 Good morning everybody, I know some of you are still wandering in but we did want to get started on time We have a packed a packed agenda For those of you, I don't know my you don't for those of you. I don't know my name is Rafael Heller I'm with jobs for the future and we are co-hosting this event with learning policy Institute I just would like to say a few very quick words welcome and then and then step out of the way first just to thank you to learning policy Institute to Shawnee's to Charmaine to Libya to win in the California office We are co-hosting this event, but they did a very large share of the work and very effectively So thanks you guys are terrific Secondly, just a couple of words about the papers that we'll be discussing today a little background so about two years ago The floor a William and floor Hewlett Foundation asked jobs for the future to produce a series of white papers on what they call deeper learning and The name the brand name isn't so important the the important issue is that There is a ton of research in the recent years showing that while academics is absolutely critical It is not enough for kids to succeed in college and careers and the rest of their lives In addition to high-level Academic work kids need some combination of skills variously called Deeper learning soft skills employability skills Some people still use the term non-cognitive skills, although nobody particularly likes it They've kindly recently recommended we call it them success skills, but that hasn't caught on yet The important thing is that If it's true that these things matter very much We need to try to figure out what the implications are for secondary schools especially so we've Commissioned a series of papers, and I hope you look at all of them asking what the implications are for assessment for the use of technology in schools for Civic education for career education for how we how we think about teaching and teacher education We don't have the answers our job is to ask smart people to review the research for us to begin to think about some policy recommendations Which brings us to the papers today the two latest papers in the series are both related Very much very closely to equity issues. Basically the question is Again, if it's true that yes academics are central are critically important, but so are other skills Interpersonal intrapersonal whatever you call them What are the what are the equity implications? What will it take to make sure that all children have access to what we call deeper learning? What will it take to ensure that students who are immigrants or English language learners have those opportunities? So that's where we are that's that that's what brings us here today, and that's what brought us to the papers in your packets With that my three minutes are up. I want to let our speakers begin In a minute, we'll hand the mic over to Sarah sparks from Education Week. He'll be moderating for us She's assistant editor at Ed Week She also if you follow her work Seems to know more about education research than most education researchers do Patricia Gondra just in from the civil rights project at UCLA And let me hand the mic over to Linda darling Hammond Well, I believe used to work at Stanford or somewhere, but is now the CEO and President of the brand new learning policy Institute I just want to reassure anybody who might be listening in from Stanford that I am still teaching there And I will be back on Monday to teach adolescent development to my student teachers, so I am splitting my time But I am glad to welcome you on behalf of the learning policy Institute We call ourselves the learning policy Institute because our focus is on Research and policy that support learning and the kind of learning that is empowering and equitable for all young people Not all policy it tends to learning And in fact, we think that has to become the focus of all our efforts because the kind of learning that Rafael described has implications for the nature of teaching for the nature of school Organizations for what school systems do and for what policies have to do to help us become ready for the century We are already in but are not yet actually fully ready for as somebody once said the future is here It's just not equitably distributed And so I do want to add my thanks to the staff Charmaine, Olivia, Shanice and others who made this possible all the staff in our Washington office