 Good afternoon and welcome to the New America Foundation. I'm David Gray and on behalf of my colleague Lisa Guernsey and all of us here at New America, we delve into the 2012 election this afternoon and welcome you to this event on what the presidential candidates should be saying about childcare and early learning. Thank you all for joining us today and thank you to all those who are watching over the Internet and watching it live on C-SPAN. I want to begin by saying thank you to the Annie E. Casey Foundation for its leadership on the issues we'll be discussing today and its support of this and other events. In our research here, we have come to believe that attention to and investments in quality affordable childcare and in early learning can have dual generational benefits that can make a difference for the social mobility of American families. You'll be hearing about some of those advantages this afternoon. Casey and I have hosted a number of events previously on childcare and early learning but today we'll be talking about what the candidates and the parties should be discussing because next Wednesday night, the presidential debates begin. And thus far in our discussions with the Obama and Romney campaigns and as we've looked at the party platforms, we've seen less attention paid to childcare and early learning than we might have expected, both in the presidential and also in the congressional races. Given the research that points to the impact of attention to the earliest years of life and given the advantages of childcare and helping low income workers, we might have expected, for example, Democrats to focus on childcare after Obama had been criticized for allowing flexibility for states and welfare work requirements. And then given the gender gap that Republicans face and need to overcome and given that childcare has been an issue that many working mothers have been concerned about for a long time, we might have expected some attention to be paid by Republicans. As I've reported in a recent Huffington Post piece and others have talked about, there's been insufficient attention paid by the campaigns in the opinion of many. The singular focus on employment and the deficit have taken the wind out of the sails of issues such as these. And yet they're critical and linked to jobs and social mobility both now and in the future. Now meanwhile, there's been a lot of work going on in the U.S. Senate to develop a reauthorization bill on the childcare and development block grant, as many of you know. From what I understand, they're making good progress at the committee level and endeavor to present a draft to the public to view in the very near future. As I understand it, some of the keys for Senators Burr and Mokulski, for example, have been on raising the quality and health and safety in programs for kids, even given a resource constrained environment. That could mean a more modest reauthorization, but still there are opportunities available for kids to be safer. But there will be, of course, a lot of opinions on this legislation when it comes out. And there'll be a lot of opinions expressed here today both by our panelists and by you in the audience. Something's come up at the Senate and Chris Toppings has likely pulled away for today, I'm afraid, but we have four experts that I'm thrilled to be that are here today to help us think through what the candidate should be saying next month in the debates. And then what whoever wins in November should say when Congress comes back and then in 2013 about early learning in child care. Full biographies on all four speakers are available outside along with some reading materials by us and some of our speakers, but we are very pleased to be joined by Helen Blank, who is the Director of Child Care and Early Learning at the National Women's Law Center. Rob Duggar, who is Chairman of the Ready Nation Advisory Board, invest in Kids Working Group. Grace Reef, who's Chief of Public Policy and Evaluation with Child Care Aware of America. And Lisa Guernsey, who's Director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation. Friends, thank you for taking your valuable time to be with us today. We'll begin with me posing questions, some specific questions to each of our speakers that build on the general topic. And then after their responses and comments will open the discussion up for your questions. So Grace, let's begin with you today. And just I'd like your perspective if you would start us off about what the candidates really should be most focusing on to create an ideal child care system. If you could pass the best CCDBG reauthorization bill in the world, what would you like? How should the system be changed to meet the needs of families and children's? In other words, what are the most important changes to the system that you would make if you were a presidential candidate? Well, I think that's more than one question. Well, that's right. But you know, let me just say, it's amazing that the candidates can be so focused on jobs and not have talked about childcare. I mean, parents with young children need childcare to work. They don't have childcare, they can't work. So that really is an emission that is interesting at best that they haven't yet talked about childcare. Here's what I wish the candidates would talk about. First of all, that childcare is key to work and parents that if we're going to strengthen this economy, we need to have affordable quality childcare. Second, children and childcare need to be safe. And they need to be in a setting that promotes their healthy development. And, you know, we're really not where we should be on that today. At childcare aware of America, we have done six licensing studies in the last couple of years. We've taken a look at state laws and regulations to see what the states are doing with regard to childcare centers and family childcare homes. And what we found is really not okay. The average score for centers in our reports is 87, which is out of 150. So that's about 58%. So that would be a failing grade in any classroom in America. For family childcare homes, you know, at home care, the average score is at 69, which is out of 150, which is a 46%, which is even worse. We just came out with a report, I don't know if you've seen it, I brought some today, it's called Leaving Children to Chance. This report, we came out with a couple months ago and it looked at what's happening with family childcare homes. You know, when you look at the top 10 scores, you had no A's, you had one B, four C's, and the 10th state, Massachusetts, failed, and they were in the top 10. So all the other states are really not where they should be. And you ask, well, not where they should be with what? Let's start with, I think I heard the first remarks say, you know, investments in childcare and early learning. I don't think it's childcare and early learning. I think that for many parents and many children, childcare is an early learning program. Children are there on average, 11 million kids, about 35 hours a week. And so, you know, for those lucky enough, you know, 1.3 million children who are in state pre-K, a couple hours a day, a couple hours a week, that's great. And that makes a huge difference in school readiness. And for the almost a million, it's 967,000 children who are in head start, I think primarily four that also makes a big difference. But the rest of the children, as I said, there's 11 million. They were in childcare somewhere. And those settings matter. And that's why, you know, when we look at our licensing system, and we see how it's stacking up, it's really important to ensure that those teachers, number one, are safe. Let's weed out the people who don't belong in the business of caring for unrelated children. So we want to see a comprehensive background check. Second, training, minimum training is the biggest way you can improve the quality of care. You need education, you need training. And that is what guides effective interaction between children and adults. It's approaches to learning. It's safety, like basic CPR, and health and safety practices, and approaching children with maybe different behavioral issues. And all of that leads to school readiness. And the fact is we can't be looking at children in kindergarten and then the later grades and see that they're not really progressing the way that they should and ignore the fact that they spent five years in a childcare setting where maybe the TV was on all day or maybe, you know, the providers didn't have any training and they didn't have age appropriate stimulation activities, thinking things that we'd like to see in a quality early learning setting. So at a minimum background checks, minimum training, we also want to see inspections. Why? Because inspections help ensure that when a state does set standards, we all know the federal law doesn't have any minimum, so there's nothing really to check on. But when each state does have a policy of inspecting that they look to see, you know, are the children safe? And, you know, what's the caregiver doing? That somebody's in there on a regular basis at least once a year, preferably more often. Because otherwise, any standards, even a gold standard doesn't matter. You know, in California, they do inspections once every five years. In Montana, it's once every five years. In Pennsylvania, it's once every six. In Michigan, it's once every 10. The law calls for effective enforcement. But if anybody thinks every, you know, once every five years or six or 10 is effective, I, I think expect a little more than that. So we are looking, basically, to raise the bar. And we spent a lot of time working with parents. Parents make assumptions. We've done polling. Parents assume a license means something. They assume there are some basic protections for children. They assume that somebody's looking out to see where, you know, how's the program doing? But what we know from the gap between the logical assumptions of parents and what's actually happening in state policies is that it's huge. The parents that we've been working with throughout the country have stories to tell. And I'm hoping that we make the candidates think twice, what are we doing? I was in Alaska two weeks ago, a 19 month old toddler died on the playground. She had a she was strangled on some playground equipment. And when the grandmother came to pick her up, the quote in the newspaper was, Oh, all the staff were running around to find somebody who knew CPR. And you know, I'm thinking they had to rush around to find someone who knew CPR. Why isn't it a requirement that every, you know, staff person who's working with children in a childcare center is required to know CPR? I mean, a crisis happens and they have to rush around to find somebody. And I'll tell you, it's because, you know, the state laws require somebody on the premises have CPR. Okay, so you rush around and find that somebody when a bad thing happens. You know what, that's not okay. Would it have made a difference for that child? I don't really know. But I know that we have examples from our parents who've had some really tragic things happen that the status quo is not okay. And until we talk about what's really going on out there, it's hard to get policymakers attention to see the status quo is not okay, we really need to fix it. We really need to do something about it. So I think we're really hoping that this reauthorization bill in a bipartisan manner with limited, you know, fiscal options, we all know that. I wish we had a printing press and a magic wand, but unfortunately, we don't is a roadmap to quality. And it starts with safety. That is the bottom rung. No child should be in a childcare setting. Regardless of income, I haven't even started talking about, you know, children on subsidy and what they have access to. But let's say all children, regardless of income should be safe in childcare, and parents shouldn't have anxiety when they're at work about whether or not their child is going to be safe. And these parents have learned the hard way through a tragic situation. Hopefully, we can do something to preempt that from ever happening. So I will say, I'm not exactly sure what else you're looking for in a federal bill, but one is safety. Two is, maybe if we require some minimum training, and start on that road to quality, we can do things that make a difference, like technical assistance to follow up training to make sure that somebody who gets some training actually uses that training effectively either in a home setting or in a childcare center. We're not quite there yet. A lot of our agencies, we have 600 agencies throughout the country. They train about 600,000 providers a year. They also work with a lot of providers on technical assistance to make sure that the training sticks and makes a difference. But I think we need more of it. And so we're looking to try and see if the cornerstone of quality in a childcare setting is the training and education of the workforce if we can up the bar on that. I think there's a lot that can be done. I think that as far as quality is concerned, you have about 28 states with a quality rating system. That's a really good thing, transparency for parents so that they can better understand the settings that they're selecting. It's tough to be a parent. What questions do you ask? What do you look for? I think every parent wants the warm person who's going to be friendly and nice and you can click with because you want someone who's going to love your children. But at the same time, the expectation should be if you're in the business of caring for unrelated children, there should be some criteria that come with that too. You should not have a history of violent offenses so that you might be a potential harm to the child. You should have some minimum training so that what you're doing can nurture the children and hopefully put them in a situation better ready to succeed when they start school. Unfortunately, as I said, what we've seen from our studies is that's not happening. I want to end with one other thing, which is we also have done a report on affordability and it's called Parents and the High Cost of Child Care. The fact of the matter is I've just described we're really not where we should be on the quality of care and the safety of care. For where we are, it's not affordable. It's crazy. How can it be that there's so much improvement to be done really to be where we need to go on this road map? Parents have tapped out. It's not affordable. In 36 states, the cost of infant care in the center is more than college. How can that be? That is the reality and I think we're going to have to look at some point alternative ways to finance child care and early education because parents are tapped out. The condition and quality of what's out there is really not what it should be to protect and promote the healthy development of children and how are we going to deal with that? This is not a low income children's issue. This is not a poverty issue. It is to some extent but this really the cost of care is a problem for all families regardless of income and frankly I have three children but if you have more than one child, it's almost impossible. So, you want to license the access, you want to access the license market, you want the license market to mean something. You don't want children just to be safe. That should be the minimum. Do no harm. Children and child care, there should be no harm and then it should be a roadmap to quality so that there's some type of connection between the setting you're in before you reach school and the point that you enter school so that you can succeed. So, I think that is our vision of what we'd like to see in any reauthorization bill. Grace, that's very helpful. I know we'll have a chance to go deeper in Q&A as well. Yeah, I've got four kids under six and I'm struggling with every question you just raised so I appreciate you raising it. Now, Helen, give me some good news here. Let's say you're going to plan the system and it's going to be your opportunity to work on reauthorization. What would you put into the to the bill? And then I'll maybe hold my second question until you finish that one rather than I've got another talk to you. I'm going to put them together. Then I'll ask my second question because she knows in a sense of what I'm going to ask. I'm very interested in today versus the 1988 to 1990 time period and 1996 time periods versus today. And along with Grace Helm, one of the leaders when we had the Child Care Development Blocker as it came about in 1990 following a campaign in 1988 where Bush 41 in Dukakis talked about child care in the 88 campaign in a way that we haven't seen since, I would argue, but in many ways led to what happened in 1990 with CCDBG. Then in 1996 you had out a campaign that was also what it was and the environment led to some reauthorization or some updates in the law in 1996 and then child tax credit. So things were different. Presidential candidates always didn't always ignore some of these issues. There have been some relatively recent examples of where conditions were a little bit different. I'm curious as to what am I right? Am I reading some of the historical tea leaves in terms of the elections and what do we need to do now to return to some of the conditions where there's more attention to the issues in this campaign similar to the way we saw in 1988 and 1996. So sorry, put the two questions. Was that the second question you thought I was going to ask you? Yeah. Good. Good. And I'm going to also try to present a fuller picture of sort of of where we are and what parents and providers are facing. And David, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today on behalf of the National Women's Law Center. Somehow in my very long career, I have always heard that it's not the right time for children and we don't have enough money to do what's right. When we were working on CCDBG, which was then called the Act for Better Child Care, someone took me to lunch and said, how dare you ask for $2 billion at the time when we have such a big deficit? And I don't think that the lack of resources should be the starting point for our debate on CCDBG reauthorization. Let's be clear. For low-income children to be in high quality early childhood settings that will improve their chances for better life outcomes, there have to be increased investments to support children, parents, early childhood educators, and childcare programs. And that's not impossible, even in this environment, especially given the strong case for investing in early childhood. Childcare assistance, it's a twofer. It can help improve a child's childcare environment, especially if it's robust enough to support high quality care. Childcare assistance by relief, by helping families work and go to school, can also lead to positive effects on a child's home environment. Both of these environments, both outside the child's home and the environment inside the child's home, can have a significant impact on children's development and pay off for our country, both for this economy and for our future economy. Despite the expanding awareness about the importance of better quality experiences for young children, and you'll hear that I'm sure from our other panelists, and the importance of childcare assistance for parents to work, we still haven't found the will to ensure that all of our children and their families, especially the most vulnerable, have the early childhood opportunities they need. And we owe our young children and our families who are trying desperately to work, we owe them better, and we need to do this for the sake of our nation's economic success. Early childhood doesn't have an extensive financing stream undergirding it like K-12 education. As Grace talked about, the bulk of support comes from parents, and we can't build a high-quality system with safe and supportive environments, with parents picking up the majority of the cost, because you've seen they're stretching themselves as far as they can. We can learn much from past reauthorizations. I think history teaches us a lot regarding the relationship of child care assistance to work, the challenges of winning the supports necessary to support high quality care, and the recognition that new investments are integral to successful reauthorizations. There were actually three reauthorizations that are relevant. Discussions around the 1990 reauthorization began in the spring of 1986 because we recognized it could be a presidential campaign issue. In the midst of planning the child care campaign that resulted in CCDBG, we took time out, and I remember being in the back of our conference room around these discussions, to work with Congress and the Reagan administration in a complimentary opportunity presented by a debate on welfare. They all agreed that child care assistance was key to enabling low-income mothers to get and keep a job. This led to an entitlement for child care assistance for mothers receiving welfare and a year of transitional child care assistance as mothers moved off. It wasn't even a fight. The debate also included a realization and a guarantee that programs receiving child care subsidies should at minimum receive the market rate for their services. Then we moved to the discussions around CCDBG. The child care entitlement for a substantial group of low-income or most vulnerable mothers was in place. We were then able to focus on making sure low-income mothers not on welfare, and this is really the same group of mothers because women move on and off welfare. They needed child care assistance as well. There was also as now a strong discussion around improving the quality and building the supply of child care. The bipartisan bills that were introduced in both houses with a significant number of cosponsors included federal standards because in the end the standards that govern the funding and the accompanying resources to meet them are the key drivers of quality. However, then as always there were competing voices and policy tensions between helping moms work, helping children succeed, the federal role, and state flexibility. The states weighed in. They joined the first Bush administration to argue for flexibility. As a result in order to move forward and enact legislation, the quality set aside, which with a supply set aside had been over 20% of total funding was significantly cut back. The federal standards were eliminated early in the process. A compromise on standards was further weakened in the final negotiations with the Bush administration, resulting in a provision the states only had to set minimal health and safety standards. Congress was clear from early debates that certain relatives receiving funds should be exempt from these standards. Funding was also cut back. The bill was finally enacted after a three-year debate and we were happy. It was interestingly enough included in a deficit reduction bill that also increased benefits from the earned income tax credit and raised taxes. It represented significant compromises but was enthusiastically re-received by the states, putting them on a stronger path. As Philip Court, a child care director in Tennessee, testified this summer at a child care hearing, it made a big difference for our parents and our providers. Let's turn to 1996. Then the debate was very basic. Congress decided to end the child care entitlement at the same time, this is a little ironic, as they were ending welfare as we know it and time limiting welfare benefits. However, this time advocates joined by governors Congress and the Clinton administration agreed that a significant infusion of new child care funds were necessary if low income women were going to face increased work requirements. This led to a second version of a Senate bill that included a 4 billion increase in child care funds over five years. The TANF bill also included a provision that allowed some TANF funding to be transferred to CCDBG. It was absolutely clear in that debate that if most of the low income women being expected to work were not going to earn enough to pay for child care. This is still true. The battle over quality was illuminating. The governor's leading the welfare discussions and many Republicans in the House wanted to completely eliminate the minimum standards and the quality set aside. After a long fight we won bipartisan support to maintain both, but we lost the requirement that states pay for the market rate. There was no meaningful discussion of improvements over that two over those two years. With these new funds and additional funding later in the Clinton administration, states made improvements between 1996 and 2001. They raised wages for providers. Some actually guaranteed child care assistance to low income mothers, whether they were on welfare or not. They helped child care teachers go back to school. Some hired new licensing inspectors. Then funds began to stagnate. Only one out of six children eligible for federal child care assistance now receives it. The number of children receiving help is actually declining. It's likely by the end of the year we'll be reaching only about one and a half million children. This is the lowest number of children served since 1998. However, the need for help is not dropping yet, but the cupboard for children who need high quality care while their parents struggle to work is bare. According to a study that the National Women's Law Center did in 2011, families in 37 states were worse off under one or more child care assistance policies than they were in 2010. States are making solemn like choices. Do they serve fewer children? Do they ask parents to contribute more toward the cost of the care? Do they pay child care providers lower rates? Waiting lists continue to grow. 75,000 children in Florida? When we did the child care bill there were 25,000. Over 20,000 children in Maryland and 36,000 in Massachusetts. At the same time, there's a fraying safety net for these families. The number of mothers receiving TANF is declining with time limits. More children are living not only in poverty, but in deep poverty. It's challenging for child care providers serving low-income children to provide high quality care with reimbursement rates that have failed to keep pace with rising costs. Only three states pay providers at the federally recommended level compared to 22 states in 2001. Well, three-fifths of the states report that they pay higher rates for high quality care. Approximately four-fifths of these states, the reimbursement rates even at the highest quality level, is below the 75th percentile of current market rates. Quality rating systems are an interesting way to help parents understand about higher quality care. But they are not real if parents don't have money to access this higher quality care and if providers don't get the support they need to improve their settings. Families receiving child care assistance now because of low rates may have difficulty finding a high quality or any child care option in their neighborhoods. Child care centers and family child care homes are shutting their doors in low income communities and more providers in middle income communities find it all but impossible to serve families receiving child care assistance. I'd urge presidential candidates to listen to the moms and to the providers. In New York City three-quarters of the families on a waiting list reported that their child care arrangements were negatively affecting their children. One parent from Minnesota is on the waiting list. My child is six months old and has been in three horrible daycares in two and a half months. Research is clear that parents are more likely to work if they have reliable child care and they find it very very challenging to work when they do not. In North Carolina about one out of four families on their state's waiting list had lost or had to quit their jobs while waiting for child care assistance. A Minnesota parent without assistance explained the consequences. I lost that job after eight months because of upsets in my schedule due to babysitting problems. I was very conscientious about lining up child care arrangements but disruptions caused everything that I had carefully planned to come tumbling down. Low income moms live on the edge. They face so many challenges and child care assistance is a lifeline. They're countless other stories about moms who benefited from child care assistance but time is short. There's no way that we can reach the goal of serving all low income children in high quality care if we continue to dismantle our fragile early childhood system now in place or place new demands on it without new resources. Child care and families deserve a reauthorization that's infused with significant new funds that enable more children to have child care assistance and that ensure that these children are in high quality settings that can offer them strong early learning experiences. It's too important for parents and children not to make this to make this a debate about whether access is more important than quality or vice versa. Real reform and accountability can't come without new investments to support the needed reforms. The reforms should include a focus on making the child care assistance system more accessible and logical for parents, paying child care providers on time, offering more continuity of care for children so as parents lose their jobs children aren't bounced in and out of child care settings, they should improve the standards for care that we fund, ensure that we have the support so the teachers can gain the education and skills they need to meet the standards and make sure that our children are in safe settings. We also have to design these reforms not with one particular type of care in mind. We have to recognize the various types of care that families rely on. For example many low income moms work non-traditional hours and they work shift work. More formal child care arrangements are not likely to fit their schedules and they may have to rely on informal care. We need reforms that work for all families including these moms. What's different now than in 1990 is that mothers poured into the labor force in the 70s and 80s leading to a significant increase in demand for child care. At the time there wasn't much of a child care infrastructure to help these moms. Newspapers around the country between 1986 and 1990 had front page stories that just kept going on and on about families challenges finding and affording child care. It was the subject of nightly news broadcasts that one time I was on NBC and CBS and CBS on the same night. In 1998 or 1989 I believe over a hundred child care bills had been introduced. When we worked to draft the bill in the spring of 86 and then move it in 87 and 88 to ensure it was a subject of the campaign it was. Both presidential campaigns candidates were in child care centers frequently and both had positions on child care. My mother was helping us out that summer because I think our youngest was then about 10 and she said oh being in this house is like being in policy 101. This year it is challenging it's there's no doubt to get many issues that affect families on the agenda. It's a different time but it's not different for the children and families who need high quality and reliable child care and we have options and with the will and some tough choices we can't find the resources to invest in child care which by helping our families work and our young children learn supports a strong economy right now and in the future. We can do it if we have to get moms to the picket lines we will but in community after community if you go to meetings and you ask mothers what's on their mind what are the most important issues low-income moms middle-income moms all moms what do they say we have the worst time finding child care. It's time we did something about it it's been having this debate for a long long time and it's time we we do what's right by our our kids. Thanks Ellen thank you very much really great really great now we're going to turn to Rob and Rob I'll ask you to focus on the very big picture from your experience if you would just say you are one of the presidential candidates Rob and how would you make the case to the country that these issues are important how would you persuade the country to make investments in in early childhood or take seriously some of the issues that I know you care deeply about and the folks in the room do as well. Well David thank you first thing I do I get I get Grace and I get Helen with me and we go through the issues of safety that it's it's tough finding places to be assured that a child young child can be safe and that's really the bottom line for that hour by hour day by day process of taking care of children. You need Helen because you need to know that this the struggle has been going on for many many years and I thank you Helen for that commentary that was really helpful to hear how this debate has been has been waged in years past with victories some losses but never ever coming or going as far as it needed to go. For me as a finance business economics professional and as a student of history this campaign is a lot like the 1960s 1960 race between Kennedy and Nixon. It's like the campaigns in the early 1900s when women's right to vote was a central civil rights issue of the country. It's like the campaigns the 1840s and 1850s and ultimately the election of Abraham Lincoln when the issue of slavery or freedom was a central issue of the country. Similarly those local elections before the revolution were similar in the way they cast the issue as being one in which there is a status of British citizenship and American citizenship and there's a gap between the two and the gap must be closed. The reason I bring this up if I were candidate I would not be successfully elected because my platform would be to close a civil gap. All of us in this room being somewhat government professionals we know that budgets are not really about money they're about civil commitments. Budgets are architectures of all the civil commitments that we've made to each other as citizens over many generations and the way in which these commitments and ranging from everything from national security to air traffic control to food safety all of these commitments accumulated year after year very slowly and were re-informed and reshaped in appropriations and budget legislation families people came to trust these commitments they shaped their lives their businesses their family plans around these commitments now we discover these this budgetary architecture is not sustainable what we is in this is another statement which is this architecture of civil commitments is not sustainable so when we say that there's a budget crisis we're not saying that there's a lack of money what we're saying is is that the fabric of civil commitments that holds a society together is being torn apart people no longer know how they relate to each other people business people no longer know whether contracts can be enforced if spending is being cut back and courts are operating more slowly can you get a contract enforced this relationship of civil commitments is fragmenting uncertainty is rising trust is falling investment is falling economic growth is slowing unemployment is rising that's where we are now in this it's a civil crisis it's a it there's something in it in which there is a identifiably a group of individuals who are in innocence budget advantaged and there's a category of people who are budget disadvantaged just as the British citizens were civilly advantaged relative to American citizens and we had to fight a revolutionary war to close that gap and just as there was a gap between free and slave in the 1850s we had to fight a four year bloody civil war to close that gap and just as there was a gap between women and men in voting and it took 40 years and ultimately a woman trying to start starving herself in a jail not far from here to close that gap at the beginning of world war one and just as there was a gap between majority and minority and access to education and public facilities in the in the 1950s that gap too was closed but it took in every single case it took aggressive action and sometimes violent action to close those civil gaps now who are the who are the budget advantaged in this story what is the civil gap the gap is between a group of people or families whose circumstances are paid for by deficits that are burdens on all other families and all future children all future children these deficits are so large and talked about in economic terms what i'm hoping to convince you as a if i may say that i'm a candidate i'm trying to convince you that it's not actually an economic problem at all or certainly is an economic problem but it's deeper structure is that it is a civil rights problem it is wrong probably constitutionally wrong to create a deficit structure which results in attacks necessities which reach out and grab the labor of future children without their representation that's a form of kind of fiscal slavery you've reached out and grab their labor to spend it now who are the budget advantaged obviously they are everyone who benefits from government services in one way or another and doesn't so to speak pay their fair share it might be said that they are states that receive more than their fair share of government benefits so there's a sort of benefit by geography there is a one by so to speak sector of the economy if you're one of the budget benefiting sectors of the economy might be age frequently referred to and income equally frequently referred to but these categories of people whose lifestyle living standards are supported by these deficits they represent the gap and that's why it's so difficult for us to close it it's also extremely difficult for us to talk about it now if I were also a candidate I would be talking about the solution to this civil problem being to invest in kids and the investment in kids is done for two reasons one which is very difficult to solve this civil problem without an economy that's doing better one of the great disappointments to me and it's really perhaps I can lay it on my own shoulders because I'm not sending items to the huffington post and elsewhere to explain that when the auto industry which is one and a half percent of GDP which is big when the auto industry ran into trouble it got 80 billion dollars and roughly you know six months when the financial industry at seven and a half percent of GDP even bigger when it ran into trouble it got 800 billion dollars in about three months how big is the sector that produces young adults and can you imagine economy without young adults and if you were to expend in this economy the sector the youth human capital sector the one that produces young adults you know who produces your car it's the auto sector you know who produces or manages your checking account and so forth that's the financial sector you know who produces the food on your table that's the agricultural sector well the sector that produces young adults is the youth human capital sector autos is one and a half percent finance is seven and a half percent how big is the young adult human human capital sector, 10 and a half percent, 10 and a half percent. It's without doubt the most important, and depending on how you look at it, it is the largest sector in the economy. And as we've just heard from Grace and Helen, it's labor-intensive. You spend money in that sector and you will create jobs. Now if you can't imagine an economy without young adults, then you know you have to invest in them. Now all of you know, all of the Jim Heckman and other returns on investing in kids, so I'm not going to go back through that. What I'm going to say is that we as a community have failed, and I personally take this as a burden on myself. We as a community have failed to communicate to politicians that the youth human capital sector is as big as it is. And we as a sector have not understood our situation as being one in which if you deprive a child early in its life of adequate nutrition, you are denying, diminishing its ability to access its civil rights under the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. That's as grave a civil rights violation as any we've talked about in our 200-plus years as a country. We failed to do that. And we failed to talk about the budget as what it truly is, a civil crisis. Not a budget crisis, a civil crisis. Now how could we change that? How could we change it? One thing to do, we have to get much more aggressive. We have to put in state capitals in all 50 states, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000 people who are involved in raising kids on top, on the steps, and saying to members of state legislatures, you will vote for kids or you won't be in office. And if the next guy doesn't vote for kids, we'll kick him out too. And if you don't think it can be done, think about the basic numbers. The congressional district has about 600,000 people in it. The number of people involved in, there are about 1,000 child service sites in every child district, everything from obstetricians' offices to high schools. There are about 50 people associated with every one of those sites, that's 50,000 people. Those 50,000 people can turn every single race for the House of Representatives in this country, every single one of them. Now the question is whether this community is prepared to get militant. It isn't prepared to do what the founders of the country did in the 1770s. Are we prepared to do what was done in the 1860s? Are we prepared to do what women were doing in the early 1900s? Are we prepared to do what the civil rights activists were doing in the 1950s and 1960s? Rob, just terrific. We've got a paper out there on the family-based social contract we did a couple years ago. We should just take this script and just put it and make it available. Of course we are doing that here and I'm grateful for that very much. Lisa, let's build on that a little bit and turn to you if we could. Rob has given a most eloquent case of changing how we think a little bit around our education and really our national priorities as they relate to financing towards our human capital producers and towards the next generation. As we think about those earliest years, maybe we can link the early years of education to the broader discussions on education reform going on in our country and which actually are going on in the election. I mean both candidates are talking at least about education, but more often as it relates to either affordable college or more specifically K-12. So they've not mentioned early learning in child care as much as we've liked as we've talked about, but perhaps let's put some of these issues in the context of some of the things they have talked about which is of course dealing with education reform. Lisa, how does early learning fit into K-12 reform and some of the other pieces of education? And how should it? Yeah, thanks David. So I mean following the just amazing and really deep comments that we've just heard, a lot of my remarks are in some ways very practical and pragmatic, but I first just wanted to mention how important it is to be thinking about quality and access and investment and understanding this as part of this social contract that Rob is describing and that David's written as well. And we have a paper out-call, the next social contract for the primary years which really re-envisions what education and learning opportunities can look like for young people and for their families. So I think that that's certainly the place to start in talking about this. But as I was thinking about this question about how to connect what the presidential candidates should be saying about child care equals early learning and what they aren't saying, I was going straight to the, to me, obvious connections that could be making in our education debates in this country and how much we need to start connecting these issues to what we are already talking about in terms of schools and investing in and changing and improving our schools. So the first thing I wanted to just make very clear and I don't think that any of us are in disagreement on this up here but I unfortunately think that out there in the wider world in the public this is not as recognized and that is that child care programs are early learning programs. And that children from their very earliest ages from, from infancy are learning and developing social, cognitive, physical, motor skills. All of that is happening in the context of their environments in which they're in and that they are also, they should be in environments that are giving them a space to learn how to learn. And that, that is like the primary thing that we as human beings need to be able to teach our young, right, to learn how to learn. So that we, we need to understand that these settings that young children are in, in, in their homes and in outside child care centers and in family based child care centers and any other environments in which there's an adult caring for and interacting with a child those are learning environments for these kids. So we have, once we know that we have to break out of the mindset that education starts at age six and we have to break out of that and recognize the huge opportunity that's latent in these early learning settings for young, for young children to, to develop our next generation, right, to develop the strong students that we want in our schools and develop those, those adults that are innovating and in, in jobs that are, that are more than barely fair, fair wage work, right. So I think that both the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign are really missing an opportunity to, to make this connection to education reform conversations. So the solid fix that we're all looking for in our quote K-12 system is not going to happen until we start thinking about what's happening for these children in their first six years of life. And until we can recognize as a country how far behind we are in investing in those children and in their families and really supporting their families. So, and I really think we can't just stop at the kindergarten door by any stretch of the imagination. We've done a lot of work in the early education initiative to focus on, well, what is kindergarten looking like and how are we thinking about the new cognitive science, developmental science research as it relates to children's first grade year, second grade year, third grade, all the way up actually through children in young adulthood, the lives of young children and young adults. How are we understanding their capacity to learn and are we actually harnessing that? So I wanted to give just a quickly three examples of where I've seen places where presidential and congressional candidates as well could be making a stronger case and aren't. Where when I hear the debates are reading this paper I go, geez, they missed it again. How could they not be making these connections? The first one for me is, so there's obviously a conversation in our country about improving conditions and job opportunities for the middle class, right? So when the candidates are talking about middle class families, they surely have in their mind a picture of a family with children, right? So who is taking care of those children when their parents are working? And are the childcare professionals who are with them, are they able to provide those learning opportunities that were described so well by Grace and Helen and others in terms of really allowing them to explore their worlds, connecting with them, really cherishing their curiosity and helping them build upon that? Are the professionals in these settings able to give that to kids? Have they got the training that they need to do that? Are they introducing them to art, music, movement, early math skills, certainly storytelling, any other kind of opportunities that enable them to develop their language and their ability to express themselves, which is what we are seeing not there for kids when they're getting into kindergarten classrooms? Our elected officials and those that want to be elected officials need to recognize that so many children in this country are not necessarily getting those opportunities, and the only way to fix some of our larger education problems in this country is to be looking at them what those kids are experiencing in those first five and six years. So that's the first one. The middle class, supporting middle class families and jobs for middle class families has to include this conversation. Secondly, in the education space, there's a lot of conversation around turnaround schools and teacher quality. That's the big part of the education debate in this country, and those are two big issues that the Obama administration has focused on for fixing failing schools, and certainly there's been a laser focus on effectiveness in teaching and how to improve our teacher workforce. And the Romney campaign has signaled an interest in improving our schools as well through a different avenue by promoting more choice in vouchers for parents, but neither side I would argue is recognizing that those reforms, if those are ever put in place, will be far less successful if children are given this poor foundation in the first place. If kids are growing up in impoverished conditions and have little access to this kind of rich curiosity-driven conversations that we're talking about that they need in those younger years, that those reforms aren't going to go anywhere. They aren't going to amount to anything until we start really getting serious about the problem that we're talking about here today. And schools are going to put up lots of resources and remediation and teaching just those basic skills when in fact we really need our children to be environments where there's a focus on innovative thinking, flexible thinking, much deeper background knowledge and multiple subject matters in the way that they are integrated in today's world. So wouldn't it be smarter, right? Wouldn't it be a far better use of our public funds and thinking of them as education dollars to be-and I want to say that meaning let's not just think about the K-12 pool of dollars, but our investments as a country that we've made as taxpayers wouldn't be smarter to be using those investments to be kind of front-loading, to be making sure that we are setting these children up to succeed in the very first place. And then the third one I just want to mention is families, family values strengthening family life. Certainly this is an issue that comes up a lot on the campaign trail for candidates. And I don't doubt at all that the candidates want to make sure that families are supported. But we need to have a really serious question then about how to do that for families who have young kids today. And there was a comment made by Romney during an education nation segment on NBC this week. Children may be best off if a parent can stay at home with them. And I think that that's maybe a conversation we need to have, but let's then get really serious about talking about family paid leave policies in this country, which a lot of work that David's done on that as well. And let's get really serious about what our early learning environments that children have can do to help parents to be partners to parents and be flexible so that parents don't feel like these aren't open or available to them or that, oh, it's only going to be from 9 to 5 or even 9 to 1230 that's one day and so those things aren't available to me. Let's really think about how these early learning environments can work for today's working families. So those are the three pieces I wanted to put out there on the table. And I'm sure I just think we're missing a big opportunity to connect early childhood education with the big issues that are affecting our country with education and innovation issues. And so I'll be curious to see in the next couple of months if we can maybe stir the pot a little bit and get more of the conversation going on this. Very good. Lisa, thank you so much. As we turn towards our audience here, I may start by seeing if there's any immediate response or any questions among the panelists that you want to jump in on anything that you've heard from any of the other panelists, or maybe we should all go down and get militant right now. But we've got a little bit of time. We need to get militant with the folks in the audience first. So unless there's something that jumps out from one of the panelists to the other, we'll start with questions. Claire's going to go around with a mic here. And if you wouldn't mind, as you ask your question, might identify yourself or your organization and ask a single question, a brief one so that we have a time for folks to respond. So we'll start with the question here, and then we'll just start moving back through the room. So I just had a quick question. I agree with everything that was said, and I do agree and wish that we had sort of settled on quality and investment 20 years ago when we really had a good opportunity to do that. And I say that because I think one of the issues that the candidates are facing that I'd love to hear a response from is how do we now make investments in childcare when U.S. birth rates are at an all-time low in the last 25 years, when we have the elderly being the largest segment, over 50 is our largest segment of U.S. population growth. So the question I have is, is it more that we have a childcare crisis or do we have a caregiver crisis? Because those same families that we're talking about who have young kids are also faced with now caring for their parents as they become of age. So I think we have a caregiving crisis. And I'd love to hear a response to that. Well, you know what's, I'm sorry, can you do it? We'll start with Helen and go from Grace here and we'll just see how it goes. And we may start doubling up questions. That's a very penetrating question, though, a good one. So we'll start with Helen and see what goes. What is interesting is once at the beginning of the childcare bill, someone who was working for HHS at the time said, you better get this passed quickly because pretty soon everyone's going to be old and need caregivers. And that's all they're going to focus on. Well, first, it may be that the birth rates declining, but one in four children under six is poor. And so we've got this growing number of young children who are poor. And we know their mothers have to work because we know poverty, especially in young children, is extremely damaging. And we know they need high quality early learning opportunities. Another interesting issue, which is something I think I would tell President Romney, but I can't blog about it because it's related to electioneering, is that we have a huge number of children growing up in single parent families. And especially for African American families, I think it's what, close to 70%, if not over. And those single moms have no choice but to go to work. And I think paid leave is really a critical component of any early childhood strategy, but at the most we would ever have is three months in this country probably. And so we need high quality early childhood opportunities. And we also need to support caregivers of young children. And what's also ironic is that women, and I think you and I talked about this a long time ago, our goal, most many low income women are those caregivers at either end of the spectrum and they're going to need the kind of childcare arrangements that make sense. They may need childcare assistance at night and on the weekends and then they may need a high quality pre-K program in the mornings. We're going to have to have more flexible, complex solutions. But I still think it's a major, major need. And I think with middle class families facing more economic strains, the cost of college, the cost of housing, they need assistance because they're buying the kind of childcare that if they're honest, they're not really very happy about. Grace? I think you hit it right on the head. We have a caregiver crisis. And it's not just for the elderly in this nation. It is also for children. But unlike the situation with children, we have spent some resources on the elderly. I mean, there is social security. And we all, every single one of us in this room, contributes to social security. And there's elderly people have a minimum, some minimum protection. And when they're in a nursing home or an assisted living facility, there are some minimum protections. There's background checks for people who work with the elderly. Make sure that they're treated OK. I wouldn't call that a later learning area, although I think some of them do have later learning opportunities in those facilities. But at least this recognition that the elderly need to be treated in a safe and decent manner. And with children, there's no minimums. Absolutely none. The child care and development block grant doesn't have any minimums. And you can see the states are all over the map. And you can see children are really left to their own devices. And parents are really left on their own. And I would say that when you go to the grocery store, you have a choice. You have a choice when you pick out vegetables. And you have a choice when you pick out meat. And you know as a parent, when you get the cart and you're walking around, you can put things in the cart. That somebody out there who knows something about the quality of meat and the quality of fresh vegetables and things that you want to buy because you might eat them and you don't want to get sick, somebody has set a bar somewhere. And you've made sure that some minimum, it may not be fancy, but some minimum that's not going to harm you in some way. But we don't have that for child care. Parents are really out there on their own. And they're expected to be kind of their own eyes and experts in a field that's really complicated. I think the time has really come if we really care about school achievement and closing the achievement gap and making progress when children are in school and increasing the high school graduation rate all with an eye to long term economic growth of this country, that we need to be looking at those early learning settings. And we need to make sure in this caregiver crisis that we have a big enough civil commitment that we are there paying as much attention to the youngest in this country as we do to the oldest. I know some might say we're not paying enough attention to the elderly. And that may be the case. But I certainly think it's a great deal more than we spend on the youngest. In 1996, I was pregnant with my second child. And he's 16 now. I mean, that's like three generations of young children, 0 to 5, have gone through this cycle of early learning. And where are we? I couldn't agree more with what Helen said. In some ways have made a little bit of progress. But as far as the roadmap to quality, we're not there. And how many more generations is going to take before we make sure that children are in a safe setting and that we recognize this link between the setting that they start off in for five years, for 35 hours a week, for the most part, it leads to the ultimate consequence of where they are and how they succeed when they get to school. So I would just say I agree. I'm going to do something about it. Rob, you have a comment? What was said is illuminates the question completely. One of the gaps that has to be closed is the generational gap in the civil terms. I had the real pleasure of being on the board of directors of an organization that ought to be at this table. It's Generation United. I just went off the board last year. And typical of things that I do, right about the time I go off the board, the organization gets recognized as one of the 50 best non-profits in the country by one of the looking for innovative groups. The Generation United has done a lot of work on this issue of older and younger. And what they find is that shared sites end up improving the health of seniors and increasing the education performance of little kids. I'm 68, or I will be in 45 days. Do I look like I could take care of a kid? I'm the oldest by anybody's definition of the baby boom generation. The youngest is about 54. The very old that you're talking about is a relatively small portion of the population. The old that you want to be focusing on is between me and age 54, basically the age of many sort of active business and political and leaders of lots of kinds. And what we want to do is to get these people to recognize that they have this obligation because, as was pointed out, the birth rates falling, so to speak. If GDP is a function of capital, labor, technology, land, so forth and so on, in that capital component, it is GDP is dependent on the production of young adults, educated, team oriented, globally competitive, tuned in, fun to be around young adults, 18-year-olds. If you don't have them, you're not going to be competitive. GDP is not going to grow. You're not going to solve any of these problems. And you're going to just go to drift, kind of like Greece or Japan. That's your future. But what's thrilling to me is the challenge of becoming militant over the requirement that the baby boom soon to be geezers have a responsibility. Even in their own self-interest, they should be doing what the Constitution says. Now, some of you may have noticed. I kind of glanced at my cell phone a little bit earlier. I wanted to go back and make sure I had the wording right. The Constitution says, we ordain and establish this Constitution to preserve the blessings of liberty. They could have put a period there, but they didn't. They went on to say, we preserve the blessings of liberty for ourselves. They could have stopped there, but they didn't. We preserve the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. That's what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States contemplates multiple generations as having civil rights. A society which is systematically depriving its youngest of nutrition, health care, strong parenting or caring, housing, and the other things that are necessary to be successful in life, which things we know are most importantly provided conception to kindergarten. It's that's when the 85% of the brain is formed, as has been pointed out. To deny it at that age means you, as Lisa says, forget about K through 12 reform. You're going to have what you've got now, which is steadily falling high school SAT scores, because you systematically began to underinvest in kids 15, 20 years ago. So if the blessings of liberty, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and all that the pursuit of happiness means, which means to be able to engage in business, practice your faith, raise a family, these things require education, particularly in a modern era. To deny a child at the earliest point in his life so that they'll never get back on track is profoundly, profoundly, aggressively, almost genocidically a civil rights violation. It is, as a student of history, someone who's traveled all over the world, I see no way for this community to achieve what it seeks to achieve on behalf of children, except by becoming much more militant. Powerful. All right, let's see. Let's start taking questions in groups. Well, let's see how many more. We've got one question here. Let's see if the other hand sort of go. We'll take Eric's. We'll take the two questions here as a block, and we'll just sort of see what kind of responses we get from our panel. Oh, I have so much to say. I'll really avoid doing that. And we'll pose a question. I would like to highlight, though, that I came wearing a different hat, and now I'll speak on behalf of the National Association for Regulatory Administration, which oversees licensing in the 50 states for child care, adult care, and child welfare. Just came from California. And to kind of put some context around Grace's remarks, the Department of Community Care Licensing in the state of California oversees all of those residential child care and adult care settings, and are responsible for inspecting more than 100,000 facilities in their state. So they do get round every five years, but they do respond to complaints much more regularly. So just to throw that in the mix, excuse me. The candidates, and I'm really happy, Lisi, that you mentioned Education Nation this week. I think if New America and others could just put the comments made by the candidates in that environment side by side, we would see a stark contrast in their civil commitments. And I think that would be a very worthwhile thing to do. And then finally, some of the candidates that you haven't talked about, and I didn't expect today, would be so much about licensing. But we have a whole set of candidates out there running for office right now in state legislatures. And it is within state legislatures that regulations are enacted and approved. So I just would like the panelists' connections from the presidential candidates on down the line to where kind of state-based rights and regulation are connected. Yes, that's a very good point. We framed it in terms of the federal piece, knowing that there's a lot of other things going on at the state level that's very, very good. Let's hear Eric's question. That's a powerful question we'll let everyone respond to. But let's get Eric's and then we'll go down the line, starting with Lisi, and to see if any of the two questions raised something up for you that you'd like to respond to. Thank you. Mayor Corollac with the Early Care and Education Consortium, which is an alliance of about 9,000 child care centers around the country, you've spoken so strongly to the need for improvement, for reform. And one of the things I'm struck by is the why in this question. Why aren't the campaigns picking this up and talking about investing in kids and making a priority of the crisis in caregiving that we have in the country. Grace, your organization puts out some excellent reports and you mentioned the one that referenced that parents are really tapped right now. There is an additional capacity there for the resources that would be necessary to meet reforms. And you mentioned Lisi about the K-12 world and we all know how in our communities that's a world where resources are also constrained. Is there something in the why of why campaigns aren't picking this up that is related to the resource issue and the need for prioritization or reprioritization and shifting of priorities that explains why this isn't the issue it was in 1988 or 1990 or even in the background in 1996 with welfare reform. Very interesting. I may begin with Lisi and just see out of those two questions here and we'll go down and I have a thought on the last one too so we'll just keep going down the line. Yeah, I actually think my answer's in the way similar for both because I think that a big part of the why has to do with the money question and where the resources are going to come from to make this possible to really invest in our young kids and our families with young kids and there's been I think a real chill right now over being able to have any conversations about innovations or new initiatives even consolidating programs in a way that would lead to better outcomes but still would require some real federal and state investment. Those kinds of conversations are dampened by the larger cloud that's hanging over everything right now when it comes to trying to figure out if there's going to be any more government revenue to use to do this with and so part of a lot of us I think are doing is thinking okay everyone's just kind of stalling out on this because of the debt question and because of the election and then November 7th we'll ramp back up and maybe but my worry is that if we're not having these conversations now that we won't be prepared for when maybe some of those roadblocks are removed in the near future and I'm really struck by what Helen said earlier which is that in the past there'd been conversations about trouble with the deficit and yet there was the ability to think about investing in young children and I'm now I'm really kind of grappling with that like we are at a place where we as a society can't even really seem to think about it in a broader way because we are just seeing a shrinking pie and that's all we're seeing is a shrinking pie so that's just a big problem to put out out there I think at the state level there are we're now in a situation where because of the race to the top early learning challenge grants that have come from the Obama administration and because of some states that just on their own have some really innovative and dynamic leaders who are trying to put these issues to the forefront we have some states that are moving fairly quickly in a constrained environment to be focusing on quality and to be thinking about more children getting more disadvantaged children having access or at least setting up a stage so that more of those children will have access when if things can open up a little bit again but there's now we have almost to have a half-knot situation depending on what state a child's been born in right or what kind of community it's back down to that zip code issue that the pre-K-12 world talks about so much you know educational opportunities dependent on zip code well we really are in the same place when it comes to young children and opportunities for their families and opportunities for their early learning environments so there's lots more to say on the state front and I would actually encourage folks to look at a previous event that David and I held that looked at state innovations and it's online and archived the video of that is archived but I will see time over to some other folks here to raise those issues. Okay we'll go to Grace and then. Wow those were some great questions and I think everyone in the room should think about how we can change this. Number one, Eric to your point why aren't they talking about it because they don't have to because they can get away with not addressing it because nobody's calling for it because we're not standing up en masse and saying fix child care do something about it. Retired of this we see a connection to your point do something and we'll find some people who do you know what until we en masse can stand up in a articulate way and make that point whether it's a you know working mom not show up at a rally you can't do it at one rally it is every day unless it's a civil commitment for every day to stand up en masse and raise visibility on this issue then they're going to get away with it because they can. Second I think this is to your point why isn't anything being done because this Congress is the most polarized Congress in years and I think there has to be a message from voters we sent you there to review policy make sure what's happening is effective that we're headed in the right direction to reach common ground when necessary and that compromise isn't a dirty word and as long as the Congress is allowed to be polarized sticking out political positions rather than good public policy decisions to promote families and assist children and make connections the way the rest of us do then you get what you get and I'm hoping the next Congress is going to be looking to find common ground and do right by families with children and that the American public says enough with polarization we're sick of it keep the public you know keep the political press release and give it to somebody who wants that but not us we're done with it that compromise is not a dirty word and finding common ground is incremental change and that's how policy happens and that's what we hope to see and what are we doing about it I heard the question on you know inspections and I think that we in our reports I hope it comes across this way believe inspections really make a difference and they are key and really important and we're looking to find the most effective way possible to ensure that there can be inspections on a frequent basis a regular basis to ensure that children are in the best setting that they can be and building on that we are working to get a nationwide network of parents who will stand up and make these points I agree with Helen that we should be ashamed that only one out of every six children in this country receives assistance because all the studies show that low income children have the most to gain from access to high quality care but what I also know is this is not a low income families issue this is an issue child care is an issue for all families all families with a working mom and right now this about two-thirds of moms with children under six under five are in the workforce today this is an issue for all of them when I go home and I talk to my neighbors everybody talks about how to find care once you find it hard to afford it once you get it and you get questionable quality and what's good enough what can I live with we are working with parents throughout the country to change that stop talking it's great to talk to each other but you got to stand up and talk to policymakers absolutely at the state level in every state capital and not just at rally day but every day and also reach out to Congress so we're working on it we have about 13,000 parents in our child care aware parent network we have parent leaders about 80 that we've been working with to bring to DC and have some training because it's intimidating parents think oh geez laws well those are for the experts and we turn around and say you you parents as consumers of childcare you are the experts but you need a little confidence builder to accept that because you don't think so you think well the members of Congress and staff they're the experts and they are but they know it from a different lens frankly they know it mostly from hearing about it from those who use it and parents need to come together and understand that they have power in coming together and increasing visibility and without the visibility Eric we're gonna get back right to the beginning all these Paul all see these policymakers and these candidates whether they're running for state office of the running for federal office even at the highest level for president they don't have to say a thing if they can get away with it it's only if you can create the buzz to make them address the issue the 800 billion that you mentioned to the bankers you better believe the bankers didn't just talk to each other and say yikes I hope somebody does something the bankers came to DC the bankers went to the state level the bankers were loud and clear do something and parents have to do the same for Rob before Rob before you answered that I just I want to see just because we're gonna we're gonna get to a place where by the time we get the last question we may be right up at our two o'clock time take one more question to add to this mix here and to see if it sparks anything else for Helen and Rob as they continue the peace take the one question here from the lady on the right to add to the mix good afternoon my name is going to go there with title one report in education daily thank you for having this I wanted to ask all of you how in your organizations are you going to try to get some questions about early childcare and learning into those presidential debates how are we going to get the candidates talking and then as far as the real authorization of ESCA how do we get the infant and toddler and early learning in there very good alright I saw Helen smile so maybe when Helen Rob will turn to Rob I cut right off right there so he's ready to go I know but but Helen Helen I the very least will answer that question I know I actually have an answer for you yeah but we got it robs up I'll go up and then you're gonna have the last Helen will have the last word here oh see the time Helen Helen's gonna have a rob will have a last word somebody talk well I'll I'll go ahead and let Helen have the last words kind of reverse of ladies first the reason the bankers got what they got was because they were organized and they were really literally quite prepared to show up in the thousands and they did in Washington DC where it mattered what has to happen is on weekends when parents can do it they have to show up in numbers that people can visibly see five thousand ten thousand twenty five thousand out of state capital on a sunny weekend that is what is visible and that marks a change in this in the civic state of the youth human capital sector it has changed from being a recipient and passive and accommodative to being assertive aggressive and insistent that the country do what it should do which makes sense economically and civilly the reason it hasn't been done Eric I believe is first the question of money is very clear second is that the money question hasn't been expressed yet as a civil question and third it is not quite recognized yet how vitally dependent the country is on a trained educated team oriented likeable fun youth human capital population young adult population we haven't quite recognized the in a sense the deficit we have there as for the state level I think a lot is happening at ready nation we work at the state level we attempt to put together business coalitions business leader groups that recognize the importance of educating kids from conception to you know properly taking care of educating caring for them conception to kindergarten we're finding more and more business people who get the reality they are understanding what the situation in is increasingly ready to take action in additionally in this area that Lisa pointed to educating early actually solves elementary school problems we find that we published a report last March it's on the website on social impact finance peaksy bonds for pay for pre-k to reduce special education costs well what we know is that quality three-year-old pre-kinder garden provided to a hundred kids yields a reduction in special education costs alone enough to pay for all the services so what is there is a at the state level this understanding can take place and people can act on it it can even be better done on a school district level so in a many respects the the power of technology and communication so forth is enabling people at local levels to act in ways that cannot act at the federal level and as they act at the local and Regent County and state level it becomes then clear at the federal level what needs to be done so for my standpoint the beginnings of this process are sufficiently still new that it would be a sort of a third reason why we shouldn't we would be surprised we should not be surprised by why is relatively in an inaction at the at the federal level but at the state level a lot is going on what Lisa and David are doing is is informing this and energizing it it's making it easier for those of us who are attempting to organize business leaders in those states and to increase the use of social impact pay for success finance so I'm very encouraged by what's happening at the local state level Helen the last one let me first give the most simple answer to your question and something everyone can do when they leave this room go to our website ww.nwlc.org and the two things you can do there's one box that shows you how to tweet into and Twitter the hosts of all the debates and ask them to ask a question about reducing poverty and and addressing early childhood and child care you can do that all your friends can do that and maybe if we get enough people to do it they'll actually ask a question there's also there's also a map that says put child care on the map encouraging you to ask everyone you know to get state elected officials federal elected officials into child care centers and then they too can put a pin on that map I agree that we have to be more militant we actually used to use more of those techniques both in the 90 and 96 reauthorization and we have to be more demanding I also believe that this is a campaign and a congress that isn't doing or saying very much about anything so that is definitely definitely a challenge to get anything constructive said and we have to push more but I guess my and I would disagree about some I think that there is some interesting activity going on the states but I think there is a lot of shallow activity going on in the states and a lot of some very serious situations in terms of what's going on with state funding for child care and early education and in some places where it may look good system wise in terms of planning it's very precarious on what we're going to be able to maintain in terms of a strong early childhood system but my final remark since I was allowed to be the last have the last word is to the business leaders and I would all urge all the business leaders who have increasingly stepped out to support early childhood to also step out to the tax writing committees and point out all the tax loopholes that we can close and all the tax increases that are absolutely viable that will provide the revenues that we need to provide the early childhood system that our children and our families deserve I think that's doable friends what a great panel please join me in saying thank you to all of our speakers today thank you to the we have our marching orders now thank you to the Casey Foundation in the C-span and thank you for joining us today we are adjourned have a good afternoon