 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you all so much for coming out in this ridiculously cold Washington DC weather. I take no responsibility for this even though I was born in Vermont but I promise this was not my fault. We are really thrilled to have you all here. It's actually pretty amazing to have a full room given how cold it is and that we've had to reschedule our event. We are so grateful to our speakers today for being able to rejigger their schedules to be here. I'm Lisa Guernsey. I'm the director of the Early Education Initiative here at the New America Foundation and I just want to take a minute for those of you who might be new to New America to tell you a little bit about who we are and what we do. We are a nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new ideas and new thinkers to address the challenges and there are a lot of them facing our country and our world in the years ahead. There are many different policy programs here at New America and the Education Policy Program is a thriving part of New America. It's been a program that's been growing a lot over the past couple of years. It's led by Kevin Kerry, our director and our initiative, the Early Ed Initiative, is a part of our Ed Policy Program. Our program is a birth through college and workforce education program. We really take a systematic and comprehensive look at all of the years that are involved in learning and preparing oneself to be a citizen of the world. In my group, our Early Ed group, we focus on birth through the third grade, taking a real developmental early childhood zero to age eight approach to what early education means. I just wanted to give you that quick overview or really, again, thrilled that you're here with the State of the Union still so fresh in our minds and with so much to talk about in terms of where our country should be going. It's a really key moment for us to have this conversation. I want to say that this got started because of some conversations that we had with the Alliance for Early Success, with Lisa Klein and Helene Stubbins who are here who helped us focus in on where are we? What do we really need to know about the State of Early Education today so that we can make some strategic decisions moving forward? I just want to say a big thank you to the Alliance for making this project possible. I'm going to have Lisa Klein come in and say a few words. Lisa is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Early Success and is responsible for guiding the Alliance's vision. Prior to that, she spent 10 years at the Kaufman Foundation, first as the Manager of Research and Evaluation and then as Vice President of Early Education. Prior to that, she was Director of Early Childhood at the Kansas Health Institute conducting evaluations and really digging into the research. We are so fortunate to have Lisa Klein here today. She is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Early Education and is responsible for guiding a lot of the work across the country and in states. Thank you very much, Lisa, for being here. Thank you. It's the Lisa show. Thank you. Thank you. Well, good afternoon. I'm really happy to be here. It's fun to look out and see lots of our friends and colleagues who we work with, both in the room and hopefully on the webcast. It's always great to meet new people who are interested in the same issues. We'll look forward to a few brief words about the Alliance for Early Success. For those of you that don't know us very well yet, we operate as a pooled fund. There are eight right now, incredible Foundation partners, who not only provide the generosity of their support, but also their vision and their foresight to believe what we do, which is if we work together, we will get results that are not only better, but we'll get them faster than if we were all going it alone. So one of the things the Alliance does is a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm told. This is our infographic that describes everything about us. So one of the things that we do is we take those funds and we provide some leadership, we partner with state and national organizations, many of whom are in this room, and beyond. And we curate some technical assistance. And our goal is to improve state policies, the kind that are effective and are evidence-based that we know lead to better outcomes for vulnerable young kids and families. We do that by investing these three things, advocacy, policymaker leadership, and knowledge. So last year we got together and we led an effort with over 150 experts who all put in their time, their attention, their expertise, and we developed a birth-through-eight state policy framework. And the idea was what are the things that most impact the lives of children? What are the policy areas that we need to attend to? And then what are the outcomes we want? And they're those three areas. So it's families, health, and learning. And we're here today to focus on the learning component. So we think about the learning component at the Alliance as a continuum. And we've always been committed to starting at the earliest time. What needs to happen for young children to get put on the path to success? And we listen to the neuroscience and the science that says, this is the time that brains are developing quicker, they're more plastic, they're more flexible, they intake information the most, and it has to happen at the earliest time. And for the Alliance, that means birth. So we are committed to starting at birth and that learning begins at birth. At the same time, we want to keep kids on the right path. And in order to do that and make sure that the investments we've made in those earliest years are not only protected but don't fade out, which is a common thing that we hear, or fade away, we know from research that if you continue to provide the kinds of supports along the way, at least through age eight, that at grade three, if kids have the skills and knowledge that we hope they do at that point is a great predictor of high school graduation as well as college and career readiness and all of the outcomes that we want for our kids. And there's another thing about that continuum as I think about it. The child development science and the way we know and understand how kids grow and learn and develop tells us that that continuum, birth through grade eight or birth through eight and grade three, that continuum, those experiences, they are interactive and they feed on each other. So what happens in the earliest years and the experiences that come first, they set the frame and they inform what comes later. And the ones that come later sustain what comes before. So if we start out with kids and families who have great quality experiences, the trajectory will be good. But if we don't, the opposite happens. The other thing that I kind of wanted to share was that when we thought about this and we have this framework and there's policies around early learning and we know what this trajectory means, we were really interested then in figuring out, well, so where are we now? And that was what Lisa Guernsey was just talking about. What is the state of the art out there? We know, we have some ideas about what evidence-based policies are that promote learning and that get us the better outcomes that we want for kids. And yet we really know what was happening. So we turned to the best and the brightest and sought out New America. And I really want to say a huge thank you to Lisa Guernsey, the entire New America Foundation team. This is a fabulous report. We are really excited and it does give the lay of the land out there. The Alliance is going to follow that up with two other activities. We're going to hold a meeting that New America is going to facilitate for us in March, bring together folks who can really debate and discuss the findings in this report, bring their own lens and expertise to it and then New America will do a bookend report to this, stay tuned on the future directions so that we all have some really good solid recommendations about what do we do and where are some priorities we can invest in next. This is an amazing moment in time to be doing this work, as Lisa said. So we are struck at the Alliance with a more state-based focus about the number of governors and state legislators who are not only more aware and more knowledgeable, but also committing investment more in the early years. At the same time, we have a president who stands up at the State of the Union and proudly proclaims that the single best investment we can make in the life of a child is early learning. We were all cheering very loud last night. So it's my great pleasure to be able to introduce two of the amazing people who are leading that charge. One of them will be here with us on video later one of them we are lucky to have here in person. Both of these ladies have devoted their careers to supporting and improving the lives of kids and families. They've both done it in the private sector and in the non-profit world. They were our friends and colleagues then and they are our friends and colleagues now as they do it in the public sector and in the administration. I don't have nearly enough time to read through their bios but I know you have them. I just consider that we are very fortunate to have them in the leadership positions we have them in and not only are they doing it in their own right and in their own departments but they are a fabulous model for how we can do these things together. And it is no small task to think about how you work across administrations, across departments, across issue areas, across funding streams. None of which mean anything to kids and families, right? They just want to be able to get what's best and we have two officials that are helping us do that. So please at this point help me welcome Libby Doggett Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education. So much to say in so little time. What a great day to be here after the State of the Union, after the budget came out the omnibus came out. We did see some restoration of some early childhood funding. I think all of us who have been doing this for years and I know many of you are friends of mine and have been doing this for years we see the glass much more than half full even though this report is a reminder of how far we have to go. Thank you Lisa and New America. I think this report is incredible. I'm a big believer in getting something that is laid out well that people can understand. I think the layout, the simplicity of it but then the depth in it and all the different pieces that you thought about is fantastic. So I'm anxious to see how it's received. I've started seeing people picking it up and talking about it and I'm sorry I can't stay for the discussion today and have to go back for I never realized that before and after the State of the Union my life would be so busy but it is. Which is good. I think you all have Lisa redefined early education. I think it's exciting that we are thinking birth to age 8. We certainly are at the department. I think it is the time to do that that we still need to fund the different pieces but we also need to think holistically. I think Lisa, I know that Linda is coming next and we usually do this dog and pony shown. She knows exactly what I'm going to say and I know exactly what she's going to say but I'm going to trick her since I'm out here and talk a little bit about something that she won't expect but before I do I want to point out this sheet. It's on political climate which is of course going down and advocacy which is going up and philanthropy which is going up which I think is just really really an interesting comment on where we are and probably if the climate were different think about where we might be but it's very interesting and it certainly has posed challenges for all of us. I'm instead going to focus on the systems building. I started out my life after I taught a bilingual first grade doing a lot of systems building around kids with disabilities because there it is absolutely critical that you pull these systems together and so now I'm actually back at the department in charge with Linda of Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Fund. We now have a billion dollars out there in 20 states and I've been very eager to tell the story so I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I know about that story because I was very intrigued once we started digging in because the money's been out for about two and a half years. We have three cohorts of states so there's a story to tell and I think it is really making a difference. It's doing what we all want done but it's a hard story to tell because systems building isn't sexy. It's not something you can sell at Capitol Hill or even in states but we all know that it's critical and it will undergird the system that we hope will finally get funded. So through this this billion dollars we're going to serve their 5.2 million children from low income families in the 20 states that should benefit. So that's significant. That's a lot of kids that will be impacted by the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Fund. States are allowed to use this in different ways but all of them are required to put a QRIS or we're calling it a tiered quality rating and improvement system but a system in place to pull the early childhood community together to set standards for all programs to let programs build their way up and to inform parents on how to do this. It's pretty excited that many of the states have ambitious plans on this. So Rhode Island is expanding their TQRIS to include all licensed child care and early learning programs and most states are. There are a couple that aren't. All states are committed to increasing the number of centers with the highest quality. So every state is said we're going to get more centers up to that very highest quality and every state is also committed that they're going to get kids up into those highest quality centers. So we'll be able to report that statistic year by year and that's certainly what we're watching. That's what I will be graded on. States are also working to validate these systems. We know that just having standards doesn't necessarily translate into better outcomes for kids right now. We think it does. There's some evidence that it does. We're going to go in and validate these systems to actually show that that is going to happen. So that's happening in many of the states. States are also investing in program quality through their contracts. So Massachusetts is providing stipends for supplies and services and technical assistance to help their programs lift themselves up. They're also providing help in multiple languages not just Spanish but Haitian, Creole and Mandarin. Rhode Island is expanding partnerships for early learning teachers by leveraging private philanthropy. Other states are significantly increasing their reimbursement rates because we know that chalk here really doesn't pay. States are really targeting their resources. They're targeting it to the programs most in need and to those that are in areas where there's the highest poverty. North Carolina is going to use existing early childhood advisory council. It's local smart infrastructure, the participation and cooperation of wide range of state and local stakeholders to create transformation zones. And in these zones early learning programs will have access to consultants. It will help them promote healthy behavior such as nutrition. So we're talking about the whole child right. Physical activity regular well child checkups with the doctor. So the other thing is not all the states but most of the states are working on the early childhood workforce. They're establishing a structure, a framework so that people can work their way up. They're providing scholarships. They're helping the community colleges and the colleges align their systems. They're helping colleges improve their course work. North Carolina has created an innovation fund for community colleges that offer early childhood training for teachers who face barriers because they're working parents themselves. They're lacking English language proficiency or they're the first in their family to go to college. The other thing states are doing is working on family engagement. Maryland plans to expand reach out and read that the American Academy of Pediatrics has so that every child, Medicaid eligible child will receive books and have a conversation about reading at their well child checkups. By the end of the grant all libraries in Title I school districts will have a family information center. Maryland plans to expand their parent child learning programs, parties in schools, libraries, churches, and head start programs. So they're pulling in the whole community. They really are using what's out there and making it better. And then finally all states or most states are expanding the screening and assessment systems. We all know that if we can screen more kids and make sure they get referred that will be a lot better for all of us because we catch these problems early, we can address them much easier than waiting around. So Rhode Island is linking their nationally recognized children's health database called KidsNet to their education database that's building and enhancing the Ed's state longitudinal data system. So they'll be able to bring their data on health and education together and really tell us what is working. So there's a lot going on. There's a good story to tell and I think what my hope is, Lisa, that this good infrastructure will result in improvements in some of those areas where we haven't seen improvements. So thank you all for what you do every day for our children. I'm looking forward, I will stay for Linda's statement in her five minutes and then unfortunately I have to leave but I'll be back for the next session. Thank you all very much. Thanks Libby, that was great. Good afternoon everyone and I want to... Hi Linda. Oh, you were so anxious that you heard that Libby got to be here in person. Linda wanted to be here in person. She couldn't. It's fantastic that she's able to be here with us on video and we really appreciate the gumby like movements that both of these women had to do to make all this happen. And I'm just guessing Linda's anxious because she heard Libby that you were going to surprise her this time around. So it is my distinct pleasure also to introduce Linda Smith who is one of Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services. Good afternoon everyone and I want to thank the New America Foundation and Lisa and the other authors of this report for inviting me to be a part of this event. The report is a pretty important report for us right now and I will go into some of the reasons why but I think most importantly because the report really supports what we're trying to do in this administration with moving forward in a comprehensive way on early care and education and I think Libby has outlined some of the things that the Department of Education is doing and I'm going to go a little bit into some of the things that we're doing but suffice it to say that and I'm sure Libby has already said this to you that we have a very real and very serious partnership between the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and we work at this all the time and there's really nothing more important to us I think that our two secretaries have set a very good example for us and Libby and I try very hard to emulate that what they have done between the two of them. So I just want to go into the report and some of the findings of the report and why I think it's important to us and in particular important to the efforts here at ACF at the Administration for Children and Families in the report I think there are four things that I took note of the first one was that at best we have an inconsistent approach to the birth to eight years and your report calls attention to that and the fact that much of our efforts have been rather scattershot over the last decades and stovepipe and one of the things that Libby and I are constantly doing is trying to overcome those stovepipes and come up with a more comprehensive approach to this. It also demonstrates that there's been a lack of a cohesive strategy at the top and furthermore a lack of a big picture vision of where we're going as a nation. So I think that the report leads us to think more about that vision something that we've spent a lot of time doing over the last two years. Third I think it demonstrates the problems that we have with teacher preparation, professional development and the pay for the workforce which are in my view tied to the inconsistent funding and the lack of reliable funding for early childhood programs. It's hard to pay a teacher more money when you're not sure you're going to have the money next year to continue that salary. And finally I think it notes the lack of attention to the childcare and development block grant which has been languishing for 17 years We now have hope that it might move forward but we see the buying power of the CCDF fund as a major driver of policy in our country and one that should be used to drive quality into all of our programs. So as a result of the leadership of this president and the partnership between the two organizations I think we're on a much clearer path to providing high quality programs, more programs and more access and a better prepared workforce. So I think what we're talking about here as we look forward to where we're going in the future with the strong start program I think that the vision is becoming clearer and clearer and I think that the report will help us continue to build the case for why we need that clear straightforward vision for this country. I want to say that we're grateful at the Department of Health and Human Services for the investment the down payment by Congress for the early head start childcare partnerships. Something that I think is going to address many of the issues brought up in the report over the next year we're going to be standing up a national competition that will really encourage the states to look at how they build partnerships between early head start and childcare giving priority for programs that number one build partnerships so that we can align these two programs but also align programs beginning with home visitation and on through into the K through 3 space so that people will actually be credited with how they approach these things taking the long view in terms of what we need to do for our children. A couple of other things that Libby may have noticed that we are mentioned that we're working on jointly between the Department of Education Health and Human Services is the National Academy of Sciences study on the workforce. We hope to put to rest the long debate over what is more important education or training and figure out really what is it that our children need in order to move forward and I want to encourage anyone on this participating in this event to be sure and provide input to the National Academy as they proceed on with that study. A couple of other things we're working on here at HHS are standard health and safety standards that we can use across programs including early head start, head start, childcare and hopefully pre-K. We've looked at the birth to five pilot for the early head start to promote that continuum of care between those programs and finally we're getting very close to finalizing the childcare regulation which I think everyone knows has taken great steps forward improving the quality and availability of childcare for our nation's children. So I'll close there and say that I wish I could be with you and I wish I could hear the conversation that goes after this but as I'm kind of fond of saying right now we're on roller skates over here at ACF trying to get our thoughts together around implementation of the new partnerships and the other things that we were afforded in the Appropriations Act. So again congratulations Lisa and crew on an excellent report and one that will be very useful to us as we move forward. Okay, so now we're going to kind of get into the meat of it and I want to give you all a presentation on what we found in our report. Before I do that though there is one quick kind of favor I told Linda Smith that I would let you all know about how to provide comments on one of the things she mentioned which is a new program to build partnerships between early head start, the program for parents and their infants and toddlers with childcare and they are collecting input as we speak on that and they have an e-mail address where you can submit comments on it, e-h-s dot c-c partnerships at a-c-f dot h-h-s dot gov. Okay, so now I want to take a moment to thank my co-authors on this report and have them stand up and then we are going to go into some of the findings and go through some of the pages that you have in front of you. This was a report that was very much a joint effort. We have a growing and amazing early head team. I learned so much from our analysts and I want to thank them all for their work and time on this. So if you can stand up Laura, born friend Connor Williams and Claire McCann. So thank you very, very much. Oh, thank you. Okay, so five years ago the United States was stuck in the thick of the Great Recession coping with the stock market crash and a loss of jobs that would send aftershocks through the early education field. Yet early 2009 was also a time of great hope among advocates for young children. President Barack Obama who was sworn in was going to be, last week it would have been exactly five years ago today five years ago and one week ago today. He had campaigned on early education and had pledged that he would bring ten billion dollars in additional funding into the world of early childhood. Many states had already been making some very impressive investments in preschool for young children by that point. So given that mix of promise and yet really severe financial insecurity what was going to happen next? This is what we're trying to answer in this report. We wanted to look back over the past five years and really answer what's been working and what hasn't been working for young kids in terms of their learning opportunities over the past five years. We did this by examining indicators related to student achievement, family well-being funding, policies and other data points. And we're doing this across the birth through eight spectrum. We also did some work on our own research based but certainly subjective evaluation of the policies that have been put in place over the past five years. And that's I think where there may be even more robust discussion and debate over whether you all think our assessment of things is right or not and we welcome that debate. So as you see in the report we decided to try to make this as easy as possible for everybody by giving you some graphics to lead you on your way. And actually I want to take a moment here. I don't, I think that he's working on so many things he's probably not in the room but our communications associate Ross van der Linde is the brain force behind the beautiful graphics in this report and we want to thank Ross for his work on it. Yes, yes, thank you. So what we did was we looked at all of that data and we decided we wanted to mark what was improving, where we were seeing things in flux, where we were seeing everything was just in stasis, flatlining essentially. What was being ignored and what was imperiled was really kind of deteriorating over the past five years. And those are the indicators that we use throughout the document to try to help us all grasp what's really been going on over the past five years and where we should be turning our attention for the future. I'm going to just go straight to the punchline here and then I'm going to dig in. In our estimation in the wake of a recession triggered by subprime lending millions of children were left with subprime learning and I want to describe how we came to that conclusion. So we also did something in this report that really has never been done before which is to look at federal funding for early childhood programs not just from birth through age five from birth through age eight. And this is complicated because there are all sorts of programs that are not necessarily delineated by a child's age. But we can use some formulas and some estimates based on good research to bring ourselves to a place where we can get at least a sense of how much the federal government has been spending on children in that age range. That's what you see here in front of you and this is on the first couple of pages of the report. So in addition to just that really fun rainbow graphics here, I think this tells us a really interesting story about what happened in 2009 when Congress passed the stimulus bill in 2009 and that big boost of funding that did come in 2009 to essentially enable states to be able to kind of carry on with what they were doing in their schools without having to do massive layoffs. But to also try to bring in some new programs and some new ways of thinking and the Race to the Top program for public schools kind of K-12 was certainly part of that. You'll see on this graphic that we in the past several years have moved into even more of a multi-colored mode in that there have been some new programs that have come forth. And so if you see at the end here I'm going to try to use my if you see here we start moving into a space where there's some interesting things going on. These are things like the Promise Neighborhoods program the home visiting program you'll see down here and you can see it better in the report. It's this tiny orange sliver and I'm going to talk about that in a moment as well but you can see some of these new things starting to come into play. But the larger story told here is really one of flatlining pretty much since 2009 and we'll get into that a little bit more. Okay, so let me take you through this in a one by one what has been improving. So through the report we have it organized slightly differently than this but for this presentation I wanted to give you it all in chunks and I'm not going to spend a lot of time in every bullet point here but this is just kind of the bird's eye view. If you look at tests in fourth grade on the National Assessment of Educational Progress you do see improvement and what that tells us is that children who were coming into elementary school in those early years of the Obama Administration that's what we might have seen in terms of their progress doesn't really tell us anything about kids that were born in the past five years. It doesn't really tell us anything about what's happened in terms of what kind of learning might have happened in preschool settings or in childcare settings in those years but it does tell you a little bit there. However as we'll show later we actually are finding that the gaps are widening even as there's been a bit of improvement on average. I'm going to talk about home visiting in a second. We certainly are seeing more focus on parents especially in the last couple of years in both policies and in the way some grants and funding programs are created. There's been a lot of attention on teaching and learning especially on literacy. There's been a lot of attention on the building of infrastructure and a lot of funding for that and I think that's what you heard as with Libby and Linda Smith were describing what's been going on over the past several years from the point of view of the administration but also this is certainly very much happening in states and in fact some federal grants have helped to make it possible in states as Lisa Klein described as well. We are seeing absolutely some really nice upticks in terms of indicators that are showing a lot more attention and focus from advocacy, and on the research side. Home visiting I just wanted to take one moment to tell you about if you're not aware of what this program is it's something that came to at the federal level came to fruition because of the Affordable Care Act and it's enabling nonprofits in states to provide nurses, social workers and other visitors to the homes of families that want them to come of course, to give them whatever kind of help they need in terms of the development of their baby, nutrition and other kind of health and cognitive development advice and support. Those programs have been funded up to five years and in the next year we'll find out if there's the appetite to keep funding them but we see that as an improvement and you'll hear Ron Haskins in a moment talk a little bit about home visiting as well. Okay, what's been flatlining? I'm sorry, no. What's been in flux? This is where we see a lot of up and down movement over the past five years. In Head Start, in Head Start funding for sure and in State funded pre-K and I should explain for those of you who may not know a lot about how funding works for pre-K. State funded pre-K does not mean it's necessarily in public schools but that's certainly a possibility in a lot of states. It also could be states that are funding non-profit organizations or agencies that provide pre-school. So they are independent organizations that are using public dollars to provide pre-school. We have seen a lot of up and down in terms of the implementation of teaching and learning policies and we certainly are seeing a lot of fluctuation in terms of political climate and at the state level things are rosier when it comes to the ability to actually move legislation forward in a bipartisan way on early education. And this is what's going on, just to give you a quick snapshot, this is what's going on State funded pre-school programs. This graph here shows you over the past actually ten years what's been going on in terms of the per child expenditure for pre-school. How much is being spent per child by states and what's distressing about this picture in addition to the fact that it's been up and down since 2008 to 2012 is that it's actually really kind of gone down overall and this is something the National Institute for Early Education Research up in at Wreckers they've done this work and have really helped I think to shine a spotlight on what's been going on when it comes to actual access. This is one of the key points that we are using when we talk about sub-prime learning we're meaning that there are just so few children still who are getting access to high quality pre-school programs and when they do have access the funding for it has been going down so even the quality comes into question when you have funding that drops as it has this way. So what's in Stasis fourth grade test scores for dual language we found to be pretty flat I'll show you that in one moment and I'll explain a little bit more there. Special Ed funding as well as test scores at the fourth grade level for special education students. There's only been one additional state since 2009 that's required. It's districts to provide full day kindergarten and we're really seeing not much when it comes to the reform of teacher credentials meaning the ability for teacher preparation and licensing programs to really recognize what's happening in the early years and help elementary school teachers get the skills that they need to be teaching in kindergarten first, second and third grade. This is what's been going on when it comes to dual language learners. We use the word dual language because at that age in these younger years kids really are learning two languages at the same time they're learning their native language and they're learning another language and are the proportion of English language learners and dual language learners in our country is growing the data that we're using here is using ELLs instead of DLLs because that's how the federal government's defining them right now. But what you see here essentially is flatlining actually if you look really closely you see things are widening in terms of the gaps between the kids who are English speakers and those who speak another language at home and are having to take these tests in English. Ignored we think this is an area ripe for discussion. I'm really looking forward to hearing what many of you in the room think. What we found evidence that there was really not much attention paid at all to do a language learning and how to insert that into policy in a way to really help and support those students almost nothing going on in terms of compensation and parity in compensation for teachers of much younger children than our public school teachers. Principal preparation is something that needs some more attention. I will say that the National Association for Elementary School Principles is very aware of this issue and wants to be working in this area and has been active and vocal but in terms of policy or changes we've only seen a couple of places where that's happening. Technology is really not something that's been part of the conversation in any deep way and we see that as a place that's been pretty much ignored. And lastly, imperiled. These are areas that I think should really give us pause and think about what the recession meant to kids for the past five years but also some of these are indicators that we were seeing before the recession even started. We are certainly seeing a widening in achievement gaps between low-income children and children who are from families that are not qualifying for reduced lunch for example. And there is one study that we know in the report on kindergartners and this is really kind of disturbing data showing that 25% of kindergartners in 2010 were in poverty, 25% in 2010. Programs that rely on federal funding as you see earlier that flat line in that graph, that rainbow graph really I think kind of helps us to make that point. And research-based approaches to ensuring that children are reading by third grade is something that we can talk about in our discussion and then the political consensus on the federal level at least is certainly something that we have really not seen moving in an upward direction aside from a couple of isolated cases. This is just a graph to give you a sense of the state of the households that children are coming from today. And this is data from the National Center for Education Statistics on how many children in our public schools qualify for free or reduced priced lunch. And that's essentially another way of saying how many children are coming from families that are low income at about 185% of poverty or below. And then for the non-wongs out there that basically means families of four who are making about $44,000 a year or less per year, you know, those are the families sending their kids to school. And our proportion of those families in our public schools is growing. And it has been growing before the recession and it certainly has continued since then. Okay, so that's, those are the the main findings from the report and I'm really looking forward to digging in and hearing your questions. I'm excited to hear from our panelists because I think that they can lend some perspective to this as well. And here in New America we are all about absolutely don't want everyone to have to agree with everything we say and we're looking forward to hearing whether there's some who find some things within this report that they want to debate. I think that would be excellent. So I think that just in closing I want to say we really have seen improved infrastructure from 2009 to 2013 but now what? If you have infrastructure, if you've laid the tracks but you don't have any train cars actually going down those tracks if you're not going to bring more children on board have you what have you been really doing with that money. So I'm now going to pause and introduce you to our moderator who will take us through a discussion of this. I'm so happy to have Sam Chaltain with us today and Sam who was the national director of the education forum and I'm sorry the national director for the forum for education and democracy is with us. He's also an author of several books and just a fantastic thinker and writer on a lot of these issues. I encourage you to follow his blog if you don't already and thank you Sam for being here and I know that he's into the discussion and then we'll proceed from there. Thanks again. Thanks Lisa. Hi everybody. Hi everybody. How are we doing? Thank you for braving the snow. Those of you that are in the room those of you that are following online thank you for stopping whatever it is that you are doing to tune in. And for those of you with the savvy and the interest in bridging those two worlds I don't think we've identified a specific hashtag for the Twitter users but so the hashtag subprime learning and I believe the most preferred Twitter account here would be at New America Ed. Is that right? So and just for those of you that don't think this way because Twitter is a lot of times described as like what you use when you want to tell people that you've had a salami sandwich. That's what Facebook is for. So the value of Twitter in professional context like this is imagine that in a moment any good idea that you hear, any good idea that you've heard in the old frame of thinking you have to internalize it, take notes, physically go to somebody else that isn't in this room tell them what you heard and then hope that there's a multiplier effect. Whereas here for those people that are going to be using social media in real time every valuable idea or statistic imagine it as a thought balloon that can immediately leave the room enter cyberspace and potentially have a multiplying effect immediately around the world. So that's why those of us that pay attention to those things pay attention to. So hashtag subprime learning at New America Ed. We've got about 40 minutes so I want to get right to it but first I have a brief pop quiz before we get into our panel and I think it's directly relevant to this topic. So 1968 an Ivy League professor of child psychology tested a theory he had about the best way to support child development and growth in a couple of struggling elementary schools near his campus. It worked and the schools registered in the span of three to five years traumatic improvements in everything from test scores to behavioral data to discipline and attendance and allowed this individual to be the first to rebut the widely held theory at the time that it was essentially impossible to support high poverty children without touching on all of the other ways in which their lives could be impacted. The pop quiz is first by a show of hands, be honest. How many people in this room know who I'm talking about? Yes. Okay. Anybody bold enough to shout it out? James Comer is correct. Still teaching at Yale and Comer's theory which for those of us for people that don't live and breathe this, this seems like the most obvious observation in the world and usually when I share it people say that's not what we're doing but Comer's observation was that if you really want to help a community of young people learn and grow then you have to ensure that the entire community of adults ideally from bus drivers to math teachers to parents understands can diagnose and meet the full developmental needs of kids cognitive, social, emotional, ethical, physical, linguistic. The reason I bring that up we could have a whole separate panel on the ways in which our willingness to heed Dr. Comer's advice has waxed and waned over time but in many respects that's what we're here to talk about today that the wisdom of what children need has been with us for a long time and our ability to actually follow through on that wisdom is what continues to ebb and we're here with some really remarkable people to reflect on where to from here as Lisa just said now what and it's always been important but a number of statistics some of which Lisa just mentioned in this report and others that she didn't I think speak to the fierce urgency of this particular moment she said 25% of kindergarteners as of 2010 living in poverty 48% of all children in this country now eligible for free and reduced lunch the one that would make Dr. Comer roll over only one state in the country currently requires courses in child development for prospective principles and 26 states have formal definitions of what constitutes school readiness now depending upon what you believe in the faith of people to put together good definitions of school readiness that last statistic could be viewed half glass you know half full half empty but what we're here to talk about today is to think specifically about this most important part of a young person's life 0 to 8 and what we need to be paying more attention to so let's get to the panel and because this is already proving itself to be a multimedia event our first panelist will be appearing virtually Ron Haskins is the co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings institution and somebody who has served over the course of his long and prestigious career as advisor to both the White House and Congress on issues of welfare in fact he was instrumental in the 1996 overhaul of welfare policy and because time is precious there's more I could say about Ron but here's one thing in case you wonder his capacity to speak to these issues three separate times he was the editor of the Green Book which is the 1600 page compendium of all the nation's social programs so clearly Ron is very capable of speaking to these issues this is a taped performance where we'll at least be able to hear what Ron thinks about this report can learn a tremendous amount from the report I like also that it gives data on spending and how much we're spending on these early childhood programs so I think it's a terrific report. Total spending on children is really a problem and all children's programs are going to be affected and in fact as you know Head Start has already been affected apparently the money's been restored but still we lost a year of you know a substantial cut in Head Start and I've read various places up to 50,000 kids or maybe even more were cut I'll say that isn't really what happened but still cutting programs is bad so this year there's a great report from the Urban Institute that many in this audience probably know about and this year I think 2012 spending was down by about $38 billion for kids now this had not previously happened last couple years we've had some years in which spending went down but before that it had been a long time spending on children increased every year and over the next 10 years they estimate that spending on children will increase 2% and spending on the elderly will increase 66% from a huge monstrous baseline and even spending on interest on the debt will increase something like 37% so these numbers are very concerning I often hear advocates say there's plenty of everybody we shouldn't fight each other I want to say that's not true as long as we continue to increase our spending on the elderly as much as we're doing now there won't be enough money for other things and gradually between spending on the elderly and net interest it's going to take a bigger and bigger portion of federal budget you can already see this it's happening and it's squeezing other spending and kids are not exactly politically powerful so their spending will be squeezed I was especially glad that you included information on home visiting I mean all of it's important but I am partial to home visiting because I've been studying the Obama evidence based initiatives the way I count it there's six of them and home visiting is one and it's an extremely interesting approach that the administration is taking first of all they identified programs that they consider to be supported by rigorous evidence not necessarily random assignment but rigorous evidence they find very careful and after a couple of years they've now identified 14 model home visiting programs that they consider to be based on solid evidence and the states have to use those programs in order to get the federal dollars so I think this is a great idea if you think of title one of the elementary and secondary education act it's about 15 billion a year now we spent hundreds and hundreds of billions on that program and we don't have much to show for it because who knows what the states are doing they certainly were not using model programs and there was very little evaluation and that's the second thing that the administration is doing not just making the states use evidence based programs but they are requiring good rigorous evaluations and they're helping the states get third party advice on evaluations and they require that money for the valuations we put in the budget this has been a long time my estimation about many children's programs is that we don't have money in the budget for valuations so we don't evaluate very much so that is a very very important thing one last thing about it that's interesting is that the states they spent the first years worth of money primarily on getting the states to do a needs assessment on where the poor families in the state lived the programs are going to be focused on not just poor families but the poorest of the poor families and the states then have to have a plan for how they're going to gradually build the program and then the federal government gave them more money going to spend $1.5 billion over five years so it's pretty pretty healthy chunk of money especially in this current environment all that was enacted since Obama came to office and the states are going to gradually expand their programs using models that have been tested that show that they do produce impacts and continuously evaluating I think that's as good as it gets if we follow this approach with other programs I think we can improve the impacts of our programs thank you Ron he's not here but we can still give it to him thank you all right I'm going to be joined up here now by our other panelists and by Lisa so if you all want to come up and as they make their way to stage it's about 230 time check so we have about 30 minutes obviously I have questions for all of them I'm also committed to at some point turning to the audience so as you listen if questions occur to you know that I'm going to be doing my best to come to you before we all scatter and I think I'm going to introduce both panelists and then I may direct a few questions at each of them individually so as I said this is a complex issue and New America has really produced the perfect blend of scholars and practitioners to speak to this issue seated in the middle of the panel is Diane August good afternoon Diane Diane is the managing director of the American Institutes of Research and she directs its specific work around research of English language learners she was the lead investigator for a 10 year NIH study on child health and development as it pertained to literacy in English language learners so she is as qualified to speak to that particular issue which was one of the areas that Lisa flagged as one of being real kind of ignoring or neglect at this part and she's been teacher and administrator a legislative age she began her career teaching Spanish to ELLs for $5 an hour and received both her MA and her PhD from Stanford so again Diane welcome and then right next to me is Rianne Alvin who is the executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children this is an organization of 70,000 members that really is the leading voice for early childhood educators we should be particularly friendly to Rianne today because it appears by her bio that she's an Arizona girl so this weather is exacting a particular toll on her she spent 15 years addressing early childhood issues in Arizona and even co-wrote a citizens ballot that resulted in something called First Things First which was a rather genius idea in an area that usually doesn't have many when it comes to policy that set aside tobacco tax dollars for kids 0 to 5 and resulted in its own state agency as I said she's an Arizona girl through and through Northern Arizona University undergrad where somehow she became the most outstanding student three of her four years there and did my research and she also majored in hotel restaurant management which is a reminder to those of you with kids approaching college age don't worry so much she's an undergraduate major we'll head in lots of different directions and we're honored to have her and Rianne let's actually start with you because it seems like the core question we're wrestling with Lisa's now what is how do we build a system of high quality, high functioning, well funded that can support the development and growth of children 0 to 8 and this issue of systems building is one that I think you really understand and wrestle with so help us understand when you look at the system as it currently exists where are we on the right track where are the gaps and what do you think needs to be paid attention to most going forward well I should have known that a person with your background would dig behind the actual bio to find what was really happening so it's great to be here Sam thank you very much for the introduction Lisa for inviting me to participate I would first start by saying that I think your assessment of the system is right on in that when you look at the progress that's been made over the last decade in the system I would argue that as it becomes historic that we'll look back and say it was transformative for early learning that we have focused on the regulation the governance structure we've focused on a variety of things that have begun to make the system work better there's so many states that are focusing on the elements of the system that hadn't been before and even states like Arizona where what was it that we struggled to have great policy that's not just Arizona that's everybody so I do think that significant progress has been made having said that there's a lot of work to do and I want to just identify the points that I think are spaces first off I would say the system connectors between the age bands are an important spot we've done a decent job at getting the system elements that connect three and four year olds together we've done a decent job with some of the system elements with babies and infants and toddlers and we've looked a little bit at K3 those spaces have to connect together to really have an aligned and coordinated system and I think that is a place to focus so for example if you look at the connections between pre-K, K1, 2 and 3 you look at the space where developmentally appropriate practice and what we know to be how young children connect with what the elementary school years are saying about the common core and about the rigor that they want to see and how does that connect that's a systems issue how does that connect together kids who are in great home visiting programs how does that connect to their high quality early learning experience so I think the connecting space is the second thing is if you get past the jargon of systems let's define what we're saying for families and children systems building means that they have a seamless early learning experience that they're able to not have these abrupt changes as they matriculate their early years and so when we look at that and you think about assessment and standards and curriculum all of the elements of some of the elements of system building I would push us to start to even step back to teacher preparation programs and it's becoming a stronger and stronger theme in my thinking because we can look at standards we can look at assessment we can look at curriculum but if we don't address the fact that early learning professionals and K3 teachers are educated in completely different universes really to some to a great degree that that we can do all we want once they all get into their programs and they all they all start working together but if we don't address how that preparation happens I think that we're really missing the boat and so I would say it's that is for me that's the next huge nut to crack and actually let's stay with that issue of teacher preparation for a moment and shift to you Diane so I mean as Lisa mentioned dual language learning is one of the areas the report indicates as being ignored so when it comes to teacher preparation and evaluation of really high quality English language learner programs what's what do we need to be aware of and are there any areas in particular that we should be paying attention to yeah so first I want to thank you very much for inviting me to be here and really commend you on writing a policy report that calls attention to English language learners all too often English language learners are included as an afterthought in a sense the language usually goes all students including English language learners right how many of you have heard that line and then promptly people forget about the English language learners and just think about all students and don't think about the special the strengths that these children bring to learning and the challenges they face I really commend you for that and thank you so the a big issue for teachers who teach English learners is that most English language learners are in mainstream classrooms and being taught by mainstream teachers with very little support from English as a second language specialist as your report points out there used to be many more bilingual programs and there are now so the children are being educated by mainstream teachers and most of the teacher preparation programs do not provide instruction on how to support English language learners in mainstream classrooms so this is a very it's a real problem I think there are five states whose certification programs actually provide in specific instruction on how to educate English language learners so that is a really big issue with regard to certification some states are trying to deal with this now Massachusetts has and because of a lawsuit I might add which often is the case when we get large systems to move on behalf of second language learners usually they're all sued lurking somewhere there was a case in Massachusetts but the state has a program called retail now and what they're attempting to do is provide professional development for all mainstream teachers in structured English immersion approaches so teaching these teachers how to support use strategies that support English language learners in classrooms so that's an important initiative with regard to teacher evaluation systems I'm not going to go into a litany about my sort of how I feel about these teacher evaluation systems I think there are a lot of flaws in the system there was a project I was involved in a couple years ago with the American Federation for Teachers which was really interesting what we did was the AFT had funds to help state two states New York State and Rhode Island develop teacher evaluation systems and they were both based on the Danielson framework and they had special I3 funds from the federal government to work with these states to help them incorporate effective methods for teaching English learners and children with disabilities into these evaluation systems Danielson in particular so we spent quite a bit of time looking at the Danielson framework which is one of the major frameworks that's being used in the country for teacher evaluation and thinking about what kinds of changes might we make to the system to ensure that English learners were fully incorporated that teachers were being evaluated on how effective they were with all students in a classroom not just children who spoke English as their first language one of the things we found of course is that there was no language in these frameworks specific to English learners which is good in some ways and bad in others it's good because what we know about effective instruction for English learners is that it really builds on what we know about effective instruction for all kids I mean you've got to start with really good a really good knowledge base about what you do with all kids and the context instruction is important for all children it's also important for English learners but you have to go beyond that and provide additional support for ELs and so in developing these systems I'm not going to go into all the details of sort of things that we changed I mean I could mention a few things that were real issues one is that some and we're not talking about the criteria themselves but if you look at the rubrics used to rate teachers if you look at what high quality teaching looks like in some instances high quality teaching for mainstream kids as defined would actually be counterproductive with English learners I'll give you an example so teachers would get very high ratings if they used mostly higher order thinking questions well this makes sense but with English learners one of the ways that you help them understand the content well enough to be able to answer those questions is to ask very detail oriented questions so if somebody was in a classroom rating a teacher who had ELs in the classroom on this criteria which is really important they would be giving teachers who were doing absolutely the wrong thing for ELs high marks that's an example there it's a great and vivid example as is the one that you're just speaking to about the AFT which is obviously existing outside the policy arena being able to leverage I3 funds which makes me think about this is a question for the table including Lisa about this question of policy so as we all know and this is what I was meeting before it was not a slide on Arizona policy is a blunt instrument right you can give people money you can tell them what they must do or you can tell them what they can't do but there's still this tension between first of all understanding what is it we want people to do how is it being done well and who should be doing it so the question for you all when it comes to this particular issue is what is the Goldilocks point of policy when it comes to really supporting the type of zero to eight continuum that we talk about and you can answer that think about it federal state and or local lens through your experiences I would add first off I would add you had three categories of bluntness I would add it can enable too and I think that's for me it's as much about how the policy is framed what the policy is and policy that enables a partnership between federal state and local is the kind of policy that cuts across political ideologies it's the kind of policy that takes into account that kids operate in an environment that's affected at different levels and so rather than naming a specific policy I think policy that doesn't feel like it's top down solely or bottom up free for all solely but is a partnership and builds on this system work building work that has happened I think is really important and I think in particular right now with the appropriations that are on the table we have a chance to really as we look at how the Department of Education and HHS write this language we have an important opportunity to get this partnership piece right and to me that is as important as what specifically the policy says although that's important too the second thing and I've become dogmatic about this quite frankly is can we not challenge ourselves to be sophisticated enough to hold quality and access in the same space together and coordinate the two I mean that's a 20 year 30 year way past my education in Arizona debate on you know you get access and then you lose quality you get quality and you lose access we know the science has now confirmed that you know young kids have to be safe while their parents work and they have to be ready for kindergarten to hit the ground running or we're leaving them behind so how do we we've been creating funding streams that either deal with the access issue or the quality issue God forbid we put them together in the same conversation and we're willing to pay for what real quality costs so that we achieve these goals I think that to me trumps everything yes I'll add one of the things that both Rian and said and is really important is the issue of and Ron I guess is the issue of effective practice and a policy I guess partly because I'm a researcher as well as a practitioner one of the issues in creating good policies for second language learners is the lack of a really good knowledge base around what effective practice looks like so we know a lot about development how children develop I wouldn't say a lot but we know something about how children develop content area knowledge and how they develop language we know very little there have been very few intervention studies done that would really tell us what effective instructional strategies look like for second language learners so I did a little search in preparation for today if you look at all the studies funded between 1980 and 2013 that are intervention studies focused on kids in pre-K and K that relate to developing pre-literacy skills in ELs and those oral language skills that align with pre-literacy skills are 18 studies, 18 so you know when we on the one hand we want instructional practices forget about programs even right now but practices that work for these kids on the other hand our research base is so slim that unless we do something about providing more dedicated funding to figure out you know what actually works we're really not going to make the strides we need to make to better educate these children to clarify in question before we go to Lisa part of what you're suggesting is that in a way the best role the federal government can play or among the best roles the federal government can play is a more active seeding of the type of research that can actually inform good policy. I mean I could talk a lot about policy and different policies around assessment and accountability for example and the policies that drive ineffective practices for ELs for example predicating success solely on scores on tests in English is a real problem so we value bilingual education and you look at the accountability provisions in Title I which really drives what's going on in states and children's sort of accountability is pretty much predicated on either actually for the early grades instruction in Spanish or instruction in English or outcomes in Spanish or outcomes in English and it's a huge issue because what happens is that you drive instruction for kids into only Spanish instruction which is a real problem actually the kids end up in fourth grade not having literacy skills they need to succeed in these mainstream classrooms or you end up teaching them only in English and you don't take advantage of all their first language skills so you know there are many different things I could talk about related to policy but I want to bring up research because sort of effective practices on the table here and we really need to learn more about which practices work for which children under which circumstances. Particularly in light of this issue one of the other statistics that jumped out to me in the report was that by 2030 40% of the kids in this country will be living in multilingual households so it was always important it is becoming increasingly important Lisa break it down for us. I think that this policy question is very urgently needed to be answered now because we need to recognize how much states are going to continue to need to step up and be robustly supporting what's happening in these younger years and into the third grade. The federal government I mean last night's speech from Obama was a sense in some ways great you mentioned it absolutely as part of the education spectrum but think about compared to last year and even the dollar amounts that we're talking about for the kinds of programs that were suggested in this race the top program that becoming because of the omnibus is great but it's tiny tiny carrots compared to what was suggested last year when it comes to the a full robust program for four year old throughout the country. So now it really means well where are the states then going to fall in this. Thank you. It feels like we're just getting started right? But it's a ten minute warning so if there's going to be an opportunity to hear from you now is it so I think we have some mics just like to ask we'll buy a show of hands and if I call on you if you could just briefly tell us your name where you're from what you're representing and then we'll get to your question and if it's directed towards somebody in particular let us know. In the back. My name is Mark Hauser I'm from the Kato Institute this isn't directed to anyone in particular anyone can speak on if you have an opinion but a lot of the randomized studies that look at pre-K show fade out which was mentioned early on once and could you just talk more about fade out and why early childhood education is a good investment and not just something that goes away by fifth grade. There's a lot of work on this in terms of this the mounds of studies that are showing outcomes far beyond third grade on a lot of social emotional measures but this idea that and it is showing up in a few studies there is a convergence so that by third grade we may not see the same kinds of differences between those who have had a little bit of preschool and those who haven't and that is helping to I think seed in important ways this conversation of continuity and of ensuring that that kindergarten year first in that second and third grade year also very high quality and robust for kids. Yeah it's Diane I mean if you just think about it the skills and knowledge that are required of children differ from year to year so you can't assume that what children acquire in kindergarten is going to prepare them to deal with the skills and knowledge they need to acquire in third grade it provides a foundation but you need to sort of support them all through the grade spins to help them ultimately reach the new standards that we have set for them. Other questions? Yeah. Hello I'm Ballora Washington with the CDA council for professional recognition one of the issues in your report is that the whole issue of compensation is largely ignored. Last night we heard 10 cents. What is it going to take for the compensation issue to become more part of the agenda? You know Ballora that gives me a great opportunity I have to tell you as I look through the report the irony of pages 11 and 12 which are teaching and learning policies struck me struck me like a ton of bricks that the first evaluating and improving teacher effectiveness we have increased attention so we want teachers to be effective and we are so on top of that and focused on it and if you look at everything behind that every indicator behind that that I would argue get to to where you want to be with teacher effectiveness so parity improving leadership in elementary schools teacher credentials and preparation, child care quality is mostly as the eye with the this is where the graphics are so great that most of the focus largely ignored and so talk about a systems issue of connecting the dots if we want teacher effectiveness we have to and I think starting to look at those how we get there is a complicated obviously there are many opportunities to figure out how to get there but one of them there are several one is I think to make start to make this alignment between the value 12 teacher brings to a young child and the value in early learning teacher brings to a child and how similar they are I think part of appropriate degree progression whatever that may mean I think is another piece to the conversation but you're right if we want to get to if we're so focused on evaluating and improving teaching effectiveness and then we're not willing to work on any of the policies that support that then we're going to find ourselves in the same swirl a decade from now time for one more question if there is and let me just well please raise your hand if you have a question I just wanted to make a point about that kind of flat federal funding line which will have a little bit of an up for 2014 but the question is how can you maybe that means a head start teacher another head start teacher can be hired maybe that means another kindergarten teacher can be hired to actually do a full day perhaps you know dip and if we can get some of those numbers up however it's just one year and there's this feeling that is that going to be able to be sustained in any way for the coming years and again that's why I think that the states are going to become more and more important in this conversation because parity in compensation and the ability to really kind of recreate our teacher preparation programs is going to require that sustained funding that enables people to really feel like hey this is a field where I'm actually going to be able to make a living I'm going to go into this field then I will take facilitators privilege and ask the last question which is Lisa you said that the story of this report is a flatlining and then you even talked about the fact that the our spending per child has actually gone down slightly 2002 that's related to preschool programs that states are supporting the per child funding went down now that's up until 2012 and I know that the National Institute for Early Education Research that looks at this every year will have new numbers let's see you know let's hope that that's right yes it has gone down the per people child expenditure for preschool so I guess what I'm wondering particularly from the three of you to take us out is what is going to be required in order to make a much deeper more sustained and predictable level of investment politically viable what needs to happen in order for the politics around this seemingly low hanging fruit which is the well being of children to work more effectively and sustainably I'll start with that I think and this I can give some examples from Arizona because it's a very conservative state and we were able to pass a significant amount of money for kids and I think this is where I think politics gets more polarized the larger the scale is and when you can get to local communities with local people who are Republicans and Democrats sitting together it becomes about kids and less about politics and so I think again it's about sophistication and how we do our work and making sure that this is a community conversation where there are nonpartisan mayors and Republican County supervisors and Democratic School Board officials whomever having this conversation that can then become a national conversation but it has to come from local communities and the second thing is I think there are enough messages there's enough research science research there are enough commonalities that this can cut across political ideologies and we can find a common ground around everyone wanting young children to get a fair start in life and defining what that looks like so I think organizations like the Alliance for Early Success are really critical because they pull resources it sounds like from foundations and sort of work on a coordinated dramatic agenda to try to change state policy so to the extent that organizations who care about or concerned about early childhood can get together and come up with a common agenda and focus I think that's really important and really critical. Last word Lisa. I just wanted to bring out one of the things that's certainly sticking in my mind from the report and that we wanted grapple with is that low income families are the ones that are really struggling as we show in the report and that are not being served in terms of their access to high quality childcare, full day kindergarten and certainly the ability to have publicly funded preschool available to their kids so how do we ensure that the policies that come forward are really able to make a really big difference for those families that are in need and I think that that's going to have to be one of the big things that we're grappling with in the coming months. Just a starting point but a good starting point. Thank you Rian Alvin, Diane August, Ron Haskins by video. Lisa Guernsey in the New America team. Thank you all for coming.