 Hello, and thank you for joining us today for this one-hour webinar. My name is Maddie Gardner. I'm a Research and Policy Associate at the Learning Policy Institute. Before we begin, I'd like to thank our co-sponsors, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the National Governors Association for collaborating on this webinar. I'd also like to let the audience know that this webinar is open to the public and is being recorded. A video recording will be emailed to you in a few days and available at our website. Today we'll be sharing some insights from the Learning Policy Institute's recently published book, On the Road to High Quality Early Learning, Changing Children's Lives. And we'll be hearing from experts who represent the State House and the School House. The focus is on how policymakers and practitioners can convert their visions of high-quality early learning into on-the-ground reality. To start, my colleague Marjorie Wexler will present some of the main ideas that are covered in the book. From there, we're going to be joined by David Kerr, who will lead a discussion with our distinguished guest. Monica DeLome from the West Virginia Department of Education, Ross Hunter from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, and Anna Mercer McLean, a preschool director from North Carolina. And then we'll have a few minutes for questions and answers from you all. As a reminder, if you have any questions or want to engage in discussion, you may type in the chat box at the lower right-hand side of your screen. Please be sure to choose all participants from the drop-down to ensure that we can see your questions. Before we dive in, though, I want to take a second to think about what high-quality early education looks like. So imagine this. There are 18 four-year-olds gathered in a circle, with three teachers sitting among them. One teacher built a bridge that looks similar to the one that you can see on this slide. But instead of blocks, one by one, she put little plastic bears on the bridge, each time pausing to ask the children if they thought the bridge could handle one more bear or not. So you can imagine the gas of anticipation as she placed each additional bear on the bridge. And finally, it was on the 16th bear that the bridge collapsed, two shrieks of delight. The teacher did the experiment again, but this time she folded ridges into the paper and had the students predict if this second bridge would be able to hold more than 16 bears or fewer. And in the end, it held 23 bears. This lesson ended with the teacher telling the kids that there were lots of materials waiting for them outside, that they could try building their own bridges and doing their own experiments. This was a real lesson that our team observed at Brown's Early Learning School in Durham, North Carolina. Think about what a rich lesson that was. There was prediction, counting, experimentation, there was hands-on learning. One teacher for every six children. We could go on and on about the merits of this one 10-minute lesson. And we know that there are states working to ensure that all of their early learning classrooms are as high quality as the programs at Brown. And that program directors like Anna, who we're going to hear from a little bit later, are constantly striving to give their children the very best possible. But what does it take to get there? I'd like to introduce Marjorie Wexler, LPI's Principal Research Manager, to talk about what we learned in our research on state-funded early learning program. Hi, and a warm welcome to everyone who's with us online today. I'm going to first tell you a bit about the research we conducted, and then I'll dig into the findings. We conducted case studies in four states, Washington, Michigan, West Virginia, and North Carolina. We wanted to understand the ins and outs behind the design and implementation of their preschool programs. We chose those states because each had research showing strong outcomes for children. They had very high ratings by the National Institute for Early Education Research, and they were all able to expand their programs without sacrificing quality. Further, they're very diverse in terms of their geography, demographics, political context, and the design of their early learning programs. So, for example, the number of four-year-olds served in 2014-15 ranged from 8% in Washington, which targets preschool to the state's poorest families, to 75% in West Virginia, which offers a universal program, meaning that anyone, regardless of family income or where they live, can sign up. Just to give a quick intro to each of the states and some of their unique elements, Washington adopted the Head Start Model for its state preschool program. It provides extensive wraparound services, such as medical and dental care and social services. The state also focuses its quality improvement efforts on home-based child care, so not just preschool programs, but subsidized child care providers have to offer strong educational programming to receive state funds. The state also provides intensive coaching to child care providers to help them raise their quality to the level of the state's preschool program. Michigan is interesting because it has had standards for preschool since 1971, long before the K-12 standards movement really took off. And over the years, the state has revised the standards, always keeping quality at the center. They regularly measure program quality against those standards and provide intensive onsite coaching to all pre-K teachers. West Virginia is one of only a few states that offers universal preschool. Funding for the preschool program is integrated into the K-12 funding formula, so compared to many other states, program funding is relatively stable. It offers communities a lot of autonomy in program implementation, but it legislates collaboration so that private providers, public schools, and Head Start must work together. And North Carolina offers a one-stop shop at the county level through Smart Start, which provides an array of birth to age five services for families, including state-funded preschool. The state also pioneered the development of a quality rating and improvement system to promote continuous improvement of early learning programs. And importantly, the state has some of the highest requirements for teacher education, but it supports teachers to build their skills through training and salary supplements. One overarching lesson from our research is that there is no single road to starting, expanding, or improving early education. Each state follows its own path, but there are factors that contribute to success. And when we looked across all four states, there were commonalities in what they were doing that fall into the five big areas you see on the screen. I'm going to take a moment to talk about each one. Each of the states has invested in strategies to improve the quality of its early education. They all have program standards on everything from class size to the way teachers talk to and interact with children. And the states have assessors who go into the classrooms to observe in order to gauge quality and to target assistance where needed. These standards are often reinforced through quality rating and improvement systems that both provide a basis for program accountability and support program improvement through technical assistance, in class coaching, or financial incentives. In Washington, Michigan, and North Carolina, quality ratings are linked to program funding as a strategy to incentivize high-quality care. In North Carolina, for example, state preschool providers must achieve at least four out of five stars to receive state subsidies. But states can't operate early childhood systems on their own. Administrators closer to the program, such as those in county offices of education, have more capacity to manage and monitor programs and to address regional needs. West Virginia, for example, was specifically designed for strong local control, where county teams have autonomy to adapt programs to meet their priorities. There, county teams make decisions about all sorts of issues, ranging from the preschool calendar to curriculum to enrollment processes. All four states place heavy emphasis on the quality of preschool teachers. They require their lead teachers to have a degree with an emphasis in early childhood education, child development, or a related field. And the states, and as the states required more from their teachers, they gave teachers several years to meet new requirements, while supporting the current workforce in meeting the new bar. The states make training accessible to teachers by offering courses regionally or online. In West Virginia's apprenticeship program, childcare workers and pre-K assistant teachers remain employed and receive mentoring while taking classes at community and technical colleges. And both West Virginia and Washington offer online courses to make educational opportunities accessible to teachers in rural areas. The states encourage teacher advancements through scholarships and salary supplements. North Carolina developed TEACH, which awards scholarships for additional teacher education. It also develops wages, which subsidizes teacher's salaries based on their level of education. And the states provide on-site coaching to provide tailored support to preschool teachers. Michigan, for example, employs experienced master's degree level coaches who provide on-site support to all preschool teaching teams in the state throughout the year. Washington offers on-site support to both state preschool teachers and childcare providers. Historically, pre-K has operated separately from K-12 and even from birth through age three in many states. But these four states are at least beginning to work on creating a more seamless experience for children. One way they have done this is by putting all children's services under one umbrella at the state level. So Washington recently created a cabinet level, Department of Children, Youth, and Families, to bring together early learning and child welfare programs under one roof. Putting multiple programs under a single administrative entity makes it possible to have a coherent vision and strategy for providing services to young children. Another way states are improving coordination is by developing more robust early childhood data systems. West Virginia, for example, has created a data system that enables pre-K and kindergarten educators to share relevant child data to smooth school transitions. The states are also improving coordination by aligning curriculum and assessments across the early learning grades. Washington uses the same child assessment tool for both preschool and kindergarten classrooms. All four states rely on a combination of funding streams, federal, state, and local, to garner the funding necessary to expand access and enhance program quality. All combine dedicated state dollars with federal funding from Head Start, Title I, or subsidized child care. So you may have a classroom where some students are funded through the state preschool program and others are funded through Head Start. Or you may have a classroom where kids are there for a full day with state preschool dollars paying for the morning and Head Start paying for the afternoon. States also leverage short-term funds to build necessary program infrastructure. For example, Michigan, Washington, and North Carolina have used federal Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge grants to build and improve their quality rating and improvement systems and develop kindergarten readiness assessments. Public-private investments can also play an important role. Thrive Washington, for example, is a public-private partnership that coordinates government agencies, businesses, and nonprofits across the state working on early learning. It also administers the state home visiting program using a blend of federal, state, and private dollars. Designing good programs is hard work, but these states also manage to build and maintain momentum for implementing them well. So how do they do that? All have broad-based coalitions working together with policymakers to promote high-quality, accessible early education. Business leaders in Michigan, for example, supported Pre-K as an investment in a future-skilled workforce that would likely generate a positive return. In North Carolina, prosecutors and police officers supported early education because they saw evidence of long-term crime reduction. The states also built broad support by offering parents a choice of providers, including public and private providers, so the families can choose the settings they believe best meets the needs of their child. West Virginia, for example, requires county boards to jointly run at least half of their classrooms with Head Start, center-based child care providers, and private preschool providers. By relying on a mixed of providers, counties can meet local needs and offer choices for families. And having a political champion was key. That might be a governor or legislators, but in each state, there was someone who made early education a priority, and these folks represent both political parties, even in the same state, underscoring that early education is an issue where there is bipartisan support. There's a lot more detail about all of these ideas in the book, but we are gonna switch gears now and hear from the people actually doing the work. Our panel will be moderated by David Kerp. Aside from being a prolific writer and champion of children, David is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He's a contributing writer at the New York Times, and he's a senior fellow at the Learning Policy Institute. David, the floor is all yours. Marjorie, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And it's a pleasure to be able to introduce these panelists who really know this work on the ground. They're the folks who've been making these programs in reality, children and families. Joining us today are Monica Delame from West Virginia, Ross Hunter from Washington State, and Anna Mercer McLean from North Carolina. Our goal in convening this group is to shed further light on how the states have accomplished the complicated work of implementing high-quality pre-K and keeping the momentum going over time. We'll spend most of the remainder of our time in conversation, but before we get to that, we're gonna give each panelist a few minutes to tell us a bit more about what they're thinking about and working on in their states. So first we'll hear from Ross Hunter, the Secretary of Washington State's Department of Children, Youth and Families. Prior to that, Ross served as director of the Department of Early Learning. Earlier, he was a state representative. There he was responsible for negotiating three state budgets, a monumental feat, and was instrumental in the passage of the Early Start Act in 2015. He led the level, the effort to redefine basic education funding. Ross, the floor is yours. Thank you. You can talk about his effort to expand Washington's pre-K program while maintaining an emphasis on high-quality programs, including what it may take to build the political will to secure the necessary funding. Ross. Thank you. Great, I think I'm on now. Am I on? Excellent. So we have three, I have three slides that I want to talk to and about three things. The first is to try and make sure that everyone knows that we have, oops, wrong way, that we have a structured way of thinking about the program that we're doing and it's all about getting kids to be ready for kindergarten. We do an assessment for every child when they enter a public kindergarten. That's about 85,000 children every year. We use national standardized assessment and the chart you're seeing is a box chart that shows the readiness by income levels and these are at up to 185, I'm sorry, up to 110 is the far right bar. The middle bar is 110 to 185 and then over 185% of the federal poverty level. So this corresponds with free lunch data, free and reduced price lunch data, which is why we actually have this data from the school system and showing this chart has been an incredibly powerful tool in helping us convince people that we needed to work on kindergarten readiness. We have a goal that all the kids in the state would be 90% ready. Most of what we're gonna talk about right now is in the far right bar is kids below 110% because those are the kids that are eligible for our state-run preschool program. We intend over time to expand into the higher income categories but doing that while maintaining the quality is hard to do. So I'm gonna get to that as I go. So our ECAP is our program and we need to add about 7,000 more slots before we get to the 20,000 slots which is our goal. Right now, this year we started with about 12,000. So the original presentation in 1415 had us at seven. We've expanded from there to 12, five. We need to get up to 20. This is the attractive version of the chart that shows how many slots you have to add a year to get there. It's almost 2,000 slots a year. Each one of those has to have a classroom. It has to have a teacher and for us the teachers have to have an AA degree. You have to have an assistant. You have to have, so in order to create that workforce, you have to have an actual group of people that have those AA degrees because without that, you don't have the teaching base. So we have a scholarship program. We have a program with our community colleges that builds that every community college offers the same program or the credits are all stackable so people can start getting paid for more progress in this work as they work and as they get closer and closer to their AA degree and almost anyone working in a program that serves low income kids in Washington will be able to get a scholarship to go to community college for free to get these degrees that we need to do. That's incredibly important for us without maintaining the quality in this, we're not gonna be able to maintain the increases in kindergarten readiness that we see in the program which are all about teacher quality, about curriculum and about actually doing the assessments in the classroom to maintain the quality. We're doing a class assessment in the CLIS, all Piantas assessment in every classroom to make sure that our quality of instruction remains high. We have a coaching and mentoring infrastructure that covers the entire state to provide that help, that scaffolding for programs to get to where they wanna be. And we have officers that are going out and looking at the quality in each one of these programs every year to make sure that we're continuing to maintain that quality. Our big problem is finding the money for this we're working right now and trying to make sure that we figure out what to do when all of these kids are actually entitled to get the program. So if you show up with a five year old at your local public school for kindergarten, they have to take you. It's like family for Thanksgiving, right? That you have to be able to get in and we have to be able to do that for kids who are eligible for free lunch, have to be able to get a slot and that requires a level of slack that we don't have in 10 other ways. That's all building the actual program but building the politics around that is also really important. So each time we do this expansion we have to get budget support from the legislature. We'd like the expansion to be smooth with this 1800 slots a year rather than have them all back loaded at the end when the kids will be entitled to this program because I probably can't create 8,000 slots overnight with this level of quality. So we have to keep convincing the legislature every year that we have a thoughtful and defensible prioritization plan that we have contractors ready and willing to expand to cover at least the next one to two years with the slots. We have to show them that it's broadly distributed geographically. That means that there's some in their district for each of the legislators. We have to have a successful history of doing prior expansions and we have to keep reminding them of how effective the program is. We do work with stakeholder groups. We meet with legislators in the off season. We have, I have 48 statutory advisory groups. Now a lot of those are on the child welfare side but I have a bunch in the early learning world trying to make sure this is fair. It's really important. So the fairness matters to the legislators. I'm unwilling to expand the program broadly with a lower level of quality because I'll get stuck at that point. As a separate path, we're introducing a plan to do a universal pre-K program because we want to have the strategy in place so people can think about what they ought to be able to do. And we'd like to work better for those families in the middle of that program. And so we want to get to having a universal program and our plan for that is this complicated diagram. We don't think we can just do the preschool without having high quality child care. I think we'll just push the problem earlier. We also don't think we can do that problem without getting ahead of some of the trauma the children experienced. About 23% of the kids in our low-income classrooms have an open child abuse or neglect investigation going on. And so our investment in home visiting and a referral network upfront is really important to making sure that we can get ahead of the trauma of these kids experienced and get them to be ready for preschool and then ready for child care. And my five minutes is up. Ross, thank you very much. Very informative. Let me introduce Monica Delamy. Monica is the Executive Director of the Office of Early and Elementary Learning at West Virginia Department of Education. There she oversees all aspects of West Virginia's comprehensive approach early and elementary learning systems for grades pre-K through five. In addition, she's the Chair of the States pre-K through grade five Executive Council. Now, Monica has done everything in the field of early education during nearly 20 years of experience. She served as an early and elementary learning assessment and school readiness coordinator, a professional development director, a program evaluator, a child care center director, a preschool teacher, a program director, a curriculum editor, an adjunct faculty member at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. It's an amazing background. She will speak about West Virginia's universal approach to pre-K, including how and why the state is pursuing a mixed delivery system. Monica, look forward. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm so glad to have this chance to speak with you. I'd like to just share a little bit about the inception of our universal pre-K program. And what happened was in the late hours of the 2002 legislative session here in West Virginia, it was determined that a universal pre-K system would be developed. And the nice thing about this system was that we were given 10 years to develop a process that included all children regardless of ability or income who were four years old. And then, of course, all three-year-olds with special needs were included in that legislation as well. And we were told at the time the legislation required that by 2012-13, every child who met those requirements had to have available a slot in our universal pre-K system. Now, as many of you know, West Virginia is incredibly rural, is very impoverished, and many of states may have similar attributes as well. We know that those challenges certainly add to the complications that came with developing this system. We're not a big state. Currently, we serve, as Marjorie indicated, about 75% of our four-year-olds. That's around 15,000 children each year. So that is some perspective for you all to think about in this. So we had our 10-year journey to build the infrastructure. That was about six years ago. And we're looking at continuous quality improvement at this point in time, of course. But the unique thing about the legislation that happened in 2002 was that it did require a minimum of 50% of our programs operating in collaboration with either child care or Head Start. Now, we're really excited to say that today, we are 82% collaborative with our child care and Head Start partners. It's safe to say that we play well in the sandbox. However, we certainly had challenges at the local level over the years that our state pre-case spirit team, which is comprised of a state pre-case coordinator, a state pre-case special needs coordinator, a Head Start state collaboration director, as well as a DHR coordinator, worked together to provide technical assistance to the counties. We know that we are a locally controlled state. We have 55 districts, as I said. And with that in mind, they are very unique. Some are more rural than others. There are two counties that have no partners to even collaborate with. So they only have the school system. There are no child care centers in two of our districts or Head Start partners. So where possible, the 50% of stipulation is in place. And we are 64% collaborative with Head Start and 18% collaborative with our child care partners. We have a unique situation going on with 2% of our classrooms in that the classroom is collaborative with the Board of Ed, Head Start, and child care. And really, this has been done to meet families' needs because we know that the family is the child's first teacher. We always want to honor the fact that Universal Pre-K is voluntary and that many families need wrap-around services. Many families need Head Start services. Especially in our very poverty-stricken state. So those are some considerations with regard to our Universal Pre-K program. The other thing I'd like to add is that, as I mentioned, you know, the legislation was passed in 2002 to develop the program. But in 2008, additional legislation was passed to build into the state aid funding formula, equitable funding with regard to or without regard, I should say, about where the children are setting. So if they're in a child care center or Head Start facility or in a public pre-K classroom in a school building, all the children are, they receive the same state aid funding. So that was really significant. We had some political champions in 2002 and we continue to have some political champions. They're not necessarily the same folks that were around at that time, but on both sides of the aisle, our legislature, our governor, continues to be incredibly supportive of early learning. And we're very, very pleased with the road we're going. We use pre-K as a catalyst for all things early learning. We even have our Office of Early and Elementary Learning now that spans up to grade five. And we look often on the successes and the challenges we've had with pre-K to move forward with our pre-school through grade five agenda. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now I'd like to introduce the third panelist. Anna Mercer McLean, the Director of the Community School for People Under Six in Carborough, North Carolina. Another practitioner with lots of experience and has been the Director of the Community School for People Under Six since 1991. The Five-Star Licensed Child Care Center at the highest quality rating in North Carolina. Also a demonstration site for the state. And a farm, early care, and education participant, she is serving her second term as Chair of the Accountability Committee for the North Carolina Partnership for Children Statewide Nonprofit Agency that oversees non-profits in each county serving children birth to five and their families. Anna will focus on how being a state pre-K provider has influenced quality in her center and how she is a Director of the Child Care Center as successfully incorporated state pre-K classroom into her program. Who is yours? By having me on the webinar today, the North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten Program formally more or is administered by the Division of Child Development in Early Education in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. This year, North Carolina has over 1200 sites, 22,589 students, 2,070 classrooms, and 91 active contractors to serve by eligible four-year-olds. Now Community School has been a part of the NC Pre-K program since January 2012 on 2002. The picture you are looking at is a picture of our great outdoor learning environment as a part of our participation in the shape and sea and farm to pre-arm early care and education program. As an Orange County Child Care Center Director, we wanted to share with you what it's like to be on the ground level for providers. Having a pre-Kindergarten classroom is wonderful but challenging. Our classroom serves up to 18 children with up to nine pre-Kindergarten students. We have the responsibility of meeting the North Carolina child care rules and regulations requirements of the pre-K program such as having a birth kindergarten certified teacher in the classroom and meeting those same standards at the public school or head start. We have been fortunate that we have had the same teachers for the past 16 years. A lead teacher has the professional support mentoring from the early educator support, licensure and professional development unit, and they have to meet North Carolina public school standards as well as the teacher and administrator must be trained in the five developmental domains under the North Carolina Foundation for Early Learning and Development. The children must be prepared for academic success. We must prepare our enrolled children for school readiness when there is enrollment is nine months or less. Our children are those who are unserved, underserved, and at risk. Therefore it is at this point when we identify children who may need early intervention services because of their unique needs. This is the first time for many to be in child care or group settings. And if we could serve them even a year earlier at age three this would make a big difference in their learning and development. However, we still see substantial growth. Private and for-profit child care centers are expected to operate on the market rates within set within the state. And after years of advocacy those have increased as of October 1 in North Carolina. We are most grateful to our officials. However, there is still an unmet need for children for pre-KNN funding for North Carolina. What has been most successful for our child care center to operate a pre-Kindergarten site is the support given by a local Orange County partnership for children. We have served as a pilot site. They cover the full day of working families. The partnership has supported programs like ours for professional development around the curriculum providing smart start enhancement for children in the classroom paid below the market rate and funding for shape and seed to help assure children are healthier and ready to learn. Also having other funding sources to help to support our work requiring both health and dental assessments for pre-Kindergarten children has provided a healthier start beginning them ready to sue as well as developing and implementing family engagement transition plans and expulsion plans for our unique needs and challenging behaviors are very beneficial. In addition to our QRIS systems the North Carolina Partnership for Children has the Community Early Childhood profile which has standards for early care and education quality and workforce health and family support to improve quality among local smart start partnerships in our 100 counties who serve our NC pre-K children and others. What we find as challenges is for us that we do not have transportation therefore outreach to families who do not have transportation is a concern. This is one of the areas our local and state officials provide additional attention. We have to ensure that families know that they have choices and that the Child Child Center meet those same requirements that public schools or head start. They often have children in public schools or head start and do not always know that child care centers are available as well. Also from DK licensed teachers at the center level is a challenge because they are often move on to the public schools for higher salaries and benefits. So greater financial support is needed for child care centers. There is greater need for classroom support and professional development to support teachers working with children who are faced with stress and trauma and having challenges behavior. And some of our most vulnerable children are always placed in quality are not always placed in quality programs and families may choose to use unlicensed care or kin care. And the new challenge for many of our contractors who support NC Pre-K is that with our market rate increases that just occurred in October that now the NC Pre-K rates are lower why would programs participate in NC Pre-K when the growing need for expansion is still there and funding is still needed. We're glad to be a part of the NC Pre-K program and prepare our children for a brighter tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm looking at this garden and kind of wishing that I were there right now. These are great presentations all of them as I was listening the word that you continue to use Anna in your presentation just stuck with me which is challenges. So I'd like for each of the panelists to pick up the challenges that you face now the accomplishments are impressive but as you know there's not the time nobody's declaring victory. Some of the things that I've heard just as prompts are how do you expand with quality so to expand to reach a larger number of kids who are four and five years old and how do you increase the numbers of kids who are birth to birth through age three which as we know is crucial. How do you all none of these states are exactly generous the amount of money that they provide which means you've got to be creative you got to do more with less how do you do that. You also you've picked up the theme of collaboration now collaboration coordination is a tricky business often because sometimes people feel like they're being coordinated with somebody else how do you how do you negotiate that and finally in at least three of the states there's been bipartisan support and all of the states lawmakers want evidence of success what are you providing for them and what do you see as the as the prospects for further growth I'm not suggesting that you talk about all of these but these again are meant to as prompts for you to be thinking about the challenges in your own state and maybe to be researching on what you heard elsewhere we have a grand total of 18 minutes for that conversation so I'm counting on you to be succinct and superb start with Ross let me talk some about expanding with quality first and then I have some I want to say about people being coordinated on quote um expanding with quality requires a level of intentionality that's that's sort of hard to imagine I I got to find places to put all these programs and I got to find partners to run them about 60 percent of our programs are run by school districts but we got churches we got nonprofits we got all kinds of people running programs and they all can do a pretty good job but I got to have them lined up and they got to be sure that the rates are going to be adequate for them to financially support the program they've got to have teachers lined up I invest ahead of time before we send kids there because there's time you got to spend to get them started up so I've really got to know when the money's coming and we do a lot of work to sort of leverage the legislature and you can't say that to any of my legislators but we try and push them by making there be a lot of demand in the district so that legislators are hearing from people from their school districts from their churches saying we're ready to go on this you just got to move the dial on the funding because it makes more sense for them to hear it from their district than it does to hear it from me but the other thing we keep doing is we keep doing studies over and over again where we're showing that these kids do better in reading in fifth grade if they've had our program that our stuff carries through every time there's a bad head start study and there was one last year I'm on the news I'm sending mail to my legislators saying I want to make sure you look at our program because here's what our program does we show the changes that we see in kindergarten readiness we show the changes we see in third grade reading we show this progressing through the elementary school how this stuff really matters and it improves outcomes for low-income kids and kids who have other challenges so making sure that you're selling the evidence allows you to get the money to expand making sure that you actually are ready to go makes it so people trust you to give you the money to expand and you can get that cycle going up on the coordinated side we've got a lot of childcare providers in the state who are upset at us right now because we are coordinating them we've mandated that people be at least a level three on our five-point scale to get CCDF money to get the subsidized childcare and people don't like it they don't like being required to do it we are starting to see the pushback now from parents who are saying hey this is a lot better and we've got teachers now that are coming back to us and saying I like all this training you're giving me because I can see how I can be more effective and this is particularly true when we have done work in some of our immigrant communities so in our Somali community in our Hispanic community we've got teachers who are saying I can contribute to the outcomes for kids in my community because of this training you're giving me and that is creating the kind of pushback to the people that run these programs that don't like it that we insist that they have a curriculum and that we insist on inspecting them all the time but they like cash in the check so we've been able to use that leverage but they are feeling coordinated and our requirement is that we actually keep it working Ross thank you and I appreciate that the level of candor because I think a lot of people listening are going to say oh my god they've got it down they know exactly what they're doing and we really do this I wish all of you are going to chuckle about that so let me just turn to Monica and see what you want to pick up on that theme of challenges and with any of those prompts or anything else that comes to mind yes absolutely well you know I was making some notes about a few things and first of all collaboration is a big has in the past been a challenge however we've largely been able to get past that because of the fact that each partner each child care partner each head start partner actually has a collaborative agreement a contract in place with each county board of education where there is a classroom in place that is that is collaborative that has helped also a policy that really grounds the whole idea of universal pre-k it's called policy 2525 it's our state board's policy but it is inclusive of head start and child care regulations as well to make sure that nothing contradictory is included or expected of our universal pre-k classrooms and when we say universal we mean they could be in collaboration certainly with child care head start with that in mind we know as well that braiding funding is really important as you said we have to learn to do more with less in so many of our states and so we look at how at the local level you know that head start funding as well as funding from DHHR those child care dollars can be put together along with state aid funding to help build a quality program another thing as far as collaboration that's really interesting in West Virginia is that we have a universal enrollment process at the county level each county is required in policy to have that universal enrollment process so that all age eligible children go through the same process to determine their needs their families needs really and determine the best placement now families can certainly put their preference for where they'd like to go but if it's determined that through this enrollment process which is inclusive of all partners that you know children or family would need wraparound services or would need those additional services provided by head start then those would be offered and available to the families so that's something and just another way that we offer with collaboration speaking about evidence of success we know that in West Virginia we have as mentioned before a pre-k through grade five approach to early and elementary learning and we look at data later on so we have a longitudinal study going on right now with the national the national institute for early education research we're in year four of this initial five-year study and we are excited yet cautious about the results the preliminary results so when I say cautious I just mean that we're cautious in that we know we have much work to do one of the things we'll be focusing on for example is instructional instructional support in our early learning classrooms as a result of the initial reports that are coming out from the first years of study so we have work to do however there are things that we can celebrate like for example with our fourth grade NAIT results in reading since 2013 we've moved up 10 state ranking points yearly we report to our legislature on things like our third grade ELA and math results and they're consistently improving we report yearly to the legislature into our state board of course the commendations the recommendations and any required follow-up that are found as part of our triennial universal pre-K review process that we have in place where the state steering team that I spoke about earlier goes out and conducts program review visits which are really technical assistance visits to help ensure that all components of that policy I spoke about are in place and to really assist those counties who are struggling with various components of the policy so while some might see that or some might think that we're in a very, very good place I see that we have been fortunate to have an infrastructure that has supported and allowed us to be collaborative and has allowed us to build a universal system that's focused on quality we also see that we have a lot of work to do still thank you very much Anna you're the person to raise the term challenge in the first place what are your thoughts well I think I can always think of some challenges because in child care we have to be very distinct in how to figure out solutions for many things that happen so we always use little have to do a lot with a little but I will say in North Carolina we have a great opportunities and we do a good job at collaborating among our agencies and our programs and one of the things that we will probably continue to do in North Carolina I would say that we need to continue to educate our legislators and our state officials about the importance of NCPK and serving our children three to five and getting them ready for kindergarten and making sure that the funding is available and that programs are expanded according to the way they need to be I would say we if we had universal a universal process that would make a big difference for us so I think that in Orange County would be a great benefit to assure that all families have choices and doing so and accounting for the voices of our administrators directors and teachers is a good way to make sure that we are being inclusive of all those things that we need to because when we don't hear all the voices of those who are working in the field and working with children and families directly even our families then we don't always make the right decision so that's a big part of making sure that we reduce those challenges and that we actually make sure that the outcomes that we've already achieved like greater math scores or reading scores and improvements and literacy that we continue to improve them but with the support for those who are who are setting side by side with children follow-up for I ask another question of the group educating politicians you mentioned and that's a big deal in North Carolina and other states how do you do that and how effective have you been well one of the things we love to do is go and talk to our officials it's important for them to know who we are and the work we do who we're serving and why we do our work many who are in the our legislators for examples were brand new coming in last year I believe and you know they didn't know as much about early childhood early care and education as they should and so it's important for us to educate them about that and to help them understand the importance of the work with children and we want to keep our children out of prison systems but more into colleges and moving forward and having successful lives so just walking up to of an legislator or calling them on the telephone or sending them email is an important way to make sure they understand what your points of view are about quality child care and about compensation for teachers and about just making sure families have what they need that's great so let me let me ask a kind of dryer administrative question but a very important one we'll start with Washington because it's Washington that reorganize its administrative structure so that Ross is now the secretary of the department of children youth and families which means he is in the state cabinet to understand it rather than the director of the department of early learning why was that change made what does it imply and and when the folks in West Virginia and North Carolina think about how to structure the early education program and perhaps the birth through grade three program how do you how do you approach these these questions what options have you considered how have you settled on where you are now what changes might you think about making but let's start with Ross because that's the state that I know is as an actor the significant change all right so I'm 12 weeks in to be in that that new dirt that new secretary and right now I'm doing this in a small room and a school building in New Jersey because I'm visiting some kids we have in a in a group home here so I got a lot of new stuff to figure out but the reason that we did it was I'd say twofold one is like many states we had and created in the 70s an enormous state bureaucracy that controlled all of the health of the human services stuff and it turns out that those are unmanageable they're just too big they have 20,000 employees and so stuff would just get lost all the time and so by having an agency that is more focused on children I'm not also thinking about prisons and I'm not thinking about aging and disability and all of those issues I'm just thinking about kids and the overlap in the kids that we serve is stunning when you look at low income kids in who the challenges those kids face when we talked about challenges that people like us face the challenges those kids face are terrifying and making sure that we're providing classrooms that have the supports that they need requires us to know the problems that they have so being able to share the data allows us to actually run a program that reflects what we need that what those kids need so I think that's really the overlap so I said earlier 23% of the kids in our state run for that version of Head Start have open child abuse complaints and if they've got that level of trauma going on at home that means I have to build classrooms to understand how to deal with that trauma I also have to get ahead of the trauma and see can I strengthen those families and doing this is together is a big deal Washington picked the Head Start model and I was very skeptical as a legislator about like why are we doing all this wraparound stuff we got Medicaid now this was 40 years ago when they built this thing and I had all that stuff going on in my head and I go in and I look and we actually have been doing experiments with an evidence-based program for these interventions for the family wraparound and we can show the increase in kindergarten readiness and increases in all kinds of other problems for kids to have have this kind of wraparound when the family needs it so being able to provide these services together matters Ross I hate to cut in and I hate to say to everybody else that you know as they say and these radio talk shows it's been a great show but our time is creeping to to an end and let me ask Maddie if she would wrap up the conversation my apologies to Monica and Anna we didn't get to you on that that round of questions I have no doubt that you have things to say and I've no doubt as well that the people who've been listening to this webcast have things to say as well and we'll try to figure out a way of keeping the connection going Maddie yes thank you so much David and thank you too to Anna Ross and Monica as you may have seen we did have their email addresses up there if any of you would like to follow up with with any of us and many thanks to all of you our co-sponsors and panelists for joining us today if you are interested in reading the book that Marjorie spoke a little bit about it's available from teachers college press at tcpress.com and on Amazon also if you're available and joining or interested in joining the LPI mailing list feel free to sign up on our website or at the URL shown on the screen our co-sponsors and presenters also have some wonderful resources available on their website which are shown on this slide thank you all so much again for joining us and we hope you have a wonderful day