, there have been some questions about what the edgy snap tool was and I saw that Betty added to the chat. So thank you Betty, that's helpful you can find the link there if if you're curious about that. And then Zeus just provided a good segue to our last to a final question for the panelists and this will just be open ended but what you've done in the past years. What suggestions do you have for how state and federal agencies can support this work Sue already a tipter hat in that direction but I'd be interested in other other your other everyone's comments on what are the implications for state and federal work agencies. I would like to see more of an investment in terms of getting voice from those that work at the school level. I would like to see some of the people at the school level to be at the table. So to speak, to help make these decisions it's easy to look at a data sheet and crunch numbers. But these are living people that were in children that we're working with so they need more input from from us. Do you have any other other reflections. I'd say that our governors is very much behind us and in supports we have an organization called right start that is really based on her initiative to really foster positive relationships and building early childhood education connections not only through positions to pre K to K, but to really foster everything from home daycare situations to the programs themselves. She, she made it a priority and I think it needs to be a priority nationwide. I agree with two like, I would agree I think it's, it's you have to be out there in organized groups and advocate and have your data have your information and be able to share the right message with the different groups of people and to be able to make that change because it's everybody's, everybody can play a piece of it from from you know the Chamber of Commerce to the Department of Ed to the Senate finance chair like everybody and we just have to get that word out to them the importance of it which which I would hope that with the state of this pandemic that that would be more obvious that it ever has been before. I'm sorry, Jason and then that doesn't Betty you go first I'll go after I was going to say I think I think telling our story, getting out just what what Mary said and what Susan said, and Nicole, I think we need to get out there and tell our story of what we've done, and the the impact it's had on our students. Thank you Jason. So, I would say that what I think we've been successful in part because we have really focused on instruction and student outcomes, and I think that the superintendent and the mayor, even though I've had six different superintendents and two mayors, they all, because there's data, they all understand what we're focused on and what we're trying to do. And I think the more you focus on students and outcomes, the easier it is for people to fund it. And I would say it has been easier to get private funding and federal and state funding. And with that said you know we've, the city is funding this right so it took a leader in a mayor, if he had waited for a Republican administration to fund early education programs he'd still be waiting. And the federal government clearly has been dry for a while and early education and so obviously with a new administration there'll be possibilities but someone has to pay for this. And we have to expect professionals to do the work therefore we need to read people to do this work it's complicated very hard work. And we need people to stay and partner with public schools and have real commitments with public schools and community based programs, equal respect equal pay equal infrastructure to make this work. I have found that the public schools have a lot of resources and have a lot of desire to do this work but you know I've been there for 15 years right and we still haven't solved a lot of these problems. So I just and we need more people to partner with the public schools and meaningful ways and that community based programs should not be attacking the public schools nor should the public schools be attacking community based programs. And we all have to get better because a great opportunity here I mean you can do this well you will help close the achievement gap. And therefore if we need to do this well and we need to create more tools to get it done. So that's my two cents. I want to thank all of our panelists today it's been a really interesting conversation I think you you shared really valuable lessons that I know our audience appreciated so thank you to you. Thank you to the audience I want to thank New America for their support and all of our partners and Norma if you would show our last slide I invite you all to next week our second webinar on coordinating comprehensive services and we look forward to seeing you at our future webinars. Thank you all so much.