 Good afternoon and welcome to New America. I know we'll continue to see more people trickle in and like to welcome our Audience online as well. I'm Laura born friend director of early and elementary education policy here at New America And once again, thanks to everyone joining us for this important discussion About what schools and communities can do together to improve teaching learning and care in children's first ten years Before I go much further. I want to thank the Education Development Center for partnering on today's event We're thrilled to be hosting this conversation and thank you to the Heising Simons Foundation for their support of this event for those of you who are watching online and Those of you who'd like to participate in the conversation via Twitter use the hashtag first ten and For those of you who are interested in other events on topics related to early education Please consider coming back or tuning in again on Thursday morning for a discussion on early childhood educator diversity And finally be sure to check our early and elementary education policy home page at newamerica.org slash early ed for all of our content That our program produces Some of you may not be as familiar with New America our organization strives to explain and uncover the implications Both the challenges and opportunities inherent in a time of tremendous Technological and social change in our education policy program We focus on equity for underserved students while also taking a broad view Examining learning environments and public education systems of all kinds Starting with our littlest ones and continuing up through adulthood Our early and elementary education team works to help ensure that all children have access to a system of high quality Early learning opportunities from birth through third grade that prepare them to thrive in school and in life Science shows that the early years are critical to the healthy development of a child's brain and the skills developed in these Years have cascading effects that enable children to become successful adults We also know that more than one in five young children are living in poverty high-quality early learning experiences and Stable nurturing relationships with adults can mitigate the harmful effects of poverty yet The children who benefit most from high quality opportunities in their earliest years are the least likely to receive them and Things don't often get better for many children when they enter kindergarten In fact across the country kindergarten and the first through third grades lie in a policy dead zone Meaning states and school districts often pay little attention to the quality of teaching and learning experiences During these critical years of children's schooling According to some research only seven percent of students receive consistently high quality Experiences in their first third and fifth grade classrooms, and this is particularly problematic for young students of color in High-poverty schools who are the least likely to have effective teachers with the resources they need What can be done to improve children's early learning experiences well in a few minutes? We'll hear from David Jacobson Principal technical advisor at the Education Development Center who just released today a new paper that offers a new approach To children's first ten years especially for children in undervalued and underserved communities He will highlight some promising efforts in a few communities across the country. I'll let David tell you more after David presents Some some noise from the back After David presents Chris Christina Samuels associate editor at Education Week will Come to the stage and moderate to panel discussions I'll let her introduce the panelists once it's time and for more details about this afternoon's program Please reference the agenda and bios you picked up on your way in once again Thank you for joining us today and without further ado. Please join us in welcoming David join me in welcoming David Jacobson Thank You Laura. It's a pleasure to be here as Laura said today. I'll be talking about my new research study all children learn and thrive building first-ten schools and communities This study focuses on an emerging reform strategy a new wave of innovative work to improve children's Experiences during the first decade of their lives in different places across the country schools and early childhood Organizations are working together to improve teaching and learning deep in family partnerships and provide comprehensive services to children and their families These are ambitious initiatives as I think you'll hear about today in some cases these initiatives are centered around elementary schools and nearby early childhood centers and family child care providers and In others school districts are partnering with early childhood programs and extending this work across a larger Geographic area such as a town a city or a county Taken together these initiatives suggest a framework and a roadmap for improving education and care throughout the first ten years None of this research however would have been possible without a great deal of help I'd like to thank Laura and New America for Organizing and hosting today's panel and Laura for being an important thought partner throughout the whole process This project was funded by the Heising-Simon Foundation I'm grateful to our program officer Rebecca Gomez and to the Foundation for its support And I very much want to thank Christina Samuels and all of our panelists today I'm looking forward to hearing their reactions and their thoughts I thank them and the 16 other early readers of the report for what was really enormously helpful feedback I'm grateful to Kyle de Mayo Cook and all my colleagues at the Education Development Center for their many Contributions and finally, I thank the well over 100 teachers Principles and community leaders across the country who shared their experiences with me Laura and I could have easily added many more Communities to the panel we successfully resisted that impulse and we are excited to highlight today the work underway in Nebraska, Oregon and Massachusetts So as I mentioned I work at EDC the Education Development Center EDC is a nonprofit organization that focuses on education and health both here in the US and internationally We have about 1,300 employees in total and about 80 staff working in early childhood in elementary school education and care Now I'd like to set the stage by grounding the initiatives I studied in a widely accepted assessment of early childhood education and care in the United States We have decades of research on the science of early childhood that demonstrate a striking Contrast between what children need in order to learn and thrive in the early years and their experience participating in programs and services Children need consistent quality sustained throughout this critical developmental period They need alignment across the years meaning that every year We are building on and taking advantage of what children learned the previous year For example kindergarten needs to build on the learning and care that children experience in pre kindergarten and Children need for the programs and services. They experience each year to be coordinated meaning coordination between education health and social services Unfortunately, however The programs and services that serve young children and their families in the United States are highly fragmented There are gaps between public and private programs often large gaps between zero to five education and care and k-12 education and care and gaps between education health and social services and So what children experience is inconsistent quality gaps across the age span and a lack of coordination at each stage of development In response to this state of affairs to education reform movements have emerged or reemerged over the last couple of decades One movement is the prenatal through grade three or p3 movement Which focuses on improving quality across the full continuum and aligning instruction across the age span the focus here is on teaching and learning Another movement is the community schools movement and related initiatives to provide Comprehensive health and social services to children schools partner with health and social service agencies to ensure that children and families receive the services they need What I think is really important and Interesting is that these two movements are converging There is a new wave of initiatives across the country that are drawing from both the p3 and comprehensive supports movements both of these movements at a high priority on family engagement and both are Committed to educational equity and are focused on serving low-income families and families of color This combination I argue is an important development We know from the research that this is what's needed to address opportunity and achievement gaps in my view This combination is sufficiently distinctive and sufficiently backed by the research to warrant its own name Something other than p3 plus comprehensive services So I follow two well-known early childhood experts Arthur Reynolds and Judy Temple and Defining early childhood is roughly the first decade of life And I use the term first 10 to refer to the combination of improving teaching and learning in the early years strengthening family partnerships and comprehensive services and One of the benefits of using first 10 to refer to these initiatives is that it makes it really clear that this work is about a Collaboration between school districts and elementary schools on the one hand and other early childhood organizations on the other Further what I have found in this research is that some elementary schools are really adopting this approach as part of their identity and For these schools. It's really become part of a whole school change effort I've sat across from any principles and many family coordinators who've told me that the Instructional practices and the family supports that they're putting into place. Don't stop at third grade Now there are two features of this combination of strategies that I want to make explicit The first is the commitment to educational equity that I mentioned The goal here is that all children receive what they need in order to develop to their full academic and social potential Doing this requires eliminating disparities based on income race and other factors Each of these communities that will be on our panel today have made significant financial investments in this work and In each case the primary focus of the work is on supporting low-income children and their families and children of color and their families in these three cases and in most of the cases in this report The funding that supports the work is public in nature Although in a couple of cases philanthropic funding has played an important role as a catalyst seeding innovative initiatives So a second point is that this convergent first-hand approach acknowledges a fundamental Interdependence between schools families and communities the success of each is integrally bound up with the success of others Schools and communities are working both internally to improve the quality of teaching and learning and the quality of the services They provide and externally as they deepen their collaboration with families and with each other So here are the research questions that my study was intended to address this study is what we call formative Implementation research. It's an exploratory study We know that these are evidence-based practices We have a number of formal rigorous evaluations that show that we're headed in the right direction and Several of the initiatives I described in the study are currently being formally evaluated by outside organizations This study is asking What can we learn from how communities are implementing this work that will help them and other communities improve Implementation and then we'll have more formal evaluations and we'll see how they do. I Began this work with a national scan of experts to identify appropriate communities I conducted phone interviews with 18 communities, and I did site visits in these six And one of the first things we learn when we go out into the field and we look at this work Is that it takes two basic forms there are two basic first-hand structures? One type of first-hand initiative takes place at the level of a single elementary school And it's nearby families early childhood centers head start programs and family child care providers I refer to this as a first-hand school hub Some hubs focus more on direct support to families with young children while others focus more on working with nearby early childhood centers and family child care a second type of First-hand structure is a community partnership and the big difference here is that this structure covers a large geographic area Maybe a whole district or zone within a district or even a county and it includes multiple elementary schools All the head start programs and early childhood centers within that area all the family child care providers, etc And then you may wonder the the question naturally arises Are these mutually exclusive could a community do both and the answers? Yes This is and this is what this would look like note the hubs within the larger community partnership circle I've not found any current examples of this, but one of my recommendations in the study is that this would be a very powerful combination So now let me share some examples, and I'd like to start with a school hub Sacramento elementary school in the Park Rose district in Oregon Sacramento student body is over 95% free and reduced lunch and 55% students of color It is one of 90 community schools that are part of a county system of community schools in Multnomah County Each blue tack on this map represents a community school This system is called schools uniting neighborhoods or sun And it's a collaboration between the county and six districts that make up the county Each one of these community schools has a site manager who's responsible for running an after-school program and connecting children and families To the comprehensive services they need Now son has a new initiative taking place in nine elementary schools It's called a p3 pilot and Brooke Chilton Timmon's who's on our panel is one of the leaders of the pilot and As I talk about these examples I'm going to use the terminology that the communities use in referring to their work But all of the examples meet the definition of a first-ten initiative Sons p3 pilot leverages this existing system the site manager and the system of comprehensive supports And it extends it to children ages zero to four and their families The funding for this p3 pilot ultimately comes from a nine million dollar State program allocated by the state legislature to support p3 work Each of these nine pilot schools has a p3 coordinator to work with the community school site manager That's Sacramento elementary school the p3 coordinators name is Manny and in her first year Manny began by conducting Outreach to all the families in the school's catchment area. She visited with the cultural groups She visited with the church groups. She met families She began to gain their trust and then started holding play and learn groups in the school weekly Parents bring their young children to play and learn groups and together they read they sing they play and the parents also Learn about child development and school readiness Through the play and learn groups and a variety of other family engagement activities The p3 coordinators build relationships with families in Manny's case she took them on field trips to museums to the library and the like and Then she began to connect families to health and social services depending on their needs Then in year two Manny and the other p3 coordinators began to connect with licensed family child care providers in the neighborhood as well as informal family friend and neighbor caregivers and Include these caregivers in the play and learn groups as well Manny builds relationships with these providers and connects them to a variety of training supports So that's our first example. That's one example of a first-hand school hub a Second example comes from Metro Omaha, Nebraska Where a birth the third-grade pilot is taking place in 10 schools across a number of districts in the metropolitan area Chris Lopez Anderson is the program manager of this initiative And this pilot is part of a larger plan called the superintendents plan referring to the superintendents of the participating districts and The overall plan is funded by a half-cent levy The Buffett early childhood Institute is contracted to provide technical assistance around this plan That is they receive money So it's important to emphasize that the county is paying for this work and not the Buffett early childhood Institute The pilot in Metro Omaha is the brainchild of Sam Myzels the well-known early childhood expert And this is how he explains the rationale that underpins the pilot Our basic belief drawn from the research of the past half century is that Persistent efforts in the early years will result in persistence of long-term effects for children Each of these pilot schools is supported by a home visitor who conducts home visits for children ages 0 to 3 in their families a Family facilitator who supports families with children ages 3 to 8 and an educational Facilitator who acts as an instructional coach and supports quality and alignment in the early grades at the elementary school Further the home visitor and the family facilitator team up and together they run parent child interaction groups similar to Multnomah County's play and learn groups So in Omaha you have monthly rather than weekly parent child interaction sessions But then you also have a home visitor with a caseload of 15 infants and toddlers and you have a halftime coach working on Instructional alignment and I should add here that what the educational facilitator does one of the things that the educational facilitator does is Provide feedback on each teacher's class results a widely used and widely respected classroom quality tool This initiative is being formally evaluated and the results have been very promising so far and they include rising Classroom quality scores using the class tool So one thing I would like to highlight about the pilot in Metro Omaha is the extent to which in many of the schools This work has become part of the school's identity. I know that this varies across the 10 schools But I visited five of them and I was really struck by the level of buy-in on the part of the principles Here's a slide from Sandos elementary school The principal the introduces herself as a as a principle of a birth through fifth grade school as Do many of the principles in the pilot and at Sandos the teachers and the students in the school have internalized the idea that the school Supports young children students will even find the home visitor and tell her when their moms are pregnant pregnant It doesn't always turn out to be the case, but it shows the extent to which children have understood the broader mission of the school One of the things I emphasize in the study is the important role of school districts in improving curriculum and instruction in the early grades And that's the case in both Multnomah County and in Metro Omaha And I also described district initiatives to improve teaching and learning in normal Illinois in Boston and in San Francisco So we've seen two first-hub school examples Both of these communities are developing relationships with families with young children ages zero to four and Importantly both bring early childhood professionals into schools to engage families in developmentally appropriate activities and through this They're building early childhood expertise Multnomah counties including family child care in this work and in the study I also described first-hand school hubs that are working with early childhood centers as well The first-hand school hubs that I studied suggest a number of design considerations for communities interested in Doing this work. For example, should the focus be on play and learn groups. Does it include home visiting? Do you provide direct support to families? Do you include early childhood centers and so on and As you would expect there are challenges in doing this work I won't go into detail here But it's important for communities to be aware of the challenges They're likely to face and our panelists will have an opportunity to address some of those challenges Now I'd like to share an example of a first-hand community partnership This is the work that Leigh Ann Ellis leads in Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge is now in the third year of implementing a birth through third grade plan This is a joint initiative of the school department and the city funded by the city Cambridge's budget for this work was one point three million dollars in year one two point three million dollars in year two and three point three million dollars this year Cambridge's plan is designed around five goals access quality family engagement and partnership health and governance The partnership is overseen by a steering committee and includes three subcommittees access and quality family engagement and partnership and health Working with these subcommittees Leigh Ann and her staff have implemented an impressive set of initiatives all of which follow from the original plan And so that I don't overwhelm you I'm only showing you one half of the initiatives that Cambridge has implemented What's important is the comprehensiveness of Cambridge's strategy. I'll draw your attention to a few of these initiatives For example a team from Tufts University assess the state of home visiting programs throughout the city And now a work group is designing a home visiting system that will support all of these home visiting programs The partnership is running two quality pilots one for centers and one for family child care providers The one for centers includes mentoring for directors coaching for teachers professional development and communities of practice And it has already seen very strong results in terms of classroom quality measures in nine preschools The partnership is developing a citywide transition to kindergarten plan and kindergarten teachers are piloting Boston's renowned kindergarten curriculum What I do in this study is compare Cambridge's work to another community partnership that focused much effort on the early years And this is a historical example in Montgomery County, Maryland in the 2000s that was heavily studied And you can see the common elements here the work in both communities is driven by a clear equity agenda These are communities with large tax bases that are investing funds to support low-income families Both communities use ambitious strategic plans that address the full first-hand continuum to guide their work and both have created new Organizing structures and again this work is not challenge free and it's important that communities are aware of the challenges They're likely to face I'll conclude with three takeaways and a preview of a framework that I describe and more detail in the study first We're seeing the outlines of an emerging model of Okay, a couple of slides are missing Three takeaways first We're seeing the outlines of an emerging model of a first-ten elementary school that with district support Collaborates with early childhood professionals to improve teaching learning and care in developmentally appropriate ways across the first decade of children's lives Second first-hand community partnerships suggest a roadmap for towns cities large neighborhoods within a city and counties to develop comprehensive approaches to improving programs and services for young children and their family and Third this work taking place around the country Suggests a new innovation a community partnership like in Cambridge But that also supports hubs like in Multnomah County and in Metro Omaha This combination would be a very powerful and systemic first-ten approach Finally the initiatives I described suggest a framework for understanding the role of first-ten school hubs and community partnerships This work begins with a commitment to equity a commitment that all children will learn and thrive We do that by supporting effective schools nurturing families and strong communities and by supporting collaboration across Families schools and communities schools support families families strengthen communities and communities support schools in an ongoing process What we're seeing in leading-edge communities is that first-ten school hubs and community partnerships support this circle of collaboration through four roles Supporting professional collaboration to improve teaching and learning Coordinating comprehensive services Promoting culturally responsive partnerships with families and providing strategic leadership and ongoing assessment. You can find the study At first-end org. Thank you very much. Good afternoon everyone and Welcome to this presentation. My name is Christina Samuels and I'm an associate editor in education week where I cover early childhood education Education week is the nation's leading authority on K through 12 education and I'm very excited to be here Thank you so much to David and to new America for inviting me to participate So I cover early childhood and I think obviously there is universal agreement on the importance of the early years But what does this mean? One of the things that I found most valuable when I was reading this report is seeing the fact that it was offering concrete Examples of how communities are really putting their support for children or what they say will be their support for children into action So joining me for this part of the discussion Debra Steipeck a professor a professor of education at Stanford University is specializing in many areas including policy and early childhood education and also crazy Rollins the vice president for leadership and engagement for the Institute for educational leadership and they'll both be sharing their impressions of this work and crazy, I'll start with you. Your work has Involved developing systems like this to support educational reforms in community schools And so what do you think about like what are the implications that you see in the work that David has shared in his report? That's going on in these many communities Well, good afternoon everyone very important development. I think The findings obviously make a lot of sense anything that calls for People to work more closely together to achieve the kind of outcomes that we need to achieve is a good idea I think it's worth noting that Very often there's some concern among early childhood practitioners that we're not doing Developmentally appropriate things for young children, and I think the same thing is true for communities There is such a thing as was developmentally appropriate and so a community can't just have no history of working together No partnership no kind of collaborative culture and then just all of a sudden wake up one day and do all of this And Multnomah County is a perfect example as you saw that map that David showed where they have 90 community schools now And I didn't know that new number so that's a great a great number of we started working with Multnomah County IEL by the way is the home for the coalition for community schools And so it's we've had that idea for over 20 years and we have worked with a number of partners and Multnomah County was one of the places That decided to to engage with the community school strategy primarily as an anti-poverty strategy And they started with probably seven or eight schools back in 1998 So to see them all these years later with 20 schools I mean excuse me 90 schools that are part of the Sun service system, and that is a county that covers There's seven school districts the largest being Portland, Oregon and six of the seven districts are part of the Sun service system So it gives you a sense of context so they've been at the whole idea of working closely together and Facilitating the collaboration of partners for quite some time and that's an expertise in that In around 2008 2009 We with some funding from the Kellogg Foundation Decided that it was a good idea based on our own learning of the importance of school readiness and early childhood education and etc To really get community schools places which up to that point had been strictly focused on K-12 To be more intentional about connecting to their early childhood community And Multnomah County was one of the places where we piloted that work We also piloted it in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Tulsa, Oklahoma And so these were three places that already had a tradition of working together Had relatively Stable if you will early childhood community so they had some strong early childhood work in tradition and history But they hadn't necessarily been working together. And so our role was very simply to bring them together To facilitate that partnership To expose them to some national experts and researchers To expose them to best practice our understanding in those days. We use the language of zero to eight And so first ten is something that we'll learn to talk about first the first decade. It's actually simpler They're making the case but just you know some best practices in early education and in alignment in transition And all these years later. I mean Brooks position didn't exist when we started that work in 2008 2009 For Multnomah County, they piloted a whole different kind of a program which they called kindergarten camp. I think it was With the little bit of Seed money that they had they hired a halftime person and they had such success with that pilot in three or four elementary schools, which is simply about deeply engaging their community around the importance of early childhood and creating some partnerships that they expanded the program the county created a position and Now Brooke is in that position. And so it's a classic story of what can happen if you continue to grow Your strategy and as you think about 90 schools now not all of them elementary schools obviously, but a number of them are Elementary schools and so these kinds of first-ten partnerships are not only feasible. They're Probably one of the only ways we can really make this happen because schools can't really do this all by themselves You really need to partnership. Sure. No, I think that that the power of those partnerships really comes through in this work You know one of the things that's interesting is that when you talk about the focus in schools And Deborah, I'm hoping that you can speak to this one thing that I've certainly written about is concerns that Although schools are important partners in this work There's concerns that are we pushing something down to the young children that is looking like schools You know except for four-year-olds kindergarten except for three-year-olds, etc I wonder whether any of this work raves of any Concerns or cautions for you as you look at what some of the schools are doing Yes, I remember I'm old enough to remember this debate when there was some kind of talk about Putting head start in the Department of Education instead of HHS and the people in the early childhood field were Adamately against that because they were afraid that if head start was in the Department of Education children would be doing flashcards and ditto sheets and All of the accountability Issues and things like that would be pushed down into early childhood we've come a long way since that debate and I think now we recognize that young children can learn and Can do Achieve at a much higher level than I think we really understood in the old days not by worksheets and Yeah, but but by playful learning but but guided planned Goal directed learning opportunities that teachers can provide One of the districts that we work with that has tried to create greater alignment between Pre-k and the early elementary grades the principles started visiting the pre-k programs because they became Responsible for the pre-k programs What they were seeing in pre-k? They were they were realizing were actually valuable in their early elementary grades as well more play more focus on Developing self-regulation skills and social emotional skills and that sort of thing and so if it's done Effectively, it's not pushing pre-k first grade down in first grade kindergarten down into pre-k. It's creating more Synergy and more continuity that is developmentally appropriate for all of those levels Yeah, I know that when I have had a chance to visit schools and visit kindergarten I remember visiting a kindergarten where the teachers had to fight to bring You know play and then you know the dress-up area and the sand table and the water table Back into the kindergarten classroom. That was a story. It was enough of a story to send me To a school district to cover it. So so it's definitely, you know, I feel some tension happening there that can be a problem too because Well, not there are there are people who talk about play-based Instruction or play-based curriculum or if you if you just Google preschool in your community You'll see a hundred play-based preschool programs Just having sand and water and a dress-up corner doesn't mean kids are learning Everything that we need them to know and so I also worry about it going too far the other way where Basically free play becomes this mystical wonderful Extraordinary thing that children should be doing all day. They should have young children need time just like 69 year olds need time to play but They also need some opportunity to develop some of the skills we now are going to be important for them in school And in life and that requires guided purposeful instruction, but Playful Yes, I just wanted to piggyback on what Debra is saying a couple of there are a great couple of great examples that I Found in my research of exactly the the dynamic that Debra is describing this push-up a combination of push-up and push-down and one of them is in normal Illinois where the pre kindergarten teachers and the kindergarten teachers began to collaborate with each other and out of that collaboration the Pre-k teachers decided that they needed to work more on concept development and to extend their units into longer Investigative themes, but also out of that collaboration the kindergarten teachers decided that they would implement a period a day that was structured guided play and This was a result of them having observed each other's classes and kind of gone through a reciprocal process So I think that alignment worked very nicely there and a very kind of face-to-face way I would also just quickly say that our our classic example of push-up in the United States right now is in Boston, Massachusetts Where they began with the pre-k curriculum and professional development model had high success with that with that a Harvard study Show that we had the We have the highest gains in preschool at scale that we've seen in the country They then built on that and developed the kindergarten curriculum a first grade curriculum in a second grade curriculum So you see the push-up where the early childhood department is pushing early childhood up But also in the community-based preschools where they're implementing that pre-k program We're seeing much greater emphasis on kind of observing children and their development and progress over the year And that's being pushed down. So it's a nice example The alignment between pre-k and those early elementary grades is that we don't talk about the pre-k curriculum the k curriculum the first grade curriculum as much because Excuse me any first grade teacher is gonna have kids whose mass free levels are closer to what the pre-k curriculum is Designed to dress and they may have some kids who are actually the second or third grade level and by getting together and looking at the Continuum of development. They're more like to think about what are these children need as opposed to what is the first grade curriculum that? I feel it bell compelled to teach Yeah, I think that there's some really important implications here for professional development That hopefully we'll get to explore a little bit in the in the second panel when we talk with the with the folks who are overseeing some of the specific panels I'm sorry specific programs. David, you know, I was wondering if you could explain a little bit One thing that I thought was different is that you distinguish between first-ten schools and first-ten communities Obviously, there are some elements that overlap here But there were some differences that were different enough that you felt that it was important to pull these pieces Pull these things apart and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what some of the differences are there You know, maybe how they complement each other Maybe you know some individual challenges that these two Forms take So as I went around the country and observe this work It became very clear to me that in some instances these first this first-ten work Was very much taking place around a single elementary school and that elementary school in these two cases Multnomah County and in Metro Omaha The focus there is on reaching out directly to families with young children before they've entered school Which is when you think about it is is really novel We haven't had elementary schools reaching out into their neighborhoods and and and bringing children into their schools in Play and learn groups very very much and supporting them with home visiting and in some places That's what this work is. That's the only way they think about it in other places like in Cambridge You can do this work Across a broader geographic area and so that it's not about one school It's about all the schools in a district or all the schools in a large neighborhood within a district And then you're you're really talking more more about system building So it's how do we improve all the home visiting programs that are serving those children? How do we improve the quality of all the community-based preschools in that zone? The quality of all the family chair child care providers rather than creating an individual transition plan between one Community-based preschool and one elementary school Can we create a transition plan that will encompass all of the community-based preschools and head starts? Can that be a general template for all of those feeders into all of the elementary schools within a zone? And so yes, I think the argument is ultimately we need both in many communities We need both we need to be working at that system level on quality improvement and alignment But then developing those special individual Relationships between elementary schools and families that are going to be coming to that school If I could yeah, I think I just want to reiterate you're absolutely right It's a both and approach because it's important to paint a picture of what it looks like in an individual school But it's also important to promote what it could look like across an entire system Every every school community is slightly different even within the same town And so the contexts are all different for sure But we do need to have a group that's kind of paying attention to the entire system particularly when you have a Lot of children and families who have been historically underserved who don't have access to as many resources and etc Then it's incumbent upon a lot of the other kind of leaders within the system to really have a clearer understanding of how they can facilitate the kinds of services and supports that are needed to make it happen You know, I think your experience in doing this work, you know brings up a question that I had which is how These initiatives interact with other initiatives You know, there's other initiatives that have some piece of this You know, I think we talked about the campaign for great level reading or there's other Different sorts of programs that exist to support early childhood and there's a lot of players here Part of it is, you know that I'm thinking is how do you organize it in a way so that everybody's kind of Moving in the right direction and maybe not overlapping efforts or repeating efforts or you know, even working across purposes Yeah, how do you see that that piece? It's an interesting time because You know, there are a lot of different efforts There are a lot of different kind of branded approaches and etc that are out there in the world in which we live But at the same time There's a lot of synergy across all of these various efforts to really work together And so if you're savvy, you know like a lot of community schools places also became part of the campaign for great level reading And we have Yoli here representing the campaign Because it was the kind of public Call to action that was going to be useful for them to move a bigger strategy If that makes sense and so there are times when you know kind of all of the notoriety around certain issues We're in that moment in terms of chronic absenteeism where it gets everybody's attention And hopefully can move us in the right direction sometimes the backfires where Places because for example, they've heard it. There's all of this Important action that needs to happen in order to get kids to read on grade level by by the third grade and instead of Working together to make that happen. They'll do kind of punitive measures. So that's always kind of a danger But I think it's a good moment I mean, I'm encouraged by the idea that there are a lot of folks working across the board I know nationally that are really trying to get on the same page even if they have kind of specific campaigns or specific Projects there are a lot. So it's a unique moment Some of that is also driven by funders that are working more together and across their you know They're funding stuff collaboratively to achieve a set of kind of outcomes that make it so high as exciting This is a classic example because they fund a lot of Particular activities around this but then they're also working with other funders in community to have a greater impact in place You know that actually is a good transition for another thing that I was thinking about which is obviously the feasibility of all of this And Deborah, I'd love you to start with this. I mean schools are are still You know having to meet academic goals and you know work with students of all grades and work with students who are coming in with all sorts of different needs and you know is there You know enough capacity in schools or you know in communities for this kind of work to To take off could this be more widespread? Do we need some special ingredients to make it work? I think if you don't think it's feasible Then you really need to read David's report because I think it demonstrates very clearly that it is feasible And these are not communities that are particularly known for it's being progressive or doing extraordinary things They're regular communities. So yes, it's feasible I think what one of the problems though is that it often it often depends a lot on soft money Funders that come in so it's it's feasible to get it going Sustaining it is I think one of the biggest challenges. It often requires someone who's dynamic strong highly Valued and respected in the community who can play a leadership role Get people around the same table get people to listen to each other And to actually coordinate rather than compete with each other and if that person goes away I've seen these things kind of fall apart. So the it's definitely feasible to start But I really recommend that anybody that wants to launch something like this But they think long and hard at the very beginning about how it's going to be sustained how it's going to be made Being built into the system one of the things I really liked in the examples in David's report were several places where it had started out with with Soft money, but had then the schools had seen or the organizations had seen the value of it and had put it into their Base budget so these are opportunities for us to demonstrate to administrators and policymakers just how valuable Some of these coordinated efforts are and but it does need to be sustained and that's it That's another set of issues in addition to just getting it off the ground Well, it's a leadership issue because I mean part of it requires consistent leadership with a certain kind of collaborative value I mean when we started out the pilot we went to places that already had a culture of Collaboration across a number of agencies first because that we knew that was the best chance and in the case of Multnomah Tulsa and Albuquerque and some of the other places where we went that work It's still alive because people were already working together They saw that this approach had value and then they committed to keeping it going and the collaboration The collaboration wasn't necessarily dependent on outside dollars. And so that's the key But it's it ends up being a leadership issue. I mean we we all know that everybody loves the idea of collaborating But the challenge in sustaining deep collaboration is because we all we don't really like to work together So I mean so that is like the paradox in all of this and so there are times when communities have Collaborative culture the right leaders in place the right stuff, you know the stars are in line and then they can really kind of Move move forward and then there are times Not so much Sustained leadership For example, if you look at superintendents, what is the average length that a superintendent serves is about two and a half years I think and The places where really good work has been done. It's very common that It's been a long-term superintendent that's been able to keep it going So and principles get moved around and so we're not necessarily Organizing our schools in ways to sustain these kinds of efforts Wondering if what secret sauce you saw when you were visiting your communities Well, one of the things I wanted to draw our attention to if we're going to talk about sustaining this work is the important role of states And so I don't think it's a coincidence that Multnomah County is in the state of Oregon that is to say Oregon is I think the only state that has Allocated in the state budget nine million dollars to support collaboration between elementary schools and early childhood and so and that is it's that state funding that's paying for the P3 pilot that I described in Multnomah County So that's one really powerful example of I think the role of state And so there is a p3 a Coordinator specialist at the state level who supports this work the communities have an opportunity to learn from each other So those are other roles that states can play and then I wanted to highlight another example That is much newer than these others, but is still I think very promising and so in the state of Maine a very a State that has many rural communities and and not a large state budget for education where But they are now they have 13 there in the state of Maine is supporting 13 communities across the state in doing this Alignment work between early childhood and elementary school all of these communities have developed plans and at the same time the state has formed an interagency state level team a P3 team at the state level that Specifically is Engaged in supporting these 13 communities. How can our policies support these 13 communities? How can our experts at the state level support these 13 communities and I think that that Two-level approach working at the state and working at the community level could be very powerful for addressing this Key issue that I think you've all raised which is how do how do we sustain this work over time? I'm glad you gave examples of the way states can and have actually supported this work Maybe this is because I come from California, but all I can think of is examples of all the state policies that make this really more difficult So for example, the funding is very fragmented even even things like preschool versus Childcare are Come from different sectors different accountability different resources different regulations and so on yet these are the same kids and parents need care all day long not just for two and a half hours the Preparation of pre-k teachers is completely different from the preparation of Elementary school teachers and so when people try to do PD Combining them. It's very difficult because they have very different foundations in which to base the professional development opportunities, so There I hope that California looks at some of the examples that you just gave because there are ways that states can facilitate This kind of continuity and alignment that aren't are not being done across the country You know, let me in just this part of our discussion With a thought or a question and anybody can address this. Do we have a way yet to measure via success of these programs You know test scores are such a You know difficult way to look at things, you know, obviously there's more to life than just test scores But how can a community look at what it is doing and tell? Whether what it's doing is working by whatever metric working might mean Well, I can tell you for our pilot. I mean we didn't do a you know a gold standard Research project, but we did Look at a couple of things. We had a we had a formal evaluation and we found that Kids were more ready for school families were more engaged in school The staff was better prepared to manage all of that And then obviously there are all these studies around head start as a specific intervention and often the conversation with head start especially for the skeptics is that the The gains don't last and so part of it part of what's important about your question is we do have to figure out a way to talk about this in such a way that The fact that we don't have test scores to point to moving up doesn't mean that we don't have kind of rigorous evaluation But we also have to say well if the effects of head start aren't lasting It's because the handoff to schools is poor Because of the lack of strong first-hand partnerships I mean that's that's literally how you talk about it's not because what we did in head start was a waste of time It's because when they get to elementary school, it's like, oh another set of issues a whole different kind of engagement of families Etc. So we we have to I don't know that we have a clean answer to that question You know, we were very pleased with the results for our pilot because it moved the needle in the right direction which is fundamentally what what Systems and communities want to do but we also as a field Or a mixed field to have to figure out a cleaner way to talk about all of this What it is what you are measuring because by design these are multi-faceted programs There's and they're different. So I don't I think if you if you went to those 90 schools My guess is you would find 90 slightly different variations of the same model Because the schools are in different communities with different needs different resources and so on and so One of the problems is people want to know what made the difference. I have we did seven things in my community We added home visiting we added Full day kindergarten and so on so what's what's making a difference? But it's the collection that is really making the difference. It's the added value It's the multiplicative value the sum is greater than no the hole is greater than the sum of the parts because they're bet They're reinforcing each other. So you can look broadly in communities at whether kids kindergarten readiness seems to be improving And think the markers like that attendance is a marker You look for markers that suggest that we know are basically milestones on the way to improvement But I don't I don't think we're going to be able to randomly assign whole communities to You know the three different versions of this design. It just won't work We can we can look at the components what I've seen is in all of the examples that I know and that I read in David's Report they're building on a lot of research on the components. We know that home visiting can work We know that high-quality preschool has benefits and sometimes long-term benefits if it's followed up by high quality elementary school So if you look at the components, you know that there is an evidence base for them So what we're doing is just putting these Components that haven't have evidence for them and expecting a multiplicative effect because they're reinforcing each other Yeah, I think that you know having all these pieces kind of coming together And I think you you almost think that there has to be some kind of value in just kind of breaking down the silos that exist That can sometimes exist between you know entities that are supposed to be doing some of the same things but you know but for whatever reason because of funding streams or because one is in a Department of Health and Human Services versus a Department of Education that they've never quite come together There's got to be some value just in that alone This is fantastic. We actually have a second panel that will be coming up They'll be talking about some of the work on the ground. So if we'll just take a minute and switch panels for a moment Thank you Panel to so this is great So here we'll have some leaders who are in communities around the country that are doing the work that David outlines of this report We have Brooke Chilton Timmons is the early learning coordinator for Multnomah County Chris Lopez Anderson is the program administrator for the Buffett Early Childhood Institute and Leanne Ellis is early childhood director for the city of Cambridge and You know if when you read this report you'll understand some of the individual questions here each one of these entities Does similar work, but they also have you know sort of differing focuses on how they do this in their communities based on their individual context and Brooke, you know one of the things that came up is that these play and learn groups Which is a term that I actually had not really heard before so I'd love if you explain that briefly It's a really important part of the work that you're doing in Multnomah County I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that has meant to have families coming into elementary schools You know how this sort of serves a good community outreach purpose Well, thank you so much for having me We're really excited about playing learn groups because we know a lot of children in our community don't have access to high-quality Early learning experiences, whether that's a supportive birth to five service or high quality preschool and so this is an opportunity where families come into schools and Get to learn along with their kids and get to build community With each other and in those plan learn groups. We're building relationships with the p3 coordinator So like David mentioned in our model We have a full-time p3 coordinator in each of these nine schools and we're building off of those community school supports That are in each of those buildings What's exciting about playing learn is that it honors families as their child's first teacher We know that they're experts in their lives and their children in their communities And we want to bring their expertise into the room with us and learn with them and We use an exciting model out of Seattle from child care resources it's called the kaleidoscope model and it also provides space for parents to bring in their expertise to that to that room into that space and It actually has pathways for parents to become leaders within those groups So it's not a p3 coordinator is expert telling families. This is what you need to know it's really coming together and the exciting part about that model is also that the learning doesn't stop when a family leaves that room These are activities that are designed to be replicable replicable in families homes They use materials very purposefully that families are going to have in their homes This is not a bunch of fancy things that Coordinators are buying for families to use this is really about here's how we can use this toilet paper roll in 20 different ways and here is what your child is learning when we do this So really hands-on learning Families getting to talk to each other building those supportive networks and that relationship with the p3 cornering is really important David described a Sacramento elementary school where we know that 95% of those children are eligible for free and reduced lunch where Their access their families access to basic needs It can be limited and so it's connecting them to services earlier that they may not have known about So if a family is coming in for a play-in-learn group, they may not realize that that that school also has a food pantry on site That's designed to be welcoming. That's designed to Have easy shopping with fresh food right there So having that connection with that p3 coordinator who they're building that relationship with is really essential It also means that they may have a referral to early intervention if they are the p3 coordinator notices that there may be a developmental concern for that child and Because they're not in other formal settings That early intervention support may not have occurred otherwise We're also I think another exciting piece of this work is Around play-in-learn groups is it's a chance for principals and other school staff to start that shift of That baby across the street. They're gonna be our students someday You know, what is that? It's a big shift for principals who we've talked about already and school staff who already have a lot on their plate to Start thinking that family week. What could we do? How do we think about them differently? How do we invite them earlier into our building and connect with them? and Particularly, how do we do that for families of color and families who speak languages other than English? That's a big piece of our work is How do we change the kind of environment the kind of welcome that every family receives when they walk in that building? We want all families to feel like this is their school and we want them here We want to learn about them We want to partner with them in more authentic ways than typically happens in a school building where you get the flyer about Literacy night and tells you what time to come and what you need to know about literacy and then sends you on your way So we want to flip that on its head and really push schools to think about how we can Engage them more authentically and get to know them and their kids early You know, I'm curious with the play and learn groups. Do what age do you first start interacting with families or what age is that of child? It's really meant to be a birth to five Which as you can imagine makes p3 coordinators jobs really complicated at times But the kaleidoscope model is meant to provide those types of setting give ideas for how Someone who's leaving a group like that can set up different areas of the room to really meet the needs of that little baby Who's on the floor and need the safe place to be and that four-year-old who's got lots of energy And we also want to provide engaging activities for them as well So Chris, you know one of the things we were talking about obviously in the earlier panel with about professional development and about developmentally appropriate education I know that part of your program is bringing educational facilitators into schools in addition to the family facilitators So this is somebody that I'm understanding who is working with the staff at the school on on Creating appropriate, you know kind of being welcoming for young children I'd love to hear more about how that really works. Great. Well, thank you in addition to the home visitors that we have and the family facilitators we have educational facilitators in essence, it's a learning coach and We really value that part that added benefit that we can give to a school. We know that Embedded job coaching has high potential to change teacher practices So what the educational facilitators do each one of them has ten schools And it might be two schools within the same district or two schools each Representing a different district. So then they have to really scan their environment The we're in our fourth year and I think the first year was really spent in building a strong relationship Coaching a teacher and or mentoring a teacher coaching a principal that can be a scary experience for a teacher who hasn't had that opportunity to engage in that kind of personal reflection So we know that one of the things that really changes practices is that self-reflection So building that relationship Starting to scan the school district scan the the building as to what might be their needs What are their strengths? How can we build on their strengths to address some of their needs? So we use the class as a classroom measure to start some conversations with teachers What I have found is that sometimes the real obvious school data isn't really being used So really working with the instructional coaches. They're my personal team I've got a talented group of women at this time really working with them how to look at data and then bring that data back in a very meaningful non-confrontational strength-based approach And really having those instructional conversations. So the instructional facilitator will do building wide PD professional learning But we know that that professional learning in and of itself is not going to really move the needle much in teaching practices so then how can they move that professional development into a Grade-level team where they start having some shared Conversation or a vertical team where they can start looking at the practices from the pre-k to the k to the first And then looking at how can I have coaching conversations? How can I have a teacher invite me into their room to do an observation to start building off of some goals? Maybe a teacher practice goal or student data goal and then really looking at that data To move the the practices along and we know that when you have professional development company with The modeling and the practice with the coaching that's when we have the best opportunity To really move instructional practices. I think one thing that makes it Exciting and sometimes difficult is that coaching instructional facilitation really needs to come from a leadership You need a school leader and I think that the panel before us really spoke quite well about the importance of a school leader And some of those school leaders are also teacher leaders that really embrace this concept and culture and climate of Coaching of wanting to be lifelong learners and how we really push ourselves to have those reflective Conversations which is which sometimes we're not in our teacher preparation programs That's not something that is always Really given an opportunity for us to come in and really look on how to be a reflective practitioner so It's it's an exciting relationship to have they have become part of those schools and those school communities But I also want them to kind of be able to step back and have that objective lens So that they can bring that have we thought about this When you did this tell me a little bit more why so that we can Be that added value to spark the learning I wonder what kind of feedback that you that the teachers at the schools have given back to you or to the Instructional facilitators if there's particular things that they are looking for more of That they are very appreciative to hear somebody outside the building Talking with them about we have great stories And I think that when you when David was talking about the research and how to research this I think one of the things that is important for us to capture in this and our school as a hub story is Those stories those personal narratives of what's changed because sometimes that's not found in a an attest score It's really taking that perspective So we have lots of different stories of where a teacher had never thought of this and how it's really changed her mind So I'm having stories and I'm seeing pictures of my facilitators back in Omaha and where they've shared with me The impact that they're having with their teachers the one thing that we do differently in our models that I then coach I have reflective supervision monthly with my team members Individually to give them that opportunity to be thinking also About their practices as they're interacting with their with the teachers that they're coaching with and then once a month I try meeting individually with Principles to have that opportunity to be a thinking partner with them and sometimes they don't like it when I show up And I'm wanting to talk about something that they rather not show up But I really believe as an educator that that's just an important aspect that sometimes we forget to do Well, we're gonna come back to that thought but about Principles and kind of navigating some of the different personalities here But Leanne I had wanted to ask about Cambridge's work particularly it the governance governance structure that you use So this is a little bit different from the other programs that have been discussed thus far. Could you talk a little bit more about that? People at the table and so we have a steering committee that provides strategic input on our plan and It is comprised of I feel like I'm very loud sorry comprised of Government officials we have the assistant city manager Then we have somebody from human services from the city. We have school department personnel We have the assistant superintendent for elementary ed and a principle and then we have People from the library as well as the housing development as well as mental health service providers as well as experts in the field of family child care and An executive director who runs a system a small system of six preschools Connected to a university so the table of the people who sit on the steering committee Really are represented of the whole community We and so that is the group that provides Strategic input three times a year on where we are Then under that as David showed we have three subcommittees and these subcommittees are related to our goals So we smushed access and quality together in one committee because how do you divide those two? You can't and so and we have a family engagement and partnership subcommittee and we have a health subcommittee And they're made up of they meet monthly They're 14 to 17 people on each committee and they really represent the community at large again It's the mirror image kind of of the steering committee on the health subcommittee For example, we have somebody from the public health department. We have a chief pediatrician for the local hospital We have a preschool director. We have a mental health agency and providers we have people who from wick people who provide services Home visiting services, so we have a wide array of people sitting at the table and they each bring a really unique Perspective to the discussion at hand So the person from wick and the person from preschool might see something from two different angles or perspectives And it gets hashed out in the in the subcommittee The subcommittees co-chaired by two people who are members of the subcommittee But act as co-chairs and they are I meet with them once a month before the next meeting to plan the meeting and the charge of the subcommittees are really to Shape the implementation of our ambitious plan How are we going to do the things that the plan says we must do and I would say I'm just looking at my notes. I don't forget anything I would say that The subcommittees are really Driving the work whether it be kindergarten transitions or home visiting What's come really from the subcommittees that are really fabulous is just recently We were talking about health and nutrition of young children because of the obesity crisis that we see now in young children and together With some of the people at the table we applied for a Catalyst grant to study. What are the what is the policy in early childhood that contributes? to or does not contribute to who helps Healthy eating and active living and so these subcommittees not only shape But they go off and they do added things because that Partnership and the discussion at the table make them think oh Listen, I saw this grant opportunity We could find out What are the policies in early childhood centers and family child care and Figure out what's the next step from there? So I think they are generative not only of shaping, but of creating and going a little bit further I think the other thing I would say is that These are really important practices that we have used I think I hope I Think they're intentional because the community has to be at the table to develop that partnership for long for sustainability and long-term Long-term buying because we don't want these initiatives to become and fade away Quacy talked a little bit about that Yeah, no, I think that that piece I was wondering a little bit about how one wrangles like all of these multiple personalities, but it sounds like you there's an opportunity there or Folks to pursue, you know within the subcommittee structure something that they consider to be important to them So nobody's priority is being sort of Quashed everybody people are getting an opportunity to explore what they want to bring back to the partnership Yeah, I think that also An example would be not only squashed nothing is squashed, but people really Shape the work again I come to the health subcommittee not that the other subcommittees are not great But we were talking about one of our charges is is to expand mental health awareness And as you know in some communities mental health the discussion of mental health is a taboo And so the discussion about my parents don't like to hear that from a family support worker or the McKinney-Vento liaison saying oh, that's just not cool Brings to the bring brought us to the term of looking at wellness the concept of wellness as a and so I think Again, I really think these subcommittees Enrich the work we do You know Brooke I wanted to to go back and ask a little bit about the work that you do in Multnomah County and Very diverse population that I'm sure that you work with and it obviously you all are taking You know particular efforts as as many of them as the programs are in the entire report in reaching out to a diverse community I'm wondering how that works on the ground in your community. What kind of work do you do there? So just for some context Multnomah County is rapidly changing like I'm sure many communities across the country And a lot of people are being pushed out from Portland out to further out east There's one small school district that Has gone from, you know, 16 percent students of color to 54 percent students of color in only 10 years And that's a couple years old that statistic. I'm curious. I think it's probably even higher now so those schools aren't necessarily necessarily ready and Full of knowledge about how to fully welcome More diverse students and families and so one of the exciting things about the Sun service system is that we can come alongside schools And with our community-based organizations to really help them think differently about supporting families So in that community school model, we have an opportunity to provide more holistic supports past the classroom to whether it's to meet basic needs just to provide family engagement opportunities that respond to strengths and desires of the community as opposed to the school But as a county we also wanted to address the disparities that we were seeing in the outcomes in our community and We have a strong commitment to racial equity and so part of the way that We're trying to shift our system is in our last RFP. We devoted Twice as many resources, so we went from 30 percent to 60 percent going directly to culturally specific community-based organizations as opposed to Just culturally responsive agencies, which is something that we require all of our contractors to Aspire and work toward being but the shift meant that we have the opportunity to strengthen those culturally specific agencies and Work and learn from them and so they are the folks in our schools who are employing the p3 coordinators and They're bringing The expertise of whether it's the immigrant refugee community organization or the Native American youth and family organization Or Latino Network, they're coming into that schools with that knowledge and they're finding ways that Bringing their expertise to to meet community needs and to help schools learn from them Which is really exciting to do and So one of the ways that we want so that's sort of on the system level and then we also want to see How best we can support different communities in those schools? And so as part of our requirements each school runs to play and learn groups a week and We ask that at least one of those be Culturally specific or in a language other than English and so that That's different. We we let agencies and schools work together to figure out how best to serve their community And so that's different across each school So it might be a Vietnamese play and learn group at Lincoln Park and then we have a Slavic play and learn group at Sacramento and again, that's really driven At that school level And also we're because we're depending on those agencies and their expertise to help promote trust and create a sense of belonging for families of color and culturally specific communities that in In many instances are new to that particular part of Multnomah County and may not have that base of Support and his history that comes with being in a place for a long time. And so as our community changes I think it's one way that we can provide supports for for diverse families and Yeah, it's exciting to see and hear the different ways that plays out. So one really quick example is At one of our schools Slavic families didn't feel comfortable coming into the building for Some complex reasons that I'm happy to tell you the longer story about but our p3 coordinator Wanted to serve that population and although she's Asian American she She basically hit the pavement and she went to Churches she met community leaders of the Slavic community. She said, you know, what would how can we make this happen? How how can you come in and and do this play and learn group with us? And they really didn't feel ready to be in the school building So she said, okay, I'll come to you and so working with One of her Russian speaking counterparts at her agency. They brought the plain learn group to a community space where that group of families felt welcome and they felt safe and they built that trust in those relationships and Then a year later. They were able to Build on those relationships and say hey, what do you think want to come over to the school this time? And they said yes, we were ready and so it's been exciting to see that that trust Deepening and even as we see principles change in those buildings Whether it's a community school site manager a p3 coordinator They're able to come in and build those trust with families in different ways and create that continuity for families All the way hopefully from you know, they're tiny little ones through fifth grade. So Let's talk about those principles. I love that. I love you alluded to that and I was like Yeah, I'd love to know more about what the work is that you do to encourage buy-in from principles It sounds like not all of them are necessarily on board from day one But obviously, you know, the work continues and it's important work So what are the things that you do to maybe work with principles to explain to them the importance of this work? And then obviously there must be some who have who are probably like gung-ho from the start You know, so I wonder, you know, how you navigate the You know, sort of the different turf issues that might arise with this work First of all as a as a former retired early childhood through elementary school principal I can really empathize with being a school principal today. There's just a lot of demands So it's important to enter in that relationship with them Knowing that that they have a very difficult Important job role and and all I I believe at the soul that all educators want to do what's best It's and there's obstacles that sometimes get in that are there their obstacles. So working around them I think with Principles It's I like to kind of pull at their heartstrings Like why wouldn't you want to do this? These are this is what is the right thing to do But I think it's just really listening to them and then intersecting Navigating my work with them to help address What they're what their goals are what they're what their wishes are what their dreams are very much like we do with teachers And very much like we do with parents. What do you what do you envision? What do you hope for? What do you want and then building that on but you've got to admit that this thing called birth prenatal To grade three and beyond is new And David in the panel before has talked about, you know, yes, there's silo So the one good thing is that we are breaking down those silos But we're also entering into areas that I don't know anything about Now I was fortunate that I started my career as an early childhood teacher and then moved up and thought Why would I want to do anything other than early childhood and realized there's a lot to give? My fellow colleagues in elementary school, I think I'll enter into that world and Share them a little bit about this thing called early childhood So I think that it's it's Giving them that that support that they need. I think that teacher preparation leadership programs need to really work to Embrace that principles need to be birth through Grades whatever in their buildings and look at how to do that So I know there's different initiatives out there and I'm excited to see those continue to grow but individually or More specifically with our work in Omaha. What we've tried doing is really looking at our theory of change So we're we're talking to princes about how to strengthen the organization their organization the culture and the climate The family school partnership and the community partnership We're also then talking to them about their professional building professional development that capacity So really looking at their their own leadership. What do they need to strengthen themselves as a leader? They're their professional development doesn't span that age And the collaboration and then really looking at the implementation of just really good teaching practices And how do we then move the teaching practices in our classroom also to include educational opportunities for our families? Bringing data. I happen to love data And I think data can be our friend and it can kind of just be a real reality check when I work with principals and say hey, let's take a look at your student of color data and and All of a sudden they realize and we have one Principal who after I kind of prompted that a little bit he did No, I know enough how to nudge and then how to back off he did and he came back to me a month or so later He goes, you know what Cress? my office referral is our Disapportionately to my student population. I go tell me more He goes they over-represent my students of color Tell me more. Why do you think what do you think is going on and then what do you think we want to do? What do you think we need to do and then having them there? So I think that just really meeting it I we've chuckled a little bit as we had Conversations earlier. I cannot wait for version 2.0. I think we've learned so much I think sometimes principals Struggle there's this conflict of what they want to do in their buildings and how does that align to their districts initiative? how does that align to their state mandates and so In version 2.0. I think we need to spend some time really having those conversations at the district level and making sure that We've got the buy-in of the district Leaders and we talked about the superintendents. Well, sometimes it's it's that level but sometimes it's just the the district curriculum coordinators and what we're saying I think the other thing too as we work with the principals is like we're not going to undo your curriculum We're not we're not going to come in here and say don't do you this for curriculum? Don't do this for an assessment. We want to be able to add value to what you're already doing I We've had some some of my am I and again I'm I'm I'm seeing all my principles and they all have strengths and all have individual Areas that they really want to get strong and but I had several principles who made it a goal that they were going to go on home visits They were going to go see what this thing was and it was it was it was like oh Okay, I get this now and then they started having I've got two principles Specifically who really want to know and build those partnerships with the community child care And like they are starting to have coffees with community child care or like, okay Let's see where our kids are coming from and so that we can start building that so Our principles are key They the leadership of a school is is the most important thing I believe they set the tone they give the permission They give the support for whatever happens, and I think just having them Be able to to build on their vision and see how this can be part of that vision You know your comment about principles taking time to go out into the communities and visit the child care Programs to get an idea of where their children are coming from you know leads me to a question Land and this will be the last question for this panel, and then I'll throw it open to the audience And you'll get a chance to ask your own questions of everyone who's spoken But I would love to know more about the work that you all are doing in supporting Quality in early childhood centers and in family providers, which I feel is you know, certainly some that under explored Area, but so many kids are there So tell me about the work that you're doing there When David talks about educational equity this is really the part this is the the the crux of it We don't want children going to Subpar programs just because that's what they can afford so raising the quality of all our programs including family child care is really nearing dear to my heart and We decided to tie our programming improvement to the quality rating improvement system our QRIS system in Massachusetts that was our first decision and We decided to start with centers and We started with nine centers and what we do is we offer the panoply of services that we know are Supportive you were talking about these things earlier both of you we provide coaching twice a month We provide mentoring for the directors so they can be strong educational leaders We provide monthly communities of practice We also provide robust for us professional development For example, we had a PD day April 6th, and we had 129 providers both family child care and centers come to six workshops 90% of them were Cambridge providers. So that was great and we also provide a little thing called program improvement funds and That's money and we give money to sites to improve Their environment because environment is as the workforce development book says The basis right you have to have materials you have to have your centers. It has to be really interesting So those are the components that make up the centers. We've been going for two David says three years, so I have I it feels like yesterday I started so it's hard for me to to remember the date we started But we've been we've just finished our second year of on-site coaching and programming and the results that we're seeing are about One in Eckers and class because we do it annually Eckers is environmental classes teacher-child interaction. We're seeing one to two points improvement and so that feels good and We so the first year we looked at learning environments in the second year. We looked at Curriculum and the family child care we have largely the same program But because family child care providers are alone all day long with their children everything happens at night and So we provide five communities of practice that really strengthen their business practices five Community of five professional development workshops that really are looking at development developmentally appropriate practice tied to standards Because that's what they asked for we provide program improvement funds and we provide Really links to the community because we want them to get out of their house and really attend play groups or other things And because it's our first year. We're not quite sure how it's what the results will be we're not tying it to QIS because they're allergic to QIS and But we do assessment if they want to improve their quiet their Transitions we do a pre and a post and we hope to see change over time Well, this is great Fantastic panel we Have time for questions from this panel and also if there are And also from our previous panel Debra and Quasie are still here in the audience and David as well If there's anybody who wants to ask any questions of anybody who's spoken thus far Just raise your hand and let me know You could just wait for the microphone Sure, you don't mind introducing me only float us with the campaign for great level reading and I wanted to ask Chris Specifically about the 2.0 version that you reference. I just recently read the evaluation in the report That Ralph my boss said you got to read this So it it feels like it's on track in the right direction But now you're moving into 2.0 wondering if you could say a little bit about that Well, and that was probably very premature. Hopefully Dr. Meisels isn't listening to me today I think the 2.0 is just really there's nothing out there that has That is planning 2.0. I think in this work. We're always Evaluating we're always looking for what we could have what lessons learned. So I just hope that as we look to just spread our work to continue doing what we're doing that we have an opportunity to To do some things a little differently if you want to know is one of the things that I would do differently And it just makes good sense is just a do spend some time Doing the landscape assessment really Really narrowing down where schools are where districts are so that we can be very specific to meeting their needs So that's just one example Yeah, Lisa currency at New America, this is great. Thank you very much Thanks to David as well for the report. I Wondered and and anybody can jump in on this As you know Laura's team here at New America looks out a lot of workforce issues And how to ensure that we're thinking about things like Compensation and training and the really big divide that exists between our early childhood educators birth to three versus the pay Just quite, you know candidly that is so much higher But yet still so low for the K3 teachers Does that come up as an issue? Maybe in these three communities that we're talking about here and as a barrier or two being able to really do this kind of alignment I Would I would just jump in and say one of the things that we are doing in Cambridge is providing college courses For free with the textbook so that an assistant teacher in preschool can become a teacher And while we can't change the pay structure, although it would be wonderful We're trying to provide opportunities for people to go up the ladder and therefore increase their pay I'd say the second thing we're doing is a shared services model that allows teachers to benefit from Insurance telephone plans that are Reduced to what they actually pay so it's kind of You know if there's no Unfortunately magic bullet in Cambridge One of our units is the workforce Development and we've done some extensive studies and research on that very issue and there is the work commission Part of the legislative branch is actually working closely with team members of the Buffett Early Children Institute To study that and look at to make it a recommendation To really address, you know when you think of where a child can be from birth through age Compensatory education the qualifications and the requirements for all those different settings settings are all different And when we think of that continuity and quality don't you think we might want to have some alignment and when our Most youngest most developing learners have some of the fewest Requirements for their cult their quality of care and continuity It needs some addressing so If if you want to go on to the Buffett Early Childhood website and you can see a very comprehensive study that is taking place With that very same I can add to one One example that I like a lot around the compensation issue as I mentioned earlier the Boston Public Schools involvement with the community-based preschools has received a lot of attention nationally and For the 12 community-based preschools that collaborate with the district and implement the district curriculum the lead teachers Of those community school classrooms get a very significant pay bump So it's kind of built into that model and then I would also mention the federal preschool expansion grant program Which is a high quality You know provides high quality preschool also includes teachers pre-k teacher salaries that are a match are supposed to match the district salaries We've done studies of districts that have tried to create alignment between pre-k and the early elementary grades and the When and when we ask what are the challenges the most important challenge that comes up is the difference in training and we can't ask people to get more training More preparation if we don't compensate them for it. So we're sort of stuck with in lease in California with not very demanding training and Because we don't want to pay them more or this Some people don't want to pay them more. The other thing though is it's also the difference in the way that the jobs are organized so Pre-k teachers are often also doing extended care. So they're with children all day long So if you want to do even coaching or if you want to do Professional development that brings together the pre-k and the early elementary grade teachers. It's extremely difficult for just simple Logistical reasons because they're not available at the same time. So there are a lot of ways We we've organized the work differently as well as the the compensation issue Hey, I see a gentleman in the back Hi, my name is Jerry Reed I work with David at EDC and I guess my question is as I listen to the the presentation in the model I guess what I'd love to understand is Where did you find when you traveled the country the greatest proponent of the model? I mean because there's a lot of new players in the model And so I'm thinking principles for example We spent a little time on that but where was the strongest ally and where did you find the strongest resistance? To trying something as bold and new as this Thanks, Jerry I think that's it's a great question and I think in terms of the The second part of your question is easier, which is in I think there is a common denominator that In all of these places that getting the districts to the table is a fundamental challenge and So we've won over some principles. We've won over some school districts But I think we're we're still hoping for deeper involvement from the districts in terms of support So I think that's that's something that we're working on and then in terms of proponents I Think at this early stage of development, we're seeing it different by location So I you know, I think in Metro Omaha, we've seen some principles that have really become champions for this I think In in Cambridge, I think a lot of the work, you know has been at the directors of the of the preschools and some of the I think the home visiting programs there So I think in that sense is kind of varied by the location and the emphasis of the of the work, I mean That what we always say about this work is the importance of champions and in Cambridge the outgoing city manager Really views was like a mayor similar to a mayor he really viewed this as his his Lasting contribution to the city he had been worked for decades in the city But this is the one at the end of his career that he got really excited about and he went around the city saying early Child is the most important thing and what we're doing is now the most important thing We're going to do for the city of Cambridge and he was a believer And he's retired and the superintendent that he brought into that has retired But the initiative has been sustained throughout a new city manager and a new superintendent Do you question in the back? I'm Shelly Patrick. I'm also a colleague of David's my question is for you Christine And how you think about journalism and the coverage of this model And do you feel like you have the platform to talk about the complexity and the work that it takes To support the kind of change that's described and then the second part is do you all feel like you have The tools to amplify The stories that you need to tell either working with other journalists or other venues Thank you So education week has a little bit of a different platform from a general education Excuse me a general interest newspaper because our audience is all k through 12 Educators so in some ways I could say like yeah, like anything I ever come up with ever Related to education will get some some readership I will say though one thing that we have found because we can see you know who reads our articles and who reads them the most Is that people are particularly interested in like transitions from Early childhood to kindergarten that's where our audience is our audience is I mean they you know care about home visiting I've written about home visiting. It is respectable But our audience is particularly interested in that in that transition Which makes sense because our audience is primarily principals Um And other educators who are going to be looking at it through that lens In the general interest newspapers, I think that you know one of the challenges is that this is Work is very fine grained You know, it's not something that one could say like and then our test scores improved or and then You know our school that was on great schools rated three is now rated seven or you know or or and then you know Integration happened, which is like a big well anyway a whole different A whole different set of stories there about you know different sorts of things going on at school levels So anyway, I I think that you know if I were at a journal interest newspaper I would probably be thinking like okay, so I got to make sure I have like the story here What am I telling my editor? What is the story? I think the stories are there But I think that you know the challenge of course the reporters is that you know, there's a million stories out there and And you know how to how to make this one kind of break through um But one thing that is certainly you know, I think perhaps in the favor is that there's a tremendous amount of interest in You know, I I say brain science You know, this is what we you know call it. I think that probably maybe some things are oversold But anyway, so but there's a tremendous amount of interest. There's a tremendous amount of interest in this in the general public There's a tremendous amount of interest in early childhood among the in the general public People just sort of feel like this is an important thing And so that gives stories like this and the work like this. I think a lift You know, that might have been might not have been there in the past as much Add to the story. I think Social media has Has taken opportunities to look at the stories that are being shared by parents About how this the impact of the work that we're doing has changed their lives So I think capturing those stories and the stories of teachers How this has changed their life I have You know, I this is kind of not the same But you when you think of the changes that we're making it does have impact I have an an educational facilitator who is leaving to become an elementary principal and This will forever be on her mind Her experience and seeing what can happen So I think those stories show up in different ways And and for and people are drawn to them through their own personal How that talks to them For principals that move to another school, you know, you talked about how principals leave, etc Do they take this with them? And continue the initiative where they go They may not have the same Supports, maybe that you know, but the philosophy the the Just to share a little bit about so in the first two years of our pilot project In our original eight schools, we had seven of eight principals turnover during that time In that same period we had one p3 coordinator turnover One of those principals was very successful. He got so excited about the model and he was Asked to move to a different school that needed some additional support And they thought the district thought he would be a good fit there But he advocated very strongly with the district and they were able to put together some funds So we talk about nine, but actually we have a tenth school now And it was particularly for that reason that we had a principal who was very engaged She believed in the model and yelled really loud until the district was able to piece together the funding for that work So I wouldn't underestimate the the power of a, you know, committed principal I have a principal who is leaving and he's been part of the project since it started four years ago And so he's moving to within the same district, but in a school That's not a full implementation school as a hub And so I was asking him, you know, what will you take forward? And he's not going to have a home visitor or a family facilitator or an instructional coach But the one thing that he did in his school was start An artifact moment where parents get to bring in a story or a An artifact to to share the story about their home and their family as part of a parent teacher conference And and how that really started building that relationship with a family instead of it's usually the teacher talking Where he he started that as part of his school as a hub initiative and been building those relationships with family And he's taking that with him That's just one little thing that he can do that's not going to cost any money But I there will always be this thing in the back of his head about the four years that he experienced Where the school is a hub and getting to know his school community. That's right there outside his his front door You know, I hate to do this. This is a great discussion, but we have to wrap it up I please give a round of applause to all of our panelists Thank you again for a reception. Thank you for coming and ending your day with us