 Welcome. My name is Laura Bornfriend and I'm deputy director of the Early Education Initiative at New America in Washington DC. I've been working in education for around 15 years and started my career as a fourth-grade teacher and working at New America for about five years now. And I'm thrilled to see so many of you here today. Thank you for coming. I'd especially like to thank our panelists for agreeing to be a part of the discussion we'll have in a little bit and I'll introduce them in a few minutes. I also want to thank everyone who we interviewed for this report. Many of you are in the audience. You truly helped Abby and I to understand more deeply Minnesota's context and and the sometimes unique and and shared challenges that Minnesota Minnesota has and we really enjoyed exploring those. And finally last but definitely not least I'd like to thank the McKnight Foundation for making this report an event possible. Thank you Erin and thank you Jeff who agreed to help us check everyone in today so we really appreciate that help as well. Abby and I sincerely appreciate being here today sharing our findings holding a rich discussion and we'll get to that shortly. But first a little about New America. New America founded in 1999 is a nonprofit and our nonpartisan think tank. Our hallmarks are big ideas impartial analysis, pragmatic policy solutions, technological innovation, next-generational politics and creative engagement with broad audiences. New America is home to a variety of international and domestic policy programs including the education policy program which is where the early education initiative is situated and that is where Abby and I. So I'll tell you a little bit about our work at the early and education initiative and then jump into why we all are why we are all here today. With the early education initiative we conduct research, develop policy recommendations and disperse new ideas that aim to improve access, quality and coordination of early and elementary education for all children from birth to third grade. Our team is small but mighty and we're dedicated to helping policymakers develop an early education system that serves all American children. We cover federal, state and more increasingly local policy in areas such as child care quality, pre-K, head start, kindergarten, dual language learners, leadership both at the child care center and school level and generally teaching and learning and you can find our reports, analysis and commentary on our blog early.edcentral.org. This slide may be a little bit difficult to see but you can find it in your report it's one of the first couple of pages. Beginning this summer and through the end of 2015 the early education initiative will release eight papers on reforming early education birth through third grade. The first paper was a look at San Francisco Unified School District's implementation of a pre-K third approach. That report was released in June. The report you received today on Minnesota's the second and to follow we'll have a report on California's birth through third birth through kindergarten excuse me workforce policies and a series of reports on dual language learners one from San Antonio, one on the David Douglas excuse me school district in Oregon and Washington D.C. And then we'll have a second report that's similar to the one we're going to talk about today based on Minnesota. We'll have a second one on Massachusetts and then we'll release a final report a 50 state scan of states birth through third grade policies that support children's literacy development. We embarked on this 50 state scan project about a year ago with support from the Joyce Foundation which is based in Chicago Illinois and the goal was to take a comprehensive look at how states are helping children get and stay on the path to being strong readers by the end of third grade. This is the point I know I don't have to tell all of you which content becomes much more challenging for all students but especially for children who are not reading at grade level already. We know that reading well at third grade is a predictor of success later in school including graduating from high school going on to higher education and we also know that according to the most recent NAEP the National Assessment of Educational Progress just 34% of all children across the country read proficiently at fourth grade and when you look at just low income students that percent drops dramatically to less than 20% who read proficiently and that's across the country. Abby will talk a little bit more about Minnesota in a little bit. That's not acceptable. So what what can we do? Well over the past several years many states have instituted third grade reading laws. Minnesota has one. These are meant to identify struggling readers early on and provide them with interventions to get on track. Many of these states also have a component to the law which requires children to be held back in third grade if they're not reading at grade level. That's not a part of Minnesota's law but several other other states do. We wanted to look beyond and we felt it was important to look beyond these targeted reading policies. While determining whether children are progressing in reading as early as possible and putting practices in place to support them are certainly important. We want states school district schools to be doing those things but they are not all that's necessary to ensuring that children can read proficiently at least. Things like educators ability to teach reading and understand how young children learn best are key. So is kids access to high quality pre-k and full day kindergarten. So are equitable funding systems and supports for dual language learners. And so is having the right data points to know if the outcomes are improving. Our team decided to look at state policies in seven areas looking at this this comprehensive taking a comprehensive approach to think about how states can better improve children's literacy outcomes. So we included educators both teachers and leaders birth through third grade standards curriculum assessment and data equitable funding quality and access in pre-k full day kindergarten supports for dual language learners. And when a state had a third grade reading law we included that a look at that law in our scan. We compiled existing data previously collected by other organizations such as the National Institute for Early Education Research the Education Commission of the States that's based in Colorado the National Council on Teacher Quality and the Early Childhood Data Collaborative. In a few instances we went directly to state websites or regulations to find answers to our questions. There are some data points we wanted to include in this 50 state scan we just couldn't find information about. And we see that as an opportunity for future scans of future things to explore. These included things like requirements of the state level around curricula. Is there any guidance from the state? How well are early learning guidelines and K-12 standards actually aligned? Funding levels for kindergarten we weren't able to find that that hasn't been gathered for all 50 states in in recent years. And there are a few others. This visual here shows how we decided to wait each area. We gave most of the weight to educators because of the profound impact they can have on student engagement and learning. The educator bucket is closely followed by standards assessment and data equitable equitable funding and so on. We gave the least weight to those third grade reading laws. We ranked each state in each of these individual policy areas and across all of them together to get that comprehensive look. And I can't report those results today. But in November, we will release the full rankings of states. So stay tuned. But on the purple one pager that you have from that you picked up from the table today, there's a look a sneak peek at Minnesota. And you can see how Minnesota fared among neighboring states. So I invite you to take a look at that. Now I'd like to give you but so I won't report the results. But I will give you a few highlights of what we learned from the scan starting with educators. States have lots of different teaching license. 39 states including Minnesota have an early childhood educator teaching life education teaching license that bridges pre K and kindergarten and extends at least to second grade. This license however typically overlaps with state elementary teaching license that span K to five or kindergarten to sixth grade or perhaps first to fifth or first to sixth. While someone with either one of these licenses could teach in a first grade classroom, for instance, their preparation that leads towards that license is often very different. Early childhood education preparation programs just across the country tend to focus more on how to teach, giving teacher strategies to work with new and emerging readers, how to incorporate play child directed activities exploration into learning and how to engage families. Well, element elementary preparation programs tend to focus more on subject area content and strategies to work better with older children. Currently, neither elementary or early childhood teacher prep programs really adequately equip perspective pre K third teachers with the knowledge and skills they need to work with young children. But we feel that having the early childhood education license is still important. Because perspective teachers who know they want to teach in an early grade classroom can specialize in the ways that young children learn and develop, as well as have practical experience working with younger children. Generally speaking, elementary prep preparation programs do not afford clinical practice experiences in kindergarten or first grade classrooms and almost never in a pre K classroom. So for this reason, one of our other indicators is also to see if states require at least kindergarten teachers to have that license and 14 of them do. 13 states, including Minnesota require early childhood educator candidates to pass a reading pedagogy test. 19, including Minnesota require elementary candidates to do the same. While these tests cannot tell how well teachers can actually apply that knowledge to real time situations in classroom. Can they pinpoint specific reading challenges? For instance, they do signal an importance of reading pedagogy and instruction for both preparation programs and for teacher candidates. So we think they're important. Requirements for teachers in birth to five programs also matter a lot. Under state child care center licensing requirements 19 states, including Minnesota, require lead teachers to have at least some training. Many of them require not even a high school diploma. While five states including Minnesota require principles to have at least some child development coursework, only one state Illinois require an a focus on early childhood education in principle preparation. Only 19 states, including Minnesota, require center directors to have at least a child development associate or AA in a related field, leaving more than half of the states requiring less, some requiring just a high school diploma. And we think the job of a center directors not vastly different from that of an elementary school principal. But their educational requirements certainly are standards assessment and data. Every state has comprehensive early learning guidelines for pre K and all but three have them for infant and toddler programs. Most states say these guidelines align with K 12 standards, but the real depth of alignment is less or known. Moving to assessment 26 of the states with pre K programs require multiple domain pre K assessment. So including beyond literacy and numeracy, but looking at social emotional development, approaches to learning, do our children curious, do they persevere stick with a challenging task. And those states also give assessment recommendations about what tools programs should use. 39 states, including Minnesota have a comprehensive K e a kindergarten entry assessment in some stage of development. 13 states have fully implemented. Only six states though offer recommendations for literacy and math assessments in kindergarten through second grade. A few others require encouraged literacy assessment, several through their third grade reading law. But we think it's important to have some recommendations coming coming from the state around what those assessment should be happening in those grades. And moving, not quite yet, moving to data. 21 states do not link child level level data from any of their early childhood programs to their K 12 longitudinal data systems. Minnesota is able to link from early intervention and preschool special education, but not is not currently linking from any other programs, at least as of 2013. Information about child's participation in experiences in childcare pre K or other early childhood programs can help states and local education agencies make decisions about current and future investments in early education policies and programs. And these data can help kindergarten teachers be better prepared to meet the needs of the youngsters entering their classrooms. And the last bucket I'll talk about today is equitable funding. 17 states including DC or 16 states and DC, I should know not a state I wish we were fund at least one pre K program through a school funding formula, paying for pre K in this matter raises its profile by recognizing it as part of Children's Core Education and provides more reliable, potentially stable funding. Thinking about K 12 funding, 15 states have a progressive funding distribution. 19 states have a flat funding distribution and 14 have a regressive funding distribution. What does that mean? Well, a recent school funding fairness report looked at whether states send more dollars to districts with higher concentrations of students living in poverty. At the local level, the primary funding sources property taxes, you know, which means that schools serving the nation's most vulnerable children, those facing poverty, hunger, family turmoil, high mobility and many other challenges are often the least likely to have sufficient economic and non economic resources to overcome these challenges. States can establish formula formula that helps to address these local inequalities within the school. But according to the analysis in the school funding fairness report in 2012, the majority of states do not provide higher poverty districts with more state resources. Minnesota is one of the 15 that do. And then at the the under five level, thinking about childcare subsidy reimbursement, this is another indicator that we put under equitable funding we think is really important. In 2013 or 2014, only three states reimbursed at a rate equal to or above the 75th percentile of market rate for childcare, which is the percent recommended by the federal government. States set reimbursement rates for childcare providers that accept families receiving childcare subsidies through the federal government's childcare and development block grant. The reimbursement rate is the highest amount the state will give providers if providers charge parents who pay without subsidy a fee equal or greater to the state's reimbursement rate, the provider will receive that max reimbursement. But those max reimbursement rates are often set well below the market for childcare, meaning there is little incentive for the highest quality providers to participate. Now a scan of state policies can only tell us so much. While strong policies can help establish conditions for good practices at the local level, there is a lot of variation in local implementation. And implementation is just as important, if not more important, than the actual policy itself. So we wanted to be able to take a closer look at a couple of states. And we chose Minnesota and Massachusetts. Our goal was really to get a better understanding of the relationship between state policies and the early education and literacy work happening in local school districts and communities. I'm going to now turn things over to my colleague Abby Lieberman, who's recently promoted as a policy analyst on our early education team. Abby has been at New America a little over a year. Prior to joining us, she interned on the legislative affairs team at Education Trust and at the U.S. Department of Education working on the 2013 Race to the Top District competition. So happy to have her on our team. Please join me in welcoming Abby. Thank you, Laura. And there are two seats up here if anyone would like them. We're happy to see the room so full. OK. So, can you hear me OK? OK. Minnesota is one of a handful of states often recognized as a leader in public education. And that's for good reason. Minnesota's students score well above average in reading and math on both national and international tests. They're also more likely to graduate high school than students in most other states. But unfortunately, Minnesota's pursuit of educational excellence hasn't solved core problems of educational inequity. I hope you can see this OK. If not, it's also in your report. So the state continues to have one of the most pronounced achievement gaps in the country, despite having one of the most progressive funding formulas. This chart shows the demographics of the state's public schools. Minnesota is a diverse state, but stubborn gaps persists based on socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity and English language proficiency. For example, white fourth graders in Minnesota are more than twice as likely as black and Hispanic peers to be proficient readers. Native English speakers significantly outperform English language learners. And as you can see, almost 40 percent of the state's students qualify for free and reduced price lunch, yet less than half of those students are proficient in reading. So what can policymakers, school leaders and teachers do to lessen this gap? As Laura explained, research suggests that strong supports in the early years, an intentional alignment of education systems from pre-K and into the early grades of elementary school, what we refer to as a pre-K third approach is essential to narrow the achievement gap, specifically when it comes to third grade reading. And as Laura discussed, many policies can improve children's experiences during these years. We think a strong pre-K third continuum should ideally include the following. Access to high quality early learning opportunities, whether they be in home based, center based or public school settings, access to free full day pre-K and kindergarten, highly effective educators and leaders who have knowledge of child development and evidence based reading strategies, policies that support the needs of the growing dual language learner population, laws and initiatives that specifically emphasize the importance of literacy and provide supports to districts, schools and students. And last but not least, opportunities for parent engagement. So this is definitely difficult to see, but it is on page eight of your report if you want to flip to it. So Minnesota has been ramping up efforts to improve early learning for the last few years and has started thinking strategically about pre-K third work and now has many of the policies I just listed in place. This timeline on page eight displays some highlights of this work. Just to point out a few, in 2011 the Minnesota Department of Education created a state literacy team and developed a comprehensive birth to 12th grade literacy plan. Policymakers that year also passed a read well by third grade which required districts to adopt local literacy plans. And in December 2011, Minnesota won a competitive race to the top early learning challenge to ramp up their early learning efforts, mostly in the birth to age five space. In May 2013 Governor Dayton signed the world's best workforce education budget bill which and also funded full day kindergarten. And in 2014 the McKnight Foundation and the West Central Initiative sponsored the creation of the pre-K grade three design team that works closely advising the department on pre-K third efforts. To determine how the state level initiatives are impacting the work in districts and schools, Laura and I met with leaders and teachers in St. Paul and Minneapolis and Bloomington. We visited several elementary schools including one charter school in St. Paul community of Peace Academy. We met with multiple advocacy groups, spoke with the Minnesota Department of Education and had numerous phone interviews with philanthropic leaders and stakeholders both in the Twin Cities and in Greater Minnesota. So what did we find? Minnesota has a unique pre-K system. We focused heavily on pre-K in the report because access to high-quality pre-K is such an essential part of the pre-K third continuum. In Minnesota there are multiple ways that children from low-income families can access pre-K. These include Head Start, school readiness programs and the early learning scholarship program. But even with multiple programs in place, the state serves under 50 percent of four year olds in state-funded programs and many of these programs are only serving children for a half day. This is also in the report. I apologize that it's not coming up so clearly on the screen. So most students in Minnesota do not attend pre-K in a school setting. The second circle from the right represents school readiness programs which are usually school-based and about 14,000 Minnesota students are served in Head Start which is the smallest circle. So the majority of children are served in family child care homes and child care centers. Just to note that this data isn't broken down by age so some of the family and child care centers are counting children starting at birth where school readiness is counting children for kindergarten. So as you saw in the graphic many children attend pre-K through the school readiness program. School readiness aid provides funds directly to the school districts and in the past this aid has been extremely limited in some districts only equating to about $200 per student. During the next biennium the program will receive a substantial increase in funding so it should be expanding and hopefully improving. School readiness programs differ significantly from one district to the next because districts have discretion in using this money as long as they meet certain minimum requirements. In 2014 more than 28,000 children participated in programs funding with school readiness aid but program quality and length varied significantly. The largest portion of state funding for early learning goes to Minnesota's early learning scholarship program which is unique to Minnesota. This program provides low income families with scholarships essentially vouchers to send their children to school-based center-based or even home-based pre-K. Families can receive up to $7,500 a year which doesn't always cover the cost of a full-day program especially in the Twin Cities. To regulate quality scholarships can only be used at locations that have been rated by the state's quality rating and improvement system parent aware. Unfortunately only 12 percent of eligible children are expected to receive scholarships this year due to limited funding. So school-based pre-K programs can accept early learning scholarships but from our research we found that the scholarship model can be difficult for schools to utilize because they must commit time, physical space and teachers to pre-K classrooms but can't necessarily predict how many children in their neighborhood will receive scholarships or who will choose to attend. In our paper we highlighted a few Minnesota school districts that are leading the way in pre-K some of which are using scholarship dollars. We're excited to have panelists here today who have firsthand experience in these districts. So I'm just going to give a very brief overview of the work happening in St. Paul and Bloomington and they'll have a chance to expand more during the panel discussion. So Bloomington Public Schools pre-K program called Kinderprep uses school readiness funds, pathway to scholarship dollars, title one funds and funding from the general education formula. Kinderprep is a tuition-free half-day early literacy pre-K program serving at risk four-year-olds in the district. It was first offered at Pond Community Center and since 2009 Kinderprep has slowly expanded to four of the district's title one elementary schools starting with Washburn Elementary. Despite limited funding Kinderprep has managed to secure a spot for every eligible child who wishes to attend. St. Paul Public Schools is another leader in terms of pre-K access. Last year 32 out of 41 schools offered pre-K in St. Paul but there were only seven full-day classrooms. Despite almost every school participating over 300 students remain on the wait list at any given time. Five St. Paul schools have pre-K programs modeled after the renowned child parent centers that have been in Chicago Public Schools since the 1960s. They're termed the Midwest child parent centers here and they have been they've already been found to effectively improve children's literacy skills. Children in these schools attend developmentally appropriate full-day pre-K at age three or four and they benefit from the structure of the program including emphasis on parent engagement and reduced class sizes among other things. Two St. Paul schools are implementing the McKnight Foundation's Pathway Schools Initiative where the specific goal is to improve third grade literacy. Participating schools have full-day pre-K, full-day kindergarten and aligned instruction and assessment from pre-K through third grade which I'll expand on later. So children in many districts don't have access to school-based pre-K like those in Bloomington and St. Paul. Many of those children are receiving early learning scholarships to attend center-based or home-based programs. The success of the early learning scholarships program depends largely on the quality of parent aware the state's QRIS or quality rating and improvement system. The purpose of parent aware is twofold so it's to accurately measure the quality of child care and early education programs and to help these programs improve their services. Programs are rated on a scale of one to four stars and these ratings can help empower parents to make informed decisions about where to send their children and they can help centers identify where there's room for improvement in their services. Parent aware is rapidly expanding in the state largely supported by the race to the top early learning challenge grant. The tool was available statewide as of January 2015 and all school-based and head start programs now have a star rating but many eligible programs mostly the home-based programs have still have yet to earn a rating. So while parent aware ratings incorporate many of the indicators of quality identified by researchers as predictive of kindergarten readiness the validation study to confirm whether parent aware scores are linked to school readiness is not yet available but is expected this fall. So access to tuition free full-day kindergarten is another step in successful pre-k third alignment. Full-day kindergarten is associated with improved literacy skills and can shrink the achievement gap and while Minnesota doesn't require districts to offer full-day kindergarten governor Dayton signed a bill in 2013 that made full-day funding available to all districts that wish to participate and last year 99.6 percent of kindergartners did attend a full-day program. Previously districts only received half-day funding and were allowed to charge parents tuition for full-day services. So for some districts this past year was one of transition in adding teachers in room for full-day kindergarten classrooms for others like St. Paul who already offered full-day kindergarten to all students this may have freed up funding that they could devote to other areas. So while access to pre-k kindergarten are important first steps children will only reap the benefits of these programs if they have high quality teachers and school leaders. Minnesota lawmakers have long acknowledged that it's important for elementary school principals to have a basic understanding of early education. As Laura mentioned Minnesota is one of only a few states where licensure law requires principals to understand the developmental needs of children and to apply appropriately appropriate literacy systems in their school. But specific coursework on early childhood is not required for principals in Minnesota. It's clear that the Department of Education believes elementary school principals must be deeply engaged in pre-k third alignment efforts. Many of the state's principals participated in the department's Leadership Institute in 2014 which helped increase their focus on early grade alignment and the department is also hosting a five-day principal leadership series this fall that will focus on pre-k third alignment. For early grade teachers in Minnesota there are two types of licenses as Laura discussed the early childhood education license covers birth through third grade and the elementary education license covers k through sixth grade with an option to add on a pre-k endorsement. The vast majority of k third k through third grade teachers in this state have an early an elementary education license and from our interviews we found that many elementary school principals either had limited knowledge that there even was an early childhood license or they felt that it was limiting to higher teachers with that license. So what makes a pre-k third grade approach so powerful is the alignment piece. The alignment between programs and grades helps ensure children are prepared for the next step and that they maintain the gains they make in one year to the next year. Many Minnesota school districts are thinking strategically about the transition to kindergarten. For instance Minneapolis public schools has been strengthening the relationship between child care centers head start centers and the district's pre-k program high five high five by providing joint professional development between these three different types of centers. Herman town and proctor school districts where more than 50 percent of students are not involved in any school-based early education program have developed the bridges to kindergarten program to familiarize families with local elementary schools in the year before kindergarten by bringing families and their four-year-olds to the local school to meet the teachers and have and learn about child development in kindergarten readiness. This alignment work these are both great examples but this alignment work tends to be slow small scale and inconsistent throughout the state. There is also no state funding specifically for this work. Just as important is aligning pre-k and kindergarten with the later grades of elementary school much of the vertical alignment in elementary grades is informal and left to local school districts or philanthropic groups. McKnight pathway schools are using a host of strategies to improve alignment one of which is the step assessment tool that has been found to be found to effectively align the literacy instruction in the early grades. The step tool gives teachers individualized longitudinal data on each student which allows them to tailor their instruction and coupled with strong professional development which McKnight also provides to these schools teachers have found this tool instrumental in their classrooms. Unfortunately the step tool is both expensive and time-intensive and most schools don't have funding for this type of tool. So discussion of the state's education system is incomplete without a focus on dual language learners. The Learning for English Academic Proficiency and Success Act or more easily the LEAPS Act passed in 2014 is arguably the most comprehensive law in the U.S. for DLL supports or dual language learner supports. The law views students' native language skills as an asset and accordingly bilingual classrooms and language immersion programs are common in Minnesota's public schools. The most important aspect of the LEAPS Act is that it requires all teachers know how to teach DLLs which will require some changes in teacher education and professional development to accomplish. Overall we feel that Minnesota has a solid framework on which districts can build that includes multiple pre-K funding streams and expanding quality rating and improvement system, funding for full day kindergarten, a birth through third teacher license, professional development for principals and legislation supporting dual language learners. Staying true to its designation as a local control state, the Department of Education seems to have embraced the role of nudging localities towards this work instead of implementing policies that mandate a pre-K third mindset. Therefore many of the policies around pre-K third alignment have not trickled down to the local level unless there have been strong district or school leaders in place who prioritized it. Accordingly there is still some work to be done. We offer the following recommendations in our report and they are discussed much more extensively in our report but just a brief overview here. So first, rethink pre-K funding and quality. This includes increasing the count for the scholarships so that they cover the cost of full day care and we also suggest increasing funding for school readiness programs so that schools face less barriers in providing pre-K programs. Second, minimize the overlapping grades between licenses and communicate the value of the early education license to both principals and prospective teachers. Third, strengthen elementary school principals, pre-service and in-service training requirements around early education. Fourth, require consistent assessments or allow districts to choose from a short list of approved assessments for students in grades K through 2 which would allow for more consistent data. And lastly, expand the use of strong assessments and data systems that expand the pre-K third continuum to improve teachers and school leaders practice. So we feel this is an opportune time for pre-K third work in Minnesota and we hope that the recommendations put forth in our report will help advance and strengthen the current state efforts. So that concludes the presentation portion of the event. We'll now transition to a panel discussion but here is me and Laura's contact information if anyone has any questions in the future. Thank you, Abby. And now, as Abby said, we'll turn to a discussion with our esteemed panelists. We're so happy once again that you were able to join us here today. And I'm going to give brief introductions for each of them but you can find their full bios in one of your handouts that you picked up off the table. So first we have Bobby Burnham, director of the Early Learning Service Division at the Minnesota Department of Education. She started her career as a kindergarten teacher and also worked at the Minnesota Center for Reading Research as a reading first coordinator for eight years. Welcome, Bobby. Thank you. To her right, we have Mary Medallac. Mary is the Early Learning Scholarship Coordinator and Program Assistant for the White Earth Early Childhood Program. She has 26 years of experience in the early childhood field and has held positions from Center Director to Early Childhood Trainer in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. Thank you, Mary. On her right is John Miller Hagen. He is the executive director of the Minnesota Elementary School Principal Association. He was a principal for 19 years and a teacher for 13. He retired as principal of Washburn Elementary in Bloomington where he launched Kinder Prep the District's Pre-K Program. Welcome, John. To his right, we have T.J. Anderson-Schmidt. She is the assistant director of the Office of Teaching and Learning for St. Paul Public Schools. She has worked in the St. Paul District for the last 18 years as a teacher literacy coach, district reading specialist, and supervisor of literacy pre-K-12. Welcome, T.J. And finally, Bao Vang. Bao is elementary principal at the Community of Peace Academy, a charter school in St. Paul. She has been at CPA since 2000. Previously, she served in several other roles as a special education paraprofessional, a high school special education teacher, a fifth and sixth grade teacher, and also as an instructional coach. Welcome, Bao. And thank you to all of you for joining us. We sincerely appreciate it. And how we're going to do, I'm going to start out with a few questions for the panelists. Some of them will, I'll ask for everyone to respond. Some of them will be more targeted, and then we will open it up to audience Q&A from you, which can also include questions to Abby if you have them. So I know that each of you have had the opportunity to take a look or at least hear our report. And so I'd be really interested in to hear your thoughts on our take of what's happening in Minnesota, as well as on our recommendations. So who would like to go first? Bobby? Great. The McKnight Foundation for supporting this work and really taking the time that you have taken in the support over the years for supporting this work throughout the state, I'm looking out into the audience and I can see just about every key player in this work in Minnesota. And from a state level perspective, it's really important to have the partnerships that we have. So with the with the Foundations Northland and the MIPS and United Way and Passer and Gennext and Minimines and Child Care Aware and DHS. It's just we can't do this work alone. So it's really going to take all of us to get this P3 system down and implemented statewide. I really appreciated the report. It really, I thought, did a nice job highlighting the terrific work and I felt really affirmed by some of the points that you made, especially in the recommendations because I think we're already down going down some of those roads and getting some of those recommendations implemented. So, you know, it helps to have such a supportive governor who's really, you know, a strong advocate for early learning. If you look at the money that has been embedded into the early learning system in Minnesota, backed up by the key legislation like the world's best workforce and the LEAPS Act and read well by third grade in full day K. It really gives us really nice lovers to work fund from and the funding to do that work. I think that, you know, as much as we do have going, we certainly still have challenges remaining. You know, Minnesota being a local control state, I mean, we do the best we can to encourage local leaders to implement best practice and we do the best we can to support and build their knowledge base around what that best practice is. I think that we continue to work on continuity and consistency in program quality across the state and across different program types. And I think you brought a really good point up and something that many of you may know Minnesota has focused on for quite some time is really being thoughtful about implementation and really taking the time and providing the support to implement things well and giving them the time to produce the results that we need them to produce. So I think those are my initial reactions to the paper. Thank you. Mary? Thank you. I want to echo that. Thank you to New America and also to McKnight for putting the effort forth that you have on this big achievement. I mean, it's a great book. It was longer than we intended but there is just so much good to talk about. The data is amazing. What you've put together will strengthen, I believe, all of us coming together and take down some silos as we celebrate the children and what we're doing in Minnesota. I think that your focus on early childhood pre-K is what we really need to look at in the future and understanding that learning starts at birth and your focus in here on all the areas and showing that a lot of the learning begins in early childhood and our children are going to preschool and family homes programs and so I was glad to see you bring that in that piece. Again, thank you so much. John? I'm not sure if you folks realize but New America is a big deal. I was in Washington, D.C. several years ago and had a chance to testify in front of a group of people at the Capitol about our kinder prep program and I had a chance to meet the New America people then and when I sit back and take a look at the people here I've sat in lots of meetings with many of you and the amount of work that's gone into creating a pre-K solution and answer for children in Minnesota is radically phenomenal the energy and the effort and to be in this a place like this to have a nice summary of the work that's been taken place and to be able to share that and build on the momentum that's happened in Minnesota that's a wonderful place to be. We've got some investments in pre-K we're hoping for more and we've got a lot of answers to questions that we had in the past and this is a really exciting time so thanks to New America for that work and I'll leave it there. I'm going to echo both John and Bobby and say it's so nice to see all of your faces I feel like I'm among old friends we've been in rooms and meetings together working on this same need there's purpose there's passion there's urgency in this room and I think a lot of what the report highlights are some of the communities of practice that we've come together around to ensure success for our earliest learners but also knowing that there's a lot of work to be done and while we may be leading in some regards I really appreciate the report in giving us some actionable steps to consider in moving forward thinking about what John said about New America being a big deal while this is an issue and a need in Minnesota it's echoed across the country and this report is going to give us some national energy around the things that need to be done for our earliest learners so thank you. All right and I don't know a lot of faces out there I'm pretty new to this but I will address just two things being I just finished a principal program and thinking back to you know one of the recommendations that you have about the Principalship Program we didn't do a lot in early childhood and I definitely everything that we did I thought a lot about early childhood because we are pre-K to 12 school and I think that that would be great to add to the administration program just because pre-K is so important and I also think in terms of the teacher licensure part you know being committed to full day preschool we would love to have staff and candidates who are fully licensed in that currently we don't have that because it was so hard to find but I think that's a great push and recommendation. Thanks and I want to explore that recommendation a little bit more a little bit later but first I would love it if Bobby you can sort of talk us through Minnesota's vision for pre-K third and plans you know especially over the next year. Sure so many of you may know we've cut the department has been really working around this pre-K through third grade alignment for quite some time it kind of started back in the reading first days where the focus was K3 and so we did a lot of that work through reading first and I made the transition to the department and it just made sense to have that conversation pre-K through age eight so like Laura mentioned we did receive some federal funding and we put a literacy team together and we were able to write this comprehensive literacy plan but it became more about literacy and it we really realized that it needed to be more of a comprehensive plan across all learning domains that offered you know professional development and leader teacher leader development and so our our vision for pre-K three is really building high quality inclusive learning environments statewide in that birth through age eight learning continuum so increasing access for all children implementing a level of support for high quality programming and services across that learning continuum and really building that state and local infrastructure to put that p3 system to work we feel that this p3 system is really the key lever for us as a state to help close that achievement gap and to to get those kids coming to kindergarten ready and to get them reading well by third grade thank you so to everybody else on the panel you know after hearing vision and what you know this the state is thinking how does that relate to to the work that you're doing in the in your own school or or school district I think that the first thing is just the closing the achievement gap I think starting in preschool is key especially you know in a low income school starting early with our students and getting them ready for kindergarten ever since we opened our preschool in 2007 and our students who do not attend our preschool and come to our kindergarten we can see the huge difference in readiness and I just think it's super important I would build on that as a principal of a school if you when I didn't have a pre-k program we have title one programs and and support and we've worked with the response to intervention and and several strategies to try to to work towards meeting the needs of children and closing the achievement gap and it's there's there's quite a bit of frustration when as a a good strong leader in a school you're not able to really answer those questions and they continue to perpetuate themselves as some of our schools have challenges with and it really was a driver in what pre-k meant and what the possibilities were and once you're involved in pre-k and you see what kind of a tool it can be to answer the kinds of questions that we have about how do we make sure that every child is at grade level by third grade and on their road to success and as a principal I always felt like what's a middle school or high school principal supposed to do with the student that I send to him that's two or three years behind in reading what are they supposed to do about that so as assuming that responsibility on my shoulders I worked really hard to put programming and quality teaching and experience together for children not until we began the pre-k our kinder prep program but a pre-k service in our building did we begin to see the kinds of results and the kind of support that we just felt was going to really make a huge difference and I can tell you from a principal standpoint our principal there's about a thousand elementary principals in minnesota and they take seriously this responsibility of what do we do to close the achievement gap what do we do to serve children what do we do to make sure our dual learners are on track so that they can learn the literacy skills that they need and so we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go but those are those are critical pieces and pre-k and the momentum around it and what we know about it today this information and other individual assessment programs st paul and schools have done it's powerful information and hopefully we can continue to utilize it one of the things that whiters has done with what they from the state is we have a pre-k three alignment stakeholders group committee that has met and is reservation wide and we've brought together those that work with our youngest to third grade teachers kindergarten teachers anyone who is in the early childhood world and we've actually been able to come up with a reservation wide kindergarten readiness skills list that goes home with the parents goes home with the teachers have it the kindergarten teachers the head starts everybody has the same list of skills that the children need to have when they enter kindergarten because one thing we have a lot of children that go from one school to the next school to the next to another and so this gives us some seamless transition for the children and I really have to thank the state for spearheading that and our race to the top stakeholders group kind of converted into that group one of the things you talked about is support systems and st paul has been very grateful as to be part of some of the early learning network work at mde along with many of you who may be from other school districts and we had an opportunity to bring some teams together from schools that included principals pre-k teachers office of early learning director our office of teaching and learning head start directors first grade teachers second grade teachers third grade teachers to come together to learn and think about some of the systems and infrastructure pieces that need to be in place I think in terms of st paul many years ago we moved away from having one kind of early childhood pre-k center in the in the middle of the district to shifting to having pre-k classrooms in our schools but they were only physically there they weren't part of the community we were in a time where we had an administrator who was assigned to those pre-k programs but it wasn't the building administrator it was a district administrator and so they were almost renting space and they were they were leasing space and the teachers were not feeling part of the community either and so through some of this work with MDE through the graciousness of McKnight and Generation Next and the United Way and others we've been able to break down some of those barriers think about how we're using space how we're using time teachers having opportunities to be together teachers having opportunities to PLC together and look at not only the social-emotional needs of students but also think about the the academic articulation or the standards we went so far through the kindness of a Gates Foundation grant to look at our common core standards and there at one point we had a pre-k teacher sitting next to a high school biology teacher talking about the standards and what does this mean for each of us and how we're contributing to a larger system so thank you Val do you have anything to add and Bobby you talked about you know the really the high-level vision for the state but could you also talk about you know more specific strategies that that you're putting in place I think the first thing we've done at the state level is really organize the division of early learning services work around this birth to age eight framework so in our thinking in our planning in our professional development and TA we offer we kind of have that as our focus and so that has been key the other the other really important factor that really has helped us and financially supported this work is that of race the top you all know we received the race the top grant we've recently been able to do a no-cost extension so we actually have till December of 2016 to work with the feds in getting all the different projects implemented we amended one of the projects that didn't spend the anticipated amount that was projected and we really took that amendment and looked at the work we're doing across this p3 continuum and are working within those race the top projects to align p3 so the comprehensive assessment system so the lead on that meeting Cox is now talking to the standards our academic standards person and they're working on aligning those assessments that are required and read well by third grade with the pilot program that we now have in the kindergarten entry profile so we're looking at how we can align the work for school districts and provide support across that pre-k through third grade learning continuum so we're looking at assessments curriculum alignment instruction we're looking at leadership one of the one of the fortunate enough to have this money for race the top and we have to like cover it as long as we have it we have a series of professional learning opportunities and one is a principal or a pre-k leadership series so we've invited charter school directors elementary principals and certain staff to come to a five-day series on and I think John might be talking about this on the national association of elementary school principals has a set of guidance out that has five core competencies so we're really going to work with the leaders in the schools to deepen their knowledge of child development and of these P3 core competencies we also are planning a second cohort of our leadership team institute which is where we invite districts to form a community district team where they have to have community-based early learning providers head start directors so it's really a cross-sector leadership team and then we come and do the same type of learning around Christy Cowher's framework and we're trying to we know that greater Minnesota has needs as well so we're really looking at ways to reach out to them possibly offering the institute regionally we are going to try to offer the leadership series via ITV and then a couple other things we're at the end of race the top hopefully next summer because that's going to creep up on us we hope to host a P3 summit which really highlights the work of Minnesota as well as some of the other race the top states that have focused on this work and one really important series of events we're scheduling are some regional listening sessions so the first week in November team of us along with our race the top TA provider is going to go out into several different communities in the region and hold early learning listening sessions so we want to hear from community members school folks center providers head start folks business leaders anyone who we can get to come around what early learning looks like in their communities and what their needs are so we really hope to take that information back and develop a really comprehensive program or look at moving forward you know what might be some legislation we could propose or where what are the needs of the communities and what are their priorities so I think that's going to really give us some good information great thank you bow as a McKnight's pathway school I know community a piece academy has been very thoughtful and in thinking about pre-k alignment and you talk to us about your approach and share a little bit of detail about how you're empowering teachers I would love to I'm excited to talk about this you know earlier when I said we started a preschool in 2007 and we haven't seen the results it's because we need alignment in pre-k3 not just the preschool program and so we've worked really hard on alignment when we partnered with the McKnight Foundation in the University of Chicago we have an assessment tool called STEPP which stands for strategic teaching and evaluation of progress assessment tool and all of our teachers pre-k6 actually give this tool to our teacher our students and basically we've just been a data-driven school for the last two years this is our third year and we have aligned our assessment our instruction our language our professional development and even our coaching we have a literacy coach onsite who coaches pre-k6 and just the alignment we can see the change because teachers feel like a team working together when I go to the empowerment part I'm a huge believer in belief and that's my message to the staff is you have to believe in what we do and if we're using STEPP that's what we believe in we're using that and we're doing it with fidelity and I really then empower them by just having really clear goals on our initiative and then giving them the autonomy to do the work that is necessary and our teachers you know work together to create common language in literacy instruction so like what word solving strategies are we all going to use let's decide on that and then make sure all of our rooms have those strategies the other thing we do is you know our curriculum we've had basals before we moved to once we got the step assessment tool it really gives us clear data on how each of our students what their needs are and so our curriculum is based on student need and so it's standards-based it's database versus a curriculum that's been published and sold to everybody in the U.S. and so that's a lot of work on our teachers but we really believe that in order to meet the needs of our students pre-K3 we have to work together and use the data that we have and we have to make sure that we communicate and so our teams meet regularly every Wednesday for an hour and we do literacy work we do math work but we just work on alignment pre-K6 great thank you John you were a principal for a long time you now lead the state's principal association can you talk a little bit about why principals are important to this pre-K3rd work we have a part of this that principals are key in our leadership experiences but the qualifier I want to put on that is is no principal does this work alone in my case in Bloomington Mary Mischke and K. Miller and Tom Houlton and Carol Huebner and or Carol Hutner and just all the people that were involved in that piece allowed us to build an experience and the question we had was what's it look taste and feel like to have pre-K4 year old children in our school in a literacy-rich experience and so we went about looking at what that would would experience as a principal of the school whether in my case or any of our principals and I want to tell you that as I do my role now I'm around the state and I see a lot of principals and a lot of pre-K some kind of a programming or some sort of a service in many many many of our schools but the principal has got the opportunity to create what I would call a seamless experience for families and children to be a part of our school so in our case our pre-K children rode the same buses as our kindergarten through four-year-olds we created targeted services after school programs for our four-year-olds we provided as much professional development with the pre-K staff as we possibly could we provided them with as much support kinds of experiences whether it was we weren't a long enough program we had a two-and-a-half hour program but a day for five days but if we'd had a longer program we would have built them into our music and our fayette and our art and science schedules also so that they're a part of our experience our family learning component we included them in that experience and the criteria for all of our family learning monthly activities we provided a meal and then the criteria was what are those what are these what do these children need in order to be at grade level by the time they're third grade and whatever they needed then that was the criteria that we would use to build that condition behind them and just basic decisions like staffing and utilization of licensure for people and how you support your pre-K program with that space which rooms are you going to use for your pre-K which rooms are you going to repurpose we repurposed title one funding and we put a lot of resources behind a pre-K program well the principal has the role and the position to take responsibility for all of the lowest pieces pre-K and also to assure that the other components of the school program are in operation two of the largest resources we put behind our pre-K program or transportation and dual language services and the need to be able to communicate to the parents and the families to learn how to advocate for their children once they became part of our learning relationship and our learning experience so on the other hand for us as an association Bobby we've been working with Bobby on the principal learning experiences the leadership team concept because it's just not the principal that does this work but we've been learning working together on that one of the conditions that we run into a little bit in this pre-K work is and everyone here can raise their hand and tell their story about the work they've been doing but most of you many of you end up doing a lot of that work by pulling together funds someplace pulling together monies and trying to make certain things happen one of the concerns that I have as director of elementary principals association is I'd like to have all my principals trained by tomorrow I'd like to have them all have a skill set competency by tomorrow we don't have that right now we have a plan in place to have lots and lots of principals as they come on board and and believe in the the pre-K three learning experience where people are signing up a lot for registering for this training so that's probably the biggest challenge as a principal in this experience is if you want to be involved in pre-K how do I create the resources to make this happen and I would submit to you that communities global communities private daycares community ad departments schools if we had didn't have to wrestle with the funding resource component we would be able to move this along really really well and get great results soon and quick so that's my pitch for funding at this point but it would it would allow principals and school leaders and teams and districts along with community providers to be able to make plans one of the toughest things that we had was it was to provide a language service so parents really understood what was happening and then transportation well those exist for private daycares also that need is a challenge for everyone that's trying to serve a population of children and one of the things that we misunderstand or we we don't have a clear picture on in Minnesota and as a principal you you live this almost all the time if you're working in a school that has lots of needs the depth of poverty in Minnesota and the intensity of English language learning needs is it's remarkably challenging just behind that is a mental health component for our families that really are in the way of us doing our great and best work for children and we've been getting a good handle on where principals are at in this in the state on this and people are ready to move forward we heard some of that work in the legislature you know funding and pre-k funding and pre-k and there were some concerns about space and licensure we haven't said much about licensure but if you haven't got the funding they're really you don't have a responsibility yet or a need to make it happen unless you want to put that work together yourselves if schools had the opportunity to have an avenue to make these things happen I believe they just like people here I mean people in this room room don't come to the meetings they come to and talk about pre-k for kids as much as they do if they're not going to do something when they finally have open doors and avenues to make it happen okay I know Bobby wants to add something and then Bow I want to give you the opportunity since this is a principal question if you have anything to add to so Bobby go ahead I think one of the lessons we learned during the first cohort of the leadership team institute was by observing the different teams from the different regions there was no clear person that stood out to kind of take the bull by the horn and lead this work on that team so we decided moving forward that we really needed we kind of assumed that that would maybe be the role of of the elementary principal and so we decided we needed to offer that particular group charter school directors elementary principals school leaders just a more guided learning opportunity around you know what what does a true mixed delivery system look like I mean we're committed to a mixed delivery system and we need everyone to understand their role in that mixed delivery system because really it's ultimately everybody's responsibility for those kids so those elementary principals need to reach out to those community based providers and vice versa because of the key is a smooth transition for kids from pre-k to k and that's just not the school's responsibility that's the community's responsibility so that's part of why we're kind of reaching out to provide a higher level of support for that particular population and I think what I would add on is the John talked about the family learning monthly meetings and I just think it's so important to evolve families and bring them in monthly and just you know we're educating the parents and what does it mean when we say your child is at a step seven because parents don't know what that means you know and so we're really teaching the parents what are your kids learning at school what does it mean what can you do at home and then partnering with them and bringing them in and we also have food and you know it's just a nice gathering and I think that's the start for our families to get into to buy in that they can have an impact on their child's education because so many parents think I can't help them and we really want to empower a family and say you can you know come and we'll teach you how to do that because you have the knowledge and then the other thing is just the EL component you know we used to be really high EL population we're down to about 40% now but what we have found is all of our students need the academic language and so we you know this year are implementing a new model a co-teaching model where our third teacher focuses on academic language development for all of our students and they push into the classroom and we're done with pullout because the research shows that it doesn't work and so we're really trying a new model to see if that will help our students because the more bodies we have in the room teaching I think the more our students will benefit from that thanks TJ don't want to leave you and Mary out of the the conversation so Mary you're next but first TJ St. Paul has been investing in early learning for for many many years and the district had already offered free full day kindergarten to all students and offers pre-k at at several students can you give us a sense of how the district's thinking about pre-k third and literacy development and do you see the pre-k third work that is happening like at the McKnight pathway schools for instance expanding to a a broader set of schools across the district absolutely I would say that like many we were a school district of really good intentions and had pockets of excellence our pre-k program was nationally touted at and what we realized over time is that as we started to track our pre-k students as they entered kindergarten and the rest of the system we started to see a very significant fade out and so while this system was very strong and we thought about and we did bring our pre-k's into our schools there was still that disjointed that disjointed work and so a large part of that involved again some of the infrastructure pieces first the space the time the building of the community the practice even things like sharing budgets I mean you know pre-k teachers would be sitting there with no paper looking across the hallway at the first grade classroom with the new furniture that just came in you know and we can kind of laugh and we can kind of giggle but that really reverberates through a system and sends a pretty strong message and so this collective ownership was the first thing that we needed to get over to remove some of those barriers and now that we're there now we really are trying to roll up our sleeves and be really intentional and targeted and focused in what we're doing with kids when we have them and how we're taking the expertise of our pre-k teachers and bring them together with our kindergarten teachers our first grade teachers second and third grade actually district wide to look at classroom learning environments to look at the standards to think about assessments and how we're using that information we have a gift through both McKnight and CPC to target seven schools and in those schools class size ratios have been reduced we have full day pre-k we've always had full day kindergarten I would say one of the biggest gifts however has been the targeted professional development time so teachers in those sites pre-k three are coming together and learning together for over 50 hours a year with onsite coaching additional paid time after school and even on weekends they're coming together to do that work that is something that we as a system haven't been able to replicate yet although we know that it's very very needed and so for the camera back there or anyone who's listening in Minnesota or nationally this work takes time it's a process and our teachers need to have the time to do it and the professional development to do it and so that's absolutely key what we see in those seven sites is that they're taking off exponentially in terms of ownership in terms of teachers understanding child development in terms of teachers taking ownership for students empowering students understanding the content before them and the content after them I would say district-wide one of the things that we're starting to own that's become our own community of practices we have extended it beyond pre-k three so even when we wrote our read well by three plan which didn't require pre-k component we added that and we also added grades four and five because we wanted to make sure that we didn't start creating a fade-out later so that's something we're trying to be really intentional about as well so our hope and our intention is that while district-wide we are collaborating pre-k three the office of early and learning which has early childhood content coaches and those who specialize in pre-k three are working elbow to elbow with district leadership and coaches in our office of teaching and learning in our office of multilingual learning in our office of specialized services that staff is receiving training together around cognitive coaching practices as they go out into sites learning from each other learning each other's content so that there's a singular message which is also key one of the things we have to keep reminding ourselves is that we're a district of 42 elementary schools 37 of those have pre-k in that we're talking about a couple thousand teachers and so it takes time to steer that ship around but that aligned effort is is key for us and if I can back up for just one second regarding the principal question one of the things I did want to add is that we've been working with our principals to help them understand early childhood and think about some of those pieces one of the most powerful activities that we've done with our principals and it's been hosted out of our office of early learning and with our office of teaching and learning is bringing principals on site visits with each other so we take clusters or cohorts of principals anywhere from six to a dozen principals together into a site and bring them into pre-k, k, one and two classrooms to see promising practices and to learn from those experiences debrief with each other and then it gives them some of the tools as they go back into their own sites to also think about their systems and offer feedback to their teachers I think speaking personally as an administrator if you've never been in a pre-k classroom the idea of providing constructive feedback or supporting that work can be kind of scary and so sometimes we avoid those classrooms all together and that's not okay so by creating that structure it provides kind of a safe place for people to learn and then think about how they can help each other Thanks Mary let's talk about scholarships and as a race the top early learning challenge transformation zone wide earth has had flexibility and funding with the scholarship program that is different and away from the statewide program and so can you discuss what you've done and what's working for children and families in white earth I sure can thank you when we receive the funding for race of the top early learning scholarships it really opened a lot of doors for the white earth preservation and not only did it open the doors for children it opened the doors for families and child care providers and school districts too so that was very exciting for all of us in putting together the program we looked at our population being a very rural population we have a lot of poverty on the reservation we knew that probably a third of our children were in head start we have a strong head start program a third or a little less probably in some school pre-K program programming but we knew that there was at least a third of those children out there that weren't in any type of programming so there are at most at risk children we also looked at the fact that we needed programming for zero to three year olds and so we built that in that the scholarships were not just for three to three year olds to kindergarten age level but we put it beginning at birth we have a lot of grandparents raising grandchildren we have a lot of foster children care children and opening this up but the zero to three with no work requirements was able to open the door for these children to get into some early learning environments and that wasn't very important to us the other thing that we wanted to do was empower the parents we know that a large number of our parents did not come from a did not have a large educational background themselves and they needed some education in early childhood development and so we built in that every family that received a scholarship had to attend two early learning trainings each year and at first it was like okay we'll come by the time they went to one training it was when is the next training they loved it we provided child care we gave gas stipends so they could get there which is as you know a very large rural issue we had food you know they always come with food and we also had door prizes and lots of books everybody received books because we really did focus a lot on literacy with us the other thing the families received was a parent mentor if needed that would visit them in their homes weekly to you know once a month just depending on what their needs were and then monthly I put together activities age specific to send home with each family to do with their children and again I always put those plugs in there for early childhood literacy activities because children begin reading at birth and it worked you know we we gave 185 scholarships which surpassed our goal of 150 our scores for literacy are up in our child care programs we do have teaching strategy goals that we do do some tracking and so we're excited about that the families are utilizing different other types of programming that we have we opened up a new library and the people we're seeing there are our scholarship families you know they understand now that importance of literacy it's they've begun learning along with their children so it was a success and hopefully we can continue with that thank you Bobby I want to come back to you and talk a little bit so you've outlined you know the the vision of the of the state some some strategies that you're putting in place but I want to talk about challenges to really realizing the vision and the strategies I mean and and sustaining sustaining them even past race to top early learning challenge thanks well I don't think it'll be a big shocker if you can hear to anybody that money certainly is going to be the key component to being able to sustain a lot of the work that's happening and a lot of the race to the top activities and you know I think some other challenges most certainly are going to be workforce development and demand and having qualified teachers in the regions where they are needed the most I think the whole idea of the gift of time and being paying attention to implementation and doing it well and collecting meaningful data to show what your impact is I think is important as well too and you know we're well down the road there too I mean the early childhood longitudinal data system is close to being launched which is a race to top project and it will eventually connect to the the big kid on longitudinal data system but you know there there is so much red tape and bureaucracy that goes into data sharing agreements so we are you know we are just working as fast and as hard as we can to make sure that you know we collect the data everybody needs us to collect and and we get the the results that show the impact but I would say workforce funding and just paying attention to implementation and data collection I think are going to be I want to open that question to others just that are you know doing great things at the the district level or or school level what challenges do you see to you know continuing the work or deepening the work that that you're doing and just open that to anyone who would like to respond I'm next in line so I think you know the money part again one of the challenges that I see is for the state and the federal government to actually build a program or work more with funding to help in education of the families I know it worked for our program I think it would work for other programs too I really do I think we need funding to help pay for trainers funding to educate those trainers because in each community you have different cultural needs so you need a wide variety of trainers but those fundings not just for the scholarships but also for the training of the child care providers for the training of the families education you know for beginning with the families thanks anybody else I would add as as we've thought about statewide implementation I think where we're at today is one of the biggest challenges what I would call a differentiated implementation model make sure we have the fidelity and the standards in place but we have there are a lot of differences between communities in Minnesota between the needs of communities between the services from private daycares and the capabilities of public schools to serve whatever the model might be I think what's needed is what I call a differentiated model and that would mean the ability to provide the funding and allow for a large amount of local control and just the goodwill and expertise of people in those settings to produce really really good results and to have faith in in people to do that and it'll translate itself in every little community in a little different way one of the biggest challenges when you do the to the pre pre-k five or four or three continuum is really bringing together the school folks whether it's charter or privates or public school school folks bringing them together with the the daycare folks when the four-year-olds aren't at the same site there's a challenge there and there's some answers there's some really good answers but it's really looking at it as though it's a responsibility and we embrace the opportunity we embrace the responsibility and take a look at how do I focus on every child being at grade level in reading or math and their skills at third grade and if we were able to provide the funding in a way that we could differentiate and allow local control to apply itself in Minnesota I think we would have a great chance at doing what we're hoping to do in this whole close achievement or yeah create an opportunity for children thanks I would add on to actually everybody but thinking about you know workforce development our teachers prepared as they come in and then I'm thinking about the few thousand teachers that we are gifted with who are already there and as we think about these systems and my my dream of universal pre-k that we need to be a community network and so it's a challenge but it's also something that that we're working hard on and I think I would agree with the workforce development in demand I know we had a teacher shortage but I really think it's teacher shortage of high quality highly qualified teachers we you know since we implement our new model we had to hire seven actually yeah seven new teachers and it was tough to find seven highly qualified teachers who could focus on academic language and be able to work in inner city schools I think that was a challenge but I think the more we can work with our higher ed schools on the programming and what the needs are in our schools I think that that would definitely help us when we're hiring candidates I'd like to build on that a little bit this whole concept of licensure for us and for the principals and we're looking at candidates with licensure we run into a lot of you know three to three licenses and that sort of thing from states that have provided universal pre-k and we haven't done that so there's really not a need for our people there hasn't been a need for them to become licensed there in an area that they're not going to be required to teach in once it becomes a requirement and I'm a strong believer in having a pre-k licensed person in it in our pre-k classrooms and I'll tell you I was even fortunate enough that April our person the first person I had in my program was licensed in pre-k licensed in elementary and licensed in EL and and it was a powerful program so I just want that's it yeah I just want I just that whole workforce thing if we were if we had the positions and the requirements people would go to school and get the licensure and workforce development is not a unique challenge to Minnesota but something that every state state faces so it's one of those things that that takes time but I think there's a lot of smart people working on it so both in Minnesota and across the country and we might explore licensing in a little bit but I do want to open it up even though I have more questions to uh to audience questions so if I could ask I know uh Jeff's in the back and he's going to be bringing around a a mic because we are recording this which you know we wanted to be able to share this conversation more broadly with people outside of of Minnesota so if you can talk into the microphone that would be great and just when you when Jeff comes over and you can start right here just please say your name and the organization you're with I know you all know each other but I don't so thanks there we go are we good hi I'm Karen Katigan I work for Bloomington Richfield public schools um hello John millenhaeger an esteemed panel thanks so much Laura and Abby and the whole new america crew for putting this together it's really great and I think it's a great testament to everyone that's in this room that's worked and continues to work so hard on universal access to preschool I have a I just have a piece that I wanted to hear more your thoughts about the recommendations and would love to hear kind of how you got from one place to another and I may have a friendly amendment to give as well so you did a nice job of kind of describing the multi-sector early quality early learning settings and including highlighting that most kids in Minnesota are not in school-based pre-K and that child care providers and even directors have just poultry resources and requirements and yet your recommendations really focus on schools that already have a certain standard of quality and so I just wanted to hear a little bit about the gap there between your description of child care but I didn't see it in the recommendations and then the friendly amendment I guess or suggestion would be I think that and I'm a school-based person and I can I intend to remain that way but as we move towards broader programming statewide that we think really carefully about the Matthew effect that is that to those who have more will be given and that we really keep an eye on the kids and providers that have not even the most basic level of supports that a public school district has so again both are needed but just wanted to make sure that we keep an eye especially with our embarrassing gap that we keep an eye on those populations Abby do you want to start and then or either way I would I would say so the the schools are never going to be able to serve all kids at age three and four for for pre-k I think there's just not the capacity to do so right now in Minnesota or anyone else so certainly I mean it's it's important to have that mixed delivery system and we so that's I mean that's that's the the strategy for or thinking for including both we in in the report we primarily um limited our recommendations to thinking pre-k third while certainly even beyond that looking at a birth to third grade which would include much more of the early childhood workforce I think is is is important and so certainly the there's important strategies to put in place to build the the knowledge and expertise of teachers who are working in child care centers but not necessarily even at the pre-k level so at the infant and toddler level and we know that interactions that happen between adults and children in as as young as as birth is is important and there's unfortunately you know a lot of very caring and loving adults who work in both family based programs and child care centers who haven't had the opportunity to learn the science behind how to have high quality teacher and child interaction so I think that that's some that is an area for Minnesota to to explore and think about developing that workforce I mean quality the quality rating and improvement system can be certainly be a part of that especially the improvement side but both in Minnesota and broadly there's there's a lot of work to be you done and if you haven't seen the transforming the workforce report that was recently released by the Institute of Medicine it's about a 400 500 page report that is is really I mean it lays out a strategy some recommendations for improving the workforce and and what it could could could take for that birthday birth to third grade space and so I think there'll be a lot of conversations and a lot of states around that report over the the next several years to come but you can I know New America over the next year or so we we have some some work outlined to help take chunks of that report and distill it into understandable you know pieces of information for the general public and for for policymakers to to think about the action actionable steps that can really come from the findings of of that report local leaders philanthropic leaders that we're doing a lot with parent aware related pathways to strengthen the professional development and child care centers and they had very good results and it does seem that parent aware is helping make a lot of child care centers improve their quality however because the validation study is not yet I think we were reluctant to draw any conclusions about parent aware specifically increasing quality until we know that it really does impact school readiness any other questions let's go over Hi my name is Nicole Smarillo I work at the Human Capital Research Collaborative and two years ago I did some work with Mary hello Mary up at White Earth got a really great experience talking to some of the families and at the time home child care is a huge piece of the puzzle up there and one of the problems we saw was with the race to the top funding ending providers were reluctant to get into the game because the funding you know they build a business into two more years though you know though that money might not be there and so there was a real shortage of slots subsequently I spoke with several parents in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood several of whom who also want home child care and getting a scholarship is not a problem they just they don't have slots available to them I'm just curious to know either Bobby or Mary if Mary if you've seen improvement in with that situation or what's the state's strategy for improving an increasing capacity in that area first of all no we have not seen improvement I wish that we were I was as able to say yes but there has there hasn't been any funding that the cost of starting up a Neural Childhood Program is with is not within the means of most of the population and then if you are going to meet the the qualifications of the parent aware there's additional costs there too in that we want three and four star rated programs but again we have not had any not a lot of success in adding slots the schools Ogama School added a preschool program that was a great advantage again the the principles have learned a lot through race of the top in our area and and that's been exciting about early childhood but if we could find funding for more early childhood centers or some subsidy to family child care providers that could help them cover insurance costs things like that it would benefit the children yeah I would I would echo that I don't have the the data in front of me but of course there was an increase in scholarship funding although that doesn't necessarily equate to more slots and I do know that several not only DHS is focusing on how to reach out to those home daycare providers but there are several professional organizations and businesses that are supporting that outreach as well so I don't you know I don't have the data but I could certainly look at what we have recently to see if there's been an increase and I don't know maybe Deb I'm putting Deb Swinson clad on the on the spot back there around the support given home you know to become parent aware rated hi Bobby great to be put on the spot I'm Deb Swinson clad with the Department of Human Services and I think both you and Mary were responding in part with some comments that are helpful around our efforts to reach and recruit more family child care providers into parent aware and those are critical and important and continuing and we have had some great success we've seen a pretty dramatic increase in the family child care provider participation over the last couple of cohorts but I'd also just point out and connect the dots to the basic efforts to and Mary you noted this to to the basic and critical efforts to bring more family child care and child care center capacity into our communities especially rural communities greater Minnesota communities and on that front you know we have some resources through our child care resource and referral system child care aware in terms of small grants to help startup and promote quality we have some resources through a grantee called first children's finance to help with business startup issues but the data dots I really want to connect to are to the child care development fund reauthorization and if that's not a world that you're familiar with this federal funding stream to child to states to support child care and to support both quality and child care subsidies that's where I think the conversation really needs to go we're embarking as a department on development of a plan for the next plan period and awaiting word from Congress about higher levels of funding for child care through CCDF so it's the it's it's back to the money issue I think and the resources to support states and ultimately child care providers and families with the critical capacity building efforts yeah okay I know we had a question over in the center here hi I'm Lynn Burke from reach out and read a program that actually is serving one in three children between the ages of six months and five years in Minnesota and my question to the people on the board is there's a lot of talk between about connecting schools and child care providers and I would like to know there are other networks in communities that are very connected to parents and I'm wondering if any of you have programs or partnerships or collaboratives where you're really looking for people outside of that sort of very closely defined education framework anybody want to take that I'm going to give a stab and I want to make sure I understand the question too but so Saint Paul a few things we have sprockets in Saint Paul and I don't know if if your organization is part of that network but we're looking at different community partners who are providing family connections and it's out of school time services and supports and tutorials and things like that and so we're looking to come together to understand what each of our partners specializes in and how we can connect together to kind of create more of a streamlined system for families and students both within the school day and outside of the school day so I would say sprockets for Saint Paul is part of that answer I would also say and I don't know if this is going to reach as far as your question either but Saint Paul and Minneapolis have a partnership with Generation Next as well and as we think about some of the goals coming out of Generation Next you know screening for kindergarten one of our other work groups is working on oral language development and then a third work group is looking at how are we coordinating and aligning with community partners to capitalize on that expertise but also do it in such a way that it's streamlined and transferable back and forth between the partner and the school and the student because one of the things that we realize in particular our partners who provide services to our families and our students because each of us has a kind of a little different way of doing business sometimes our families or our kids spend so much time and energy trying to translate the system that they lose out on some of the benefits and so we're trying to kind of smooth down some of those transitions so that families and students can really benefit from the service so I don't know if that hit your question but that's my stab thanks I know we had one up up here at the front good afternoon I'm Nancy Joost from West Central Initiative and I just have a question about your graph on page 21 is Minnesota unique in that we have the vast majority of our children in family child care or is that pretty typical that's I mean it depends on the state but there's a a lot of children in other states who are in family based settings either family home settings or just there's lots of even informal care which is often referred to as family friend and neighbor care especially in the zero to three population and in this graph does that include family friend and neighbor or is it family a licensed family child care homes I think I'm I'm almost positive it's licensed family child care homes and this is based on their license capacity okay thank you any other questions all right well I'm gonna just take the a quick opportunity to ask one more question myself and so I wanted to find out really what gives and this is a question I didn't you know send you to an advance so my apologies but but hopefully it should be a a good one to answer and a good question for us to end on and then I invite all of you to join us for for more informal conversation and and a glass of wine and and some snacks but to all of our panelists really what gives you hope in the work that that you're doing you know in the short term or or the long term who would like to go first hope okay so I was just telling tj how I miss being a classroom teacher I love being a principal but it's just so different than being a classroom teacher and I think the hope that I get is when I go into classrooms every day the students and their success no matter how little that smile on their faces I mean knowing that the impact that we have on them each and every day is going to help me successful in the future is the hope that just keeps me going is knowing that this kid is going to be somewhere someday and we had a part in that every child I see in my office whether it's good or bad the first question I ask is what do you want to do when you grow up you know and we talk about how they're going to get there and why school is so important for them are we going down the line back yeah we can do we can do that we'll go back we'll go backwards online I think well many things but I'm just going to start with one all of you in the room that my hope is in my beliefs I'll borrow that from you that we're all here because we have a purpose and I think a lot of the practices that were uncovered that we know are starting to make gains for students we need to find ways to replicate and learn from each other and there is a local interest very much state support for this work I get really excited and hopeful when I hear Bobby talking about some of the other things that are going to be coming down the pike in terms of the the leadership work the aligned assessment work additional professional development and some of those systems pieces that need to be in place and then I see this gaining much more momentum at a national level as well and so again thank you for the report because I think that helps put pressure as well so all those things give me hope I think some place in the report is there because I read it twice that we're possibly looking at a future budget surplus and then really and how would you spend that money now I really backed into the pre-k work just trying to answer some questions about what are we going to do for these early learners because they just aren't coming in where they need to be I have been just so impressed with the amount of work everybody has come together to be a part of and so when you got that much caring and that much energy around something and that much momentum in this state something good has to come from that I would love it if it was collaborative and voluntary and local kinds of control as I said earlier but I'll just really be surprised if something great doesn't keep happening and then we can go on to the next problem because there's a lot of them I see hope when I talk to the parents of the children that have the scholarship and the caregivers I know the children are benefiting but I also see that the social emotional impact on the families the grandpa who says my granddaughter he has custody of her she's now she's two years old she had developmental delays and three months into the child care program she's testing at above level in a couple areas or we were able to buy a car for our family we can get to different things now I see hope that our families aren't under that burden of not being able to afford early childhood services for their children and the long-term benefits for everyone I think you know the fact that we have a governor who's so tenacious around supporting early learning I think gives those of us at the state level who by the way were pretty crushed after last session but we're moving forward I think a lot of hope that he's going to keep fighting for that I think another you know like TJ said looking in this room and seeing the diversity of partnerships that all contribute to this work and play a role in the work I think the key is going to be getting you know all the advocates kind of going down the same path and I think that that's totally possible and so I'm hopeful for that that lies ahead thank you sure I'll answer that too so kind of just to jump on what TJ John and Bobby said it's great to see so many people in this room I really enjoyed the interviews I did in hearing how passionate and committed people in this state are to this work and you know we sit in DC and we hope that someone somewhere is thinking about these issues and trying to make them happen and we've really seen that in Minnesota so it's been a really great experience thank you thank you all and I just say I wasn't crushed over the last session because of all the money in early learning I just you know kind of had my hopes on pre-k so I just had to clarify that thank you and and thanks to all of you again for for joining us here today and I hope you'll you'll stay and linger for a little bit so we can continue the the conversation so thank you