 Pre-K to 3rd grade national work group 2014-2015 webinar series. I'm Mimi Howard, Policy and Systems Advisor at School Readiness Consulting and I'll be moderating the webinar today. Today we're looking at a very important piece of an effective pre-K to 3rd grade continuum. Bull Day Kindergarten. We will hear from a group of experts who will be exploring this issue from a variety of perspectives ranging from the theoretical to the practical. Before we get started, just a few housekeeping things and ways for you to engage. First, everyone except for the speakers will be muted throughout the webinar. At various points in the presentation, polling questions will be posted. Please take a moment to answer the questions as they come up. And also feel free to post questions using the chat box on the right of your screen. I'll be monitoring those throughout the webinar and we have about 20 minutes at the end for our presenters to respond to all your questions. For the technically savvy among you, you can follow the conversation on Twitter at hashtag pre-K 3rd and also at hashtag B-8. That's hashtag B-T-H-R-U letter, or number 8. So again, today's focus is on Bull Day Kindergarten. Where are we and where are we going with regard to providing highly effective programs as part of an aligned 3K to 3rd grade continuum? I'm going to give a brief framing and then we will dive into four great presentations from our panel of experts. Okay, as we get started, please take a moment to let us know who is joining us by responding to this polling question. This will help our speakers make sure they are addressing your comments to the right audience. So as you are responding to the polling question, I want to say again how glad we are that you have joined us today. We know you're extremely busy and that your schedules are full and we hope that the presentations are informative and that what you will hear will add to your work and spark some concrete next steps for each of you. Okay, let's take a look at the results of this first polling question. Lots of others, interesting. Well, when we get to the Q&A, it will be great to hear from all of you and who you are and hopefully we can meet all your needs as we move throughout the rest of this presentation. Okay, welcome to you all. Before we start and hearing from our panel, I want to take just a minute to frame our discussion. We have all seen that the public recognition of the importance of early learning for later success in school and life has become more widespread. As it does, improving the quality of and access to full-day kindergarten is often ignored in our discussions, both at the decision making and at the program planning table. Yet, it's the key component of creating a strong 3K through third grade continuum. While studies show that children benefit from full-day kindergarten, making gains in early reading and early math skills, as well as in other areas such as social skills and learning habits, most states do not require districts to provide it. As a result, too many children still do not have access to wish and free full-day, everyday kindergarten, and for those who do, it's a checkered, highly diverse landscape, with a full day ranging anywhere from 4 to 7 hours per day and with levels of quality varying significantly across districts, schools, and classrooms. The full-day kindergarten discussion, however, cannot just be about logging more hours in the classroom. I'm sure you are all keenly aware of the fact that expectations for kindergartners and their teachers have increased dramatically in recent years. And for children in half-day programs, that means having less access to what they will need to meet those expectations. It means less instructional support from teachers, especially in the way children at this age learn best through inquiry-based exploration, hands-on activities, and child-centered play. It means fewer opportunities for developing and practicing important social and what we are now commonly referring to as executive function skills, that they will need for future success, such as being able to stay focused, control their behaviors, and solve problems, communicate their own thoughts and feelings, and understand those of others. That kind of learning and development takes time in rich environments with responsive instructional support, hard to achieve in a half-day program. So today we will explore what a high quality, full-day kindergarten classroom experience should include from the perspective of a practicing teacher. We will hear from a district perspective what it takes to identify the right curriculum and intentionally coordinate and connect quality teaching and learning across the pre-K through the grade three continuum. We will review full-day kindergarten policy across the country, and we will critically examine what the research tells us about this important issue. With that, I'm going to turn this over to our four panelists, Christy Cowers from the University of Washington, Laura Bronfren from the New America Foundation, Jason Sacks from the Boston Public School, and Nina Ballew from Birchwood Elementary School in the Bellingham, Washington School District. Our first speaker is Christy Cowers, who will give us an overview of what the research tells us about full-day kindergarten access and quality. Christy is research assistant professor of P3 policy and leadership at the University of Washington, and specializes in education reform efforts that address the continuum of learning from birth through third grade. She is director of the University of Washington's Executive P3 Leadership Institute and is the lead author on the framework for planning, implementing, and evaluating pre-K through third grade approaches, a tool to guide school, district, community, and state efforts. So with that, welcome Christy. Thank you so much Mimi, and thanks to all of you on the phone. I was asked to give a brief overview of the research related to full-day kindergarten. And what I hope to do is even expand our understanding of the different kinds of research that do undergird what we think about and know about full-day kindergarten. So let me start by just contextualizing why we're talking about full-day K in the context of the pre-K through third grade national workgroup. Many of you know that as we talk about P3 or P pre-K through third grade, we talk about the importance of ensuring high-quality early learning opportunities or the P part, what children experience before, pre, or prior to school. But we also talk about the importance of full-day kindergarten because this is a transition year where kids are moving between the early learning system and the K-12 system. And a P3 approach also includes ensuring that we have really high-quality early grade, whereby we can sustain the gains that are made in those preschool and full-day K programs. And so when we put all of these pieces together, we have a P3 approach that aligns across the age continuum, but also ensures that we are providing high-quality learning opportunities within each of those age or grade levels. So today we're really focused on that pendulum or that full-crum point between the early learning and K-12 systems with the kindergarten year. So let's dig into what the research says about kindergarten. And as I alluded to when I began, I think we tend to take too narrow of a perspective on what research even is. And so I'm going to provide you several different perspectives, all research-based on full-day kindergarten. First, I want to start with what many economists, what economic research is saying about full-day kindergarten. And what we do know is that full-day K provides an employment support for families because basically, whether or not we want to think about kindergarten as a child care, that is a function it is serving for families, especially many of our low-income and at-risk families, it is giving them a safe, reliable place for their children to be during extended hours of the day while they are at work. Second, we also know from economists that full-day kindergarten contributes to the education production function. This is actually a perspective that has been used for a number of things when we talk about the education production function. What we're really thinking about is a lot of different inputs into education and then figuring out how those affect student learning later. And actually what we know is that there's a lot of things that are put into education that do not lead to greater student learning. For example, teacher degrees. We're increasingly knowing that degree has little impact on student learning. We also know that class size, unless there's dramatic reductions in class size, we know that class size does not have dramatic improvement functions on the production function. But one thing that is consistently found to be true is that more instructional minutes lead to larger effects on student achievement. And so this has been the argument not just for increased access to pre-K, not just increased access to full-day kindergarten, but also things like extended learning opportunities after school programs, summer programs, extended school days, school years, et cetera. So what we do know is that full-day K increases the education production function. And then finally, from an economic perspective, we also know that full-day K, and this is an economic term, crowds out other time use activities. So for example, if kids are in full-day K, then their participation in full-day K is crowding them out from doing other things that might not be contributing to their achievements, which could be being in a lower quality child care situation. It could be being a no early learning opportunity at all, but being in some sort of family, friend, and neighbor care. So full-day K helps to crowd out other negative time use activities that these young children or five-year-olds could be engaged in. OK, next I'd like to move towards a different perspective, which is what we know pedagogically about full-day K. And Mimi mentioned some of this in her introductory remarks. But what we know consistently is that full-day K does a lot of good things from a child's actual experience within the inside the classroom. Several are noted here. I won't read all of them, but it's full-day K, especially in the standard-based environment in which public education and private education is in right now. Full-day K gives students a time to focus on more than just reading a math. Full-day K permits the arts and creativity and physical education and a focus on growth and time motor development and social and emotional skills. Full-day K gives more luxury to focus on those things, not just because there's more time, but because teachers feel like they can have a more relaxed instructional pace. Full-day K also, again, because of this sort of luxury of time, permits teachers to tackle differentiated instruction in a more meaningful and intentional way. And as you will hear later when Nina, our practicing full-day K teacher, presents to you, is that full-day K really provides the opportunity to strike that perfect balance between developmentally appropriate play-based learning that is still rigorous and intentional. It really helps to find that sweet spot of kid-friendly learning. We also have research that says children in full-day versus half-day classrooms spend more time in child-initiated activities, more time in teacher-directed individual work, less time in large group teacher-directed instruction, and these five-year-olds have more time to be reflecting on their own learning. All things that we know are important for our youngest learners. Okay, so now I want to move to thinking about a different perspective, which is really family's perspective, and there has been some interesting research done on sort of how families perceive and think about full-day K. First, we know that families really value full-day K because it makes them have to juggle less. They don't have to be stressed out about trying to figure out where their child is going to go before or after a half-day program, and they're having to do less jigsawing to make days work for their kids. They know that their children can be in one place for an extended period over the day. As I noted earlier, it also decreases the needs for families to identify and not inconsequentially pay for child care that may or may not be a high-quality learning experience for children. And then we also know that families are actually demanding full-day K more because of the big boom in pre-K offerings, many children are not having kindergarten be their first exposure to formal learning settings. Many kids are coming directly from pre-K programs, head start programs, child care centers, places that already have an explicit instructional focus. That is still play-based. And so families are really wanting to maintain that continuity of experience for their young children. Then I want to quickly talk about policy perspectives. And again, another one of our speakers, Laura, will dig a little more deeply into this. But I do think the policy research perspective is important to consider. As I already noted with the expansion of pre-K and children's enrollment and attendance in pre-K, full-day K becomes even more important. While I have not yet seen any empirical research, I do know anecdotally from all over the country that what is often happening is that with the expansion of pre-K, we have more and more children in very high-quality settings as four-year-olds, but then they have to go into half-day programs in kindergarten. And that is a discontinuity for the child's learning progression. It's a discontinuity for the family, and it often becomes a challenge for teachers. So with the expansion of pre-K, we know full-day K is important. As we see, kindergarten entry assessments expand all around the country. KEAs, full-day kindergarten is really important because it gives more time to do the kinds of whole-child assessments that we know are crucial for this age range. We know that teachers are less burdened. If you think about a half-day K teacher having to do a kindergarten entry assessment on two classrooms because she's teaching a half-day in an afternoon section, that's a lot of paperwork to do. If, however, a teacher only has to do a single classroom of full-day K kids, it becomes a more doable, manageable task for teachers. And then finally, with common core state standards being adopted and adapted widely around the country, it's really important that we keep in mind the disparities that are being created when we have many children still in half-day programs. Those common core state standards set expectations for what all kindergartners should be able to do at the end of the kindergarten year. But what we haven't been as explicit about is that some kids are getting two-and-a-half hours of daily instruction, while others are having as many as six-and-a-half hours of daily instruction to meet those same standards. And then in closing, I want to get to the research that I think we most often talk about, which is, well, but how does it impact children and children's learning outcomes? And while some of the research is a little equivocal on this, what we do know is that full-day K produces positive and rather substantial impacts during the kindergarten year, which means from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year, full-day K kids are outperforming their peers for an half-day program. And we also know that over the course of the full-day K year, achievement gaps are closing based on full-day K participation, particularly for our low-income and non-white children. Let me show you some data that supports that. So this is a slide from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies kindergarten cohort. So this is a federal nationally representative sample of students. And what you're looking at here are gains in reading and math achievement, again, from fall to spring. So we're just looking at the kindergarten year right now. And we see almost a third of a standard deviation impact for reading and almost a quarter of a standard deviation for math. And while that looks smallish, that is actually rather substantial. Researchers get pretty excited when there's a standard deviation that crosses over the .2 threshold. And so these are meaningful gains for full-day K participation. And then I also want to show you some of the achievement gaps closing effects. These are data based on actually some of the most exciting research happening around full-day K right now out of the state of Indiana, where they actually have a natural experimental design going on because of some policy choices. Some districts are getting full-day K, others are not. But it's a really nice experimental design without having to pick and choose which kids get the full-day K intervention or not. And what this shows is the effect size of full-day K based on the total sample of full-day K kids in Indiana. But then we're also looking at the effect size for low-income kids and then non-white kids. And much like the standard deviations you see on this slide, which are sort of aggregate, so .32 and .22 for math, if we go back here and look at the standard deviation for the total sample for the bar on the far left, it's about the same. We are seeing full-day K is doing good things for all kids. But if you pay attention to the two bars on the right, we're now actually looking at the effect on our more at-risk children. And full-day K is having an even greater impact on our low-income kids and then an even greater impact on our non-white children. Where the research becomes a little more equivocal is when we look at the sustainability of those achievement gains into third grade and beyond. And I'm here to argue that those are questions that I think should not be asked without considering the full context of a child's education continuum. We need to know the quality of the first grade classroom that children are going into, the quality of the second grade classroom, the quality of the third grade. Before, we can really start making any causal, much less correlational impacts on the effect of full-day K later into life. So my key takeaways are that we need to broaden our perspective on what research matters in these debates and conversations. We need to know that it matters to families, teachers, and children. It's really important in helping to make successful many of our current policy reforms. We do know that it is extraordinarily beneficial for kids while they are in the year and that full-day K is going to require a lot of thoughtful design and support. And our next three speakers I hope will help to dig even more deeply into that. Thanks very much. Hi, Christy. That was fabulous. It's just really amazing to hear and to short a period of time the compelling arguments that you've just given us for why it is so important for full-day K to be available to so many more children than currently have it now. So thank you again. So okay, as we continue, let's take a moment now to respond to the following question that you have up on your screen. And while you are responding to that question, I'm going to introduce our next speaker, Laura Bronfrenz, who will talk about what is happening at the policy front across the country. Laura is the Deputy Director for Early Childhood at New America's Early Education Initiative. She examines state and federal policies related to learning and teaching, birth through third. She writes on a variety of topics, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, federal education programs, teacher preparation, retention, evaluation, and support, kindergarten, and early childhood assessment. I think we're really lucky to have her here today given all the things that she is working on every day when she goes to work. Her work has been cited in several national and regional publications, including Politico, Education Week, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal. So here are the results of our poll. Great. Most people are making progress. That's terrific. And nobody or only 3% said that there is no consideration in their state for full-day kindergarten. So that's good news, and I think what you hear the rest of the presentation will help you to continue to move from not being considered or just starting to being up there in that strong category. So, Laura, please go ahead. Thank you, Mimi. At New America's Early Education Initiative, as Mimi said, you know, we conduct research, develop policy recommendations, and disperse new ideas that aim to improve access, quality, and alignment in early education programs for all children from birth through third grade. And over the past couple of years, kindergarten has become a particular interest for us and specifically around children's access to a full-day of kindergarten, the quality of that experience, and then how children's learning and development in kindergarten builds on both what came before and then connects to what comes after. And we heard from Christy really why full-day kindergarten is so important, and I'll delve a little bit into where we are right now nationally. I'll reiterate a little bit of what Christy said and then just offer some recommendations that we've put out before and have for at the federal level and then also for states. So we can move to the next slide. If we look nationally, and this data, these data come from the Children's Defense Fund and the Education Commission of the states, only 11 states plus DC require that school districts offer at least five hours of kindergarten per day at no cost to parents. And the duration of the kindergarten day can actually vary from about two and a half hours to even two hours to seven hours, depending on the state and school district, with some states considering four hours a day to be a full-day program. If you look at the second bullet, my slide says that there's five states that have no statute that actually requires districts to offer kindergarten at all. Actually, it's six. Michigan is missing from the map there, but so there's six states that don't require districts at all to offer kindergarten. And while that's the case, many do at least provide a half-day. On top of that, several states do not make kindergarten attendance mandatory at all for children. We know that the majority of children do attend kindergarten, but again, it's not required. And at the same time, in many states, go back, I'm still talking on that previous slide. At the same time, many states funding for pre-K, as Chrissy mentioned, and investment in pre-K is on the rise. And in many cases, states are providing that full day of pre-K learning. Getting children ready and accustomed to a full day of learning head start often, or in many places, offers that full day. And the federal government, through recent preschool development competitions for preschool development grants and expansion grants, has really pushed states towards full day pre-K. This is a good thing. It's also a concern when you think about what comes after pre-K. And policymakers, we would say, are not setting up situations where it could be possible for children to get a full day of pre-K. And then a partial day of learning for kindergarten. These disparities really disrupt the pre-K third learning continuum. All right. Next slide, please. Before I jump in here, I will say that in the past a couple of years, some states have moved towards providing funding for full day kindergarten, even if it's not required in statute. So I know that the state of Washington comes the 2017 and 2018 school year full day is to be provided throughout the state. Oregon is making moves in this direction. Nevada has over in the last legislative session put more money towards funding full day kindergarten or dual language learners. And there are other states that are either targeting some of those funds or providing funds, but there's still no requirement in statute that all districts offer a full day of kindergarten, which leaves it vulnerable or more vulnerable than it might be without that specific requirement at the state level. And so state definitions of full day and half day often mean very different things across the country and different dosages across the country and dosage they're referring to the quantity of time that kindergarten is offered to children. There's no standard definition. And while there's some variation across states when it comes to 1st through 12th grade too, it's not nearly at the same extent as it is in kindergarten. You wouldn't have any state saying that 4th grade is voluntary or 9th grade is voluntary for children to attend. Let's not have good numbers on how many children are actually enrolled in kindergarten. Based on the 2011 census data, nearly 1 in 4 students across the U.S. do not attend the kindergarten, but those data are based on census information and they don't necessarily reflect the dosage or who pays for it. Is it a publicly funded full day or a parent's paying tuition for part of that day? And then 12 states actually allow school districts to charge for the other half of the day. And this is according to you know children's defense report there's tuition and this may be on a sliding scale or it could be depending on the district. It could be on a different rate for children from low income families or not. And you know kindergarten is really too often ignored. It's not a national priority really like pre-K has become. And again I'm not saying pre-K shouldn't be getting the attention it is, but instead I'm saying that we need to make sure that we're also ensuring children are getting the quality kindergarten to follow up for high quality pre-K. Next slide please. So how does varying kindergarten dosages impact children and families? And first it's important to note that time does not equal quality but less time does put children at a disadvantage. I'm going to zoom through some of this on the next slide because Christie touched a little bit on some of these issues in her presentation. So next slide please. First, kindergarten is embedded in the K-12 system. And parents often assume when I talk to people about the differences in kindergarten depending on the state when we're talking time there's a lot of assumptions there that there's not as much variation as there is. But in fact the instructional hours aren't the same and the funding isn't at the same level. Children attending kindergarten for less than five hours a day do receive less and sometimes much less instructional time and time for what we know time for instruction in ways that we know young children learn best. Christie mentioned the common core state standards which the rigor of common core or other college and career ready standards they require a little bit more attention and the half day sets up children to not really get what they need and when we have in some states children receiving as little as two hours per day of instruction and we know a lot of that time will go to transition and other things as Christie said it really limits teachers to what they feel that they're able to do. Common core standards were designed on the DA assumption that kindergarteners had a full day of learning and all had equal amounts of equal time throughout the day but that half day kindergarten really allows less time for teachers to teach in through inquiry led instruction allow opportunities for child center play and exploration and hands on activities all of those important learning opportunities kindergarteners have less time to be with teachers who know how to help them develop and practice social emotional skills and manage their emotions and regulate their behaviors all of those things that we know are important for their development but also for their success in later grades and while the common core only directs what should be taught in math and reading and not how it should be taught as Christie noted teachers may feel that they're restricted they don't have flexibility to really focus on other subject areas other learning and employee strategies that really match how young children learn best. If we want our children to be college and career ready and we want to prevent some of that early learning and full day kindergarten from fading out in later grades we need to ensure that kindergarten is a strong experience and it's also followed up by a strong first grade second grade and finally I just want to note that the other challenge is one that was previously pointed out that for families when states allow districts to or when states don't provide full day kindergarten or they allow districts to charge for it it's a huge challenge for families it's either denying them access and it's making employment and childcare issues more challenging for families. Next slide. So just to reiterate we heard about a new way of looking at research through several perspectives, economics, pedagogical through families, policy and education outcomes. I just want to reiterate that first brain and developmental science increasingly shows the importance of the early years and of children's earliest learning experiences. We've seen some large studies or reviews of research that have shown that the longer kindergarten days in high quality programs lead to positive outcomes for children and 2008 a literature review found associations between full day kindergarten and higher reading levels and Christy certainly pointed out some several other benefits and positive findings in research. So just to close here there are a couple of things that we've talked about in the past and how to make get a better picture of what children are receiving when it comes to kindergarten when we talk about dosage to go ahead next slide. So first it's really important that we get states to have a requirement that districts offer full day kindergarten at no charge to parents. That's equivalent to a first grade. So that all children have the benefits of a comprehensive kindergarten experience. Second, educators, policymakers data gatherers should really we think abandon this language of full day and half day and instead measuring quantity by hours per week and year so we can really get a good idea and a better picture of the kind of kindergarten experiences again when it comes to that time frame that children are receiving. And then also we'd say that any school districts and states that receive public money should be required to report publicly and to the federal government the number of hours per week and hours per year that children have the opportunity to attend kindergarten. Well, thank you very much. Thank you Laura. That was fabulous, of course. And I really appreciate the fact that you've raised so many important and very basic issues around creating full day kindergarten programs and the kinds of information that we really need to have at our fingertips as we share this kind of work with policymakers in our states who are interested in creating good programs that they address some of these very important issues raised today. So before we move on, just one quick reminder to all of you that please use chat box to the right to enter any questions that you have and we will definitely get to those at the end of our session. And then let's take a look at this next quick polling question. Please take a minute to answer this and I will move ahead and introduce our next speaker to you while you're doing that. He is Jason Sacks who will share his story of how one district is working to provide high quality full day kindergarten that meets the needs of its students and also creates a strong continuum of quality across the entire P3 spectrum. He is the director of early childhood at the Boston Public Schools where he is overseeing the expansion of kindergarten classes and coordinates kindergarten and early childhood programs for the district. A successful implementation of the kindergarten curriculum, professional development system for teachers and principals, expansion of NAEYC accredited classrooms in Boston and a comprehensive evaluation system of both classroom quality and child outcomes. So have we got a pass? Good. Here's the results of our poll. Great. Good to see there's beginning to be some alignment across and I'm sure we're going to hear from Jason in just a few minutes how we can move the needle on making that alignment across grades and programs much more realistic than it is now at many of your states and districts. So with that Jason, welcome. Thanks. From Snowy Boston. All right, so listening to the first two presenters, it strikes me that Boston is wherever you guys are maybe 20 years forward from now, maybe 10 years forward from now. So I'll share some experiences of what we've gone through in hopes that maybe it'll shortcut your running curve. As a district in the 90's, like mid-1990's we had half day preschool programs which we call K1 and we actually cut them in the mid-90's so that we as a district ahead of the state could go to full day kindergarten and then the state actually started funding full day planning grants and they match if you spend more money if you pay a pair of professionals in the classroom at least a half time in the classroom then the state will give you money and so we now have full day kindergarten and then in 2005 you know the next slide the mayor basically said well we should now go back, now that we have full day kindergarten we should implement full day preschool. So in 2005 we implemented in the district and this is just public school classrooms only a full day preschool program for about half the kids that would go to kindergarten. So it's about 2,000 children in almost every elementary school and that's what we call K1 classrooms and interestingly the teachers wanted to be called K1 teachers instead of preschool teachers so that they could stay on the same union scale as the kindergarten system so that's useful for you to think through. We implemented the full day preschool program in 2005 we've now had extensive reviews of it and the K1 or the preschool experience is having a tremendous amount of effect size on student outcomes and so Christy had mentioned that a .2 effect size is effective you can see the Boston Public Schools on vocabulary we have an effect size of .45 we had a word identification .62 applied problems which is math so we're sort of off the charts as far as if you offer a high quality preschool experience you will get a lot of outcomes and it should be noted that about 70% of our kids were already in preschool programs in Boston before and so this even if they were in a preschool program or a head start these are the effects you would see compared to kids who just go to our K1 so it's important to know that this K1 is different or what made the difference okay next slide and now I'm just going to whip through these but this shows basically that the impact of the K1 the preschool programs lasted all the way to third grade on these are state tests and these are literacy math is similar but you can see depending on free and reduced lunch or all students or Asian black Hispanic like that the differences last all the way to third grade so we did see some faith next slide please thank you and this just shows the black-white difference in third grade MCAS scores you're seeing still a 30% difference between kids who go through the K1 experience in the public schools versus those that do not next slide please and then starting to look okay so you implemented it you spent all this money on coaching now you don't spend all this money on coaching does the K1 still have the same effect and the answer seems to be yes and again for ethnicity it doesn't matter what ethnic group the K1 experience is really helping and favor these lunch the same thing next slide please okay so we spent so much time working on K1 that the kids started asking a lot of really good questions and wanting to do a lot more in the classroom and then we started looking more and more at kindergarten classrooms and we thought wow they're not really super strong quality and we sort of knew it in the back of our mind but we didn't really know how to approach it and our K1 expansion was sort of based on two sort of fundamental beliefs one is what the teacher is teaching and who the teacher is makes a huge difference but also it's a combination sort of of curriculum and the professional development that supports the teachers get and so taking that sort of mantra we wanted to say okay so we'll do a kindergarten curriculum and we'll do we'll find a strong one that's out there and we'll do professional development and we'll roll it out unfortunately the district was then implementing a K to 5 reading curriculum and it wasn't very strong in early childhood and we pointed all that out but you know because the district was so focused on sort of a comprehensive K to 5 reading approach or literacy approach they didn't really worry about their early childhood department saying this is not the most best way to teach kids and we don't take a test on curriculum but what we did so they wouldn't allow us to write our own curriculum or implement a curriculum in kindergarten and so what we did is we moved to N8 UIC accreditation because that at least got us into kindergarten classrooms and allowed us to do coaching around the standards of N8 UIC accreditation and what we found is that N8 UIC accreditation really improved the evaluation scores of quality instruction on the class and the ethers so we knew that the accreditation scores were at least affecting the improvement of what kindergarten instruction looked like but we still hadn't gotten into the curriculum so fast forward to 2012 when the reading curriculum K through 5 reading curriculum in the district was sort of rejected as not being that strong and that our third grade scores were still relatively low and so we seized the opportunity to say okay we've been trying to do a kindergarten curriculum and so it's called Focus on K2 and so we first doing a national so it didn't really find a kindergarten curriculum that we thought was as strong as what we wanted and so we created our own curriculum and so on our website and everything I'm referring to is something called Focus on K2 and I'm going to walk you through it not because I think you should do our curriculum but I'm going to show you sort of the language that we use to argue for a developmentally appropriate curriculum and I think it's just helpful from our perspective just to share what we've learned and hopefully it'll be useful. Okay so first we said our pre-K experience was super super effective let us do K2 because we're seeing that there is some fade out effect and then we actually did the class and the ELCO and some other measures of the quality of instruction in kindergarten first grade and second grade and third grade and really found that the quality of instruction is pretty low and so we're saying let us get into the classrooms by using the curriculum but we really hope to move to that quality of instruction through coaching mentoring professional development etc and and again in 2012 we did an extensive review of all the kindergarten curriculum out there and we didn't find them the ones that we liked we didn't think they were strong enough in vocabulary sort of radio principles that we really were supportive of they didn't really integrate across science math etc so we created our own and what was shocking was so we said who wants to volunteer and in Boston to get anybody to volunteer is pretty hard and what we had we thought we would get like maybe 30 classrooms we ended up 50 schools volunteered immediately because of the effect of the K1 so we pirated with 50 schools which is really that idea anyways because we wanted the momentum and now we are rolling it out this year to the entire district so we are in 80 schools so that's our focus on K2 experience next slide so understanding focus on K2 and for those of you know Reggio Emilia then you can kind of get a sense of we're really following children are reading the dance the teachers are sort of following the lead of the students but there's a lot of thinking and planning that goes on behind the scenes to help children understand what they're thinking about and building a collective group intelligence so the next slide please so this is a big shift because kindergarten teachers even though they are as Christy and Laura have already pointed out when it's a good experience and it's full day they do allow children more time to think and process and work in centers or play in centers there's still a lot of tight control in kindergarten classrooms there's still a lot of what we need to do some basic skills this is where they're learning academics and even though I have a wide swath of kids some kids who have had a lot of preschool I also have kids who have nothing have no experience and we need to get them to wait to hold a pencil or whatever the worry is that they're not going to succeed and so it really took us a fair amount of time to get the teachers to see the shift that trusting your children that the center structures and interesting and engaging material and they will succeed so it was a change in thinking next slide please and so again as I mentioned there was a change in thinking but not only as in the kid doing the work but then the students sharing their work with one another and then the whole class collectively learning and so I think what's a little bit different is it's not about just an individual child but there's actually a whole thinking feeling and feedback protocol that the class learns from and then students go back into their own groups and again there's a lot of room for children's interest and strengths but it's across the so the next slide great so this is how you sell it I think a lot of you know when you're in a public school environment it's a lot about standards and the common core and so these were sort of the way we structured it any YC gives you your standards for national appropriately appropriate practices relationships standards sort of sets the table for good practice then the common core is very clear in how you're supposed to read like a detective and how you're supposed to really stay on text and there's a lot of nonfiction the common core however is really text dependent and so for early childhood we really kind of are creating the argument that it's about children need to do an experience and talk about because some of the texts are actually not as complex as we want we want to be doing deeper stuff but if you just leave it to text it doesn't always get to the complexity of students thinking then we also really leaned on the 21st century skills because these are skills that you need to be successful and that's creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking and all of those are really emphasized in our curriculum and sort of our phrase we've been talking about is this knowledge building students need to be knowledge builders and then from the outcome measures that later on Kristi or others will cite it will be around self-regulation vocabulary, math the other thing I wanted to add is two outcomes that we really think about one is in the classroom these culminating projects so we have capstone projects for example the mayor of Boston sends a letter to every kindergarten classroom that basically says what I would like to make my city a fairer city what do you think fairer what would a fair space look like for your fairer building look like an interesting project for kids and then the last project is about the school sustainability and recycling so you see a lot of school projects and so that's about democratic participation so we're really trying to teach citizenship in our schools and what it means to be a citizen in Boston so the next slide the curriculum itself is around four themes our community construction, our community the animals and habitats where we focus on a couple animals but there's a lot of research footage behind it and then construction and then our earth and the capstone projects come in construction in our earth, next slide okay and so what does the curriculum really mean for us it means two hour block in a day, math is still discreet but we'd like it to get integrated over time but it's really this is what we're talking about it's 20 minutes of whole group meeting there's all sort of some of the social emotional stuff some of the introduction of the centers then it's actual deep centers where the teacher doesn't stay in one place there's a time where the teacher does do some skill building activities, foundations or whatever so that can be one part but then we really are encouraging them to get up, move around, explore centers document students' work really engage with students in a very meaningful way also do their documentation and work sampling or whatever they're doing and then they come back and they do this thinking and feeding protocol there might be some read-alouds and then the sharing of the research so it's really kind of this flowing process that happens and that's a lot of time to get in a full day program and not everybody's doing it and we'll talk about that next slide okay I'm just going to skip this but basically we had an intentional design for English language learners and special education using universal design so if people have questions later on we can talk about that next okay the other important piece as I mentioned is not just the curriculum it's sort of how do you build a supportive network in school districts so what we've done is every teacher will go through a monthly seminar but we have an additional monthly seminar for one lead teacher in each school and they're really using in Boston we have something called common planning time which is a weekly grade team planning and so we're really working with the lead teacher at scale so that they can facilitate their team and there's a lot of democratic buildings a lot of sharing and feedback almost the same principles we're using for the kindergarten curriculum for the students to do we have teachers do it with one another and again these were lessons we learned from the preschool experience but it's really building sort of what Reggio asked documentation pedagogical viewpoint and it really trusts not only the students but also the teachers to do their work professionally and it does require it's like we're not dumbing down the curriculum for the teacher we're actually expecting our teachers to be master teachers and really building an infrastructure to support that because frankly that's the only way to teach well and I know Christy said that degrees there's research that says degrees don't matter but I just find that really disappointing because it's going to take a lot to do this well and we really expect our teachers and all our teachers have master's degrees within five years of higher so okay next one okay so here's been the challenges to our implementation next slide that the teacher changing their pedagogical practice teachers like to be in control of kids it's very hard for them to trust their kids and so that's been a real hard one also the principal really expects to see students doing certain things and they're always like whether they're doing a dramatic play and so we really are doing a lot of work to to really get teachers to articulate what students are doing and produce strong work and be able to demonstrate strong work the good news is that everybody's beginning to see that there's a much higher level of student engagement they're doing amazing things I can't tell you every time I walk into a classroom now a teacher just smiles and says you know I didn't know my kids could do this this is amazing so that's been good and to change teacher expectations of what children can do is critical so far you know we've only been implementing this for one year in the 50 classrooms where we looked at the Dibbles data which is this dynamic indicator for the skills which is like the skills you need for reading and what we found so far is that there's been no difference in the Dibbles scores even though teachers weren't doing all the skills based up thus far we've seen no significant difference so it didn't hurt kids for kids who had no pre-k experience we are seeing that there's an increase in vocabulary which is great so this is obviously getting them to talk more for those who had K1 experience already this is not hurting or harming or helping at this moment their vocabulary is great but again we're only in year one of the implementation next slide lessons learned teachers experience a huge equilibrium before success it took until about January for teachers to get to routines and to reach trust in the kids ongoing professional development systems we can't do this if you don't have coaching and common planning time there's really some inspirational leaders to do this work the development of teacher leaders is critical to do this at scale because for pre-k we had a lot more money than we did for kindergarten teacher collaboration is highly valuable and requires dedicated meeting time so principals really have to free up and value teacher times meeting with each other and they have to not control those meetings but again trust in their teachers inclusion of paraprofessionals we have half time paraprofessionals so they are not taking advantage of as much and so we need to really work and they are super enthusiastic it's usually this kind of weird power dynamic and so really kind of teaming them up has been huge and then the administration commitment determines the extent to which the teacher can implement the curriculum of fidelity so the principals play a key role in doing this well next slide so now we've got kids flying out of K-1 and they're going into K-2 and now they're going into 1st and 2nd grade and so we are now working with Noni Wasso at Harvard to really think through what a 1st and 2nd grade and potentially a 3rd grade curriculum would need to look like that is both developmentally appropriate but really kind of ups the ante for literacy skills that are needed for reading because it's great that they're interested it's great they're engaging but there's certain like level readers that students really need expressive teaching on and or they're undermining supports and so you know sort of upping the ante and thinking about developmentally appropriate but really focusing deeply on the skills you need for reading so we're working on that and then just really kind of working with other departments because science, math, social studies they all have limited time and we need to get them to realize that if we create an integrated curriculum we're going to get more time other than less time because the teacher can make the connections and the kids are making the connections but to really do that is going to take our collective intelligence and so we're working on that the other piece is it's easy to say early childhood and maybe you get preschool and maybe you get kindergarten but there is no 1st through 3rd grade early childhood people they now see themselves as deep into elementary school but really thinking about that but I would just sort of finish with saying the good news is the folks around here really see the students are super engaged they see teachers engaged they see the students work is phenomenal and we know the data that I showed you in the beginning is really making a difference so I think we have an opportunity here to create something with people who are willing to do the work in an urban setting with 70% of our kids or low income but our teachers are highly skilled so I think I'll just stop there and wait if it was useful for questions I think I'm done Thanks Jason, thank you very much and please again just a quick little reminder if you have any questions for Jason or any other speakers coming up write those in the chat box I think Jason what you've given us is a very realistic yet ambitious picture of what a district can do to offer high quality pre-K and some of the issues that well arise as people think about creating more of a stronger continuum across the K123 continuum so here's our next polling question take a look at that and take a few minutes to answer it and while you're doing that I would like to introduce you to our next speaker, Nina Ballou who is a full day kindergarten teacher in the Bellingham school district in Bellingham, Washington she was part of the pilot training in Bellingham as a transition from half day to full day kindergarten in 2010 she's also part of the district's kindergarten steering committee as well as a demonstration classroom in the district Nina has worked with Kristi and with the Gates Foundation she positions from half day to full day kindergarten currently teaches at the Birchwood Elementary School so let's take a look at our results of our polls and rate teachers are getting some specialized training that's good to see and we just heard how important professional development is from Jason and we may hear some more about that from Nina as we move forward so Nina, welcome about your life as a full day kindergarten teacher Good afternoon thanks for having me you know my role here is to really just give you some practical teacher application tips or ideas as you move forward with the implementation of full day to ensure a high quality classroom so next slide please I'm going to take you on my journey when I sit down in July now, but August about what I think about as far as the setup of my classroom and the curriculum that I'm going to be implementing so on this slide you see this graph where I think about the first part of my year the first nine weeks of school more like preschool and thinking about the intention and the intentional and meaningful play that's happening in my classroom and everything that I'm doing in my classroom is really based on development and appropriate practices and luckily in my district I have two preschools just in my school but we have a really tight alignment with our pre-K partners and so I'm able to really know where my kids are coming from and also clearly I'm in elementary school so I have access to my first and second grade and third grade teachers so I know where they're going and so I really focus on the first nine weeks as preschools and then I implement what really looks like a kindergarten last nine weeks is really looking more like first grade so giving a practical example of this is maybe at the beginning of kindergarten my kids are working on the letter sound P well they're going to take an object out of a box at their table and they're going to roll up the letter P in Play-Doh but then later they might be writing the first sound in pencil and then later they might be learning about animals and actually writing and labeling it and so just seeing that continuum where it's going from the intentional meaningful play and transitioning through the year to the academic side and looking more like first grade next slide please and so then the second part that I think about when I sit down is thinking about the physical environment and really knowing and truly understanding that the classroom really acts as the second teacher and that the room arrangement that I have in my classroom is really critical to the development of the child and in my district fortunately I'm very fortunate to have an early childhood coordinator and a superintendent and a principal who all align the same beliefs that kids need materials that are developed only appropriate to grow and learn and that I can use those materials to create dynamic learning spaces for my kids so I'm going to walk you through my classroom to just give you a visual and an example of what this looks like next slide please so this is my classroom this year this is our whole group circle area I know that the demands of common core like Jason was saying are very text heavy and text dependent but that doesn't mean that I'm going to sacrifice developmentally appropriate practices we come to our whole group meeting and we have morning meeting and we sing songs but we also engage in shared reading and interactive writing and all the appropriate strategies that I know that I need to do in order to ensure a high quality learning environment for my children and a high quality curriculum next slide please this is the back of my classroom and you can start to see little areas forming for kids who need different places to learn you might notice that I don't have any name tags on my or labels on my tables because I teach children very intentionally that they can choose anywhere that they'd like to work as long as they're learning and it's a bummer if I have to manage you right so you can start to see my small group table that's where I pull small groups but it's also a place for children to learn and my classroom is there at the very beginning of the year and we build it up together based on our learning so this was back in December when we were learning our letter names and sounds next slide please this is our home area our dramatic play area and like I said my district is really very passionate about having all of our classrooms look the same and ensuring that we have the materials to do so so this is where kids can learn and grow and practice their oral language skills in play and they're pretending and they're doing most of their learning I would say during play time and this is one of the areas in which they play you can see the puppet theater on the left side the TP on the right side please and yes that is a closet bathtub my kids read and there sometimes they take a clipboard and write but you can start to see these more dynamic spaces that are starting to emerge in my classroom and I just want to make sure that I have unique places for my kids to learn and grow and so that I'm responding to their needs as they grow and learn next slide please this is our block area underneath that training table I have blocks and Legos and all of my kids visit this area on a daily basis practicing their math skills and their science skills and building lots of things and they pull those tables out or those rolling bins out onto the carpet and they make these huge structures that go across the room and as you can see here that there's labels on everything so my kids and I labeled the whole classroom at the beginning of the year so they know where everything is and they can take ownership over the materials and that really fosters a sense of independence next slide please so this is just a look at a typical daily schedule that I have in my kindergarten classroom there's a whole balance of whole group, small group and one-on-one instruction with time embedded for a lot of reflection but if you scroll your eyes down to where the 1135 time is you'll see work time and that's what in our district is our plan to review model and what kids do here is they plan what they're going to do, they play for anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes and then we come back together and we share and we review and we reflect on the learning that has happened during that time as you can see in this entire day it's just one portion of our day but it's a large large portion because what I know about development and only appropriate practice is that kids need time to learn and manipulate materials and talk to each other and that's really going to help their problem solving skills and develop their social emotional skills as well as their oral language skills. This is also a time where I do most of my observational assessments because what the best thing about play is that it's just the most authentic time to catch kids and what they really know and what they know how to use. So next slide please. So I'm going to talk about play and the critical components that I believe, my district believes you can walk into any of our kindergarten classrooms across the district and see this but the critical components really is this first part of kids planning. They're practicing their oral language skills, they are sometimes I have my kids plan together with the group that they're going to play with so that it deepens the level of play and then they're talking to each other and I truly believe that kindergarten should be loud and buzzing because they're just fostering the oral language skills and we know that oral language skills are the reading predictor, reading achievement predictor. So they are creating a plan and it's going to deepen their play as they move on if they have a plan and then it's just the right length of time. Over the course of the year it changes. At the beginning of the year it might not be so long because they can't sustain, the stamina isn't there. They can't sustain for that long and a teacher will know when the play is starting to disintegrate and that teacher needs to bring them back together but as the year goes on and their problem solving skills get better and they grow as learners that the play can just continue on and can last a little bit longer. Next slide please. So something that is really critical to play is having hand-on activities and they're not I'm not setting up the activities but I'm setting up the materials for them to engage in so I have the home area but the home area more than changes. Sometimes they want to play restaurant and so I will bring out menus from home and will bring out a little bit more food that I might have in my closet and it more than changes how as kids change their level of play. Just a few months ago it was a pet shop and so we brought out all of the stuffed animals and the masks and all of these materials for the kids to really dive deeper into the play and this just promotes social emotional skills it promotes fine motor development it promotes oral language development and so all of these things are these true skills that are going to build functional children in the classroom and this is the most important time of my day at sacred and I never change it because this time will feed into the literacy time of my day and the math time of my day because they're building these foundational skills as learners. The next really critical part to the play is children needing to have the basic rules and boundaries but in my classroom it's only be respectful make good decisions and solve problems and really with those three rules or boundaries it's really all encompassing of the things that you're going to find with children when they're playing usually they're so deep in the play not many things happen that need me but sometimes they do and those three rules really help and then my role is also really critical I heard not too long ago that I should just stand back and watch them but what I know is true about developmentally appropriate practices is children need to be pushed and they need to sometimes be held back a little bit but it's always very intentional the teaching points that I have for my students during this time and I need to be an active observer but also sometimes step back and let the children do what they need to do but it also again is my time to take those observational assessments for my whole child assessment. Next slide please Next slide. Thank you so much. So this is just kind of what I've already talked about my observations and interactions like this slide says support, extend and enrich the learning so during Halloween I had pumpkins out and just an array of measuring tools and they went over and they explored that area. This is a little girl who's retelling the very hungry caterpillar during work time so I am observing her doing this and getting all of my literacy objectives that I needed for my assessment so it's pretty cool to see that. Next slide please The last few things I'm going to talk about is just this idea of choice and ownership. Jason talked a lot about it's hard for teachers to trust their students and I think that can be really, it can be a true statement for sure and for me how I go about that is I have bottom lines. I need my kids to be reading during independent reading time but they can read any just right book and they can read anywhere. It's really thinking about what's the appropriate choice for the child and making intentional teaching choices based on what's appropriate and when you have bottom lines of a teacher the child really owning their choices and then the power struggle sometimes or that trust that Jason was talking about is just it becomes a non-issue and we create these posters together and they change throughout the year. The kids decide what their literacy choices are and I'm okay with that because they're making an awesome choice and as I said the choices change based on what's appropriate for them at that time in the year and if you think all the way back to that beginning slide, that transitional slide from preschool, my first time looking like preschool into kindergarten and then the first grade that's how these posters more than change and that's how their choices are going to change but it's all about having that bottom line and really being clear about that expectation. Next slide please. So this is Hope, this is one of my students and he you know like any other teacher in any other school in the entire country I've got my tough ones too and it was really about me trusting him to develop as he needed to and so the beginning of the year his day looked a lot different than a lot of my other students but here he is during work time, during that playtime and because I had very intentional teaching points for him throughout the year especially based on his behavior so he could function appropriately in the classroom, he is now he said he wanted to paint a Valentine's Day poster for his grandpa he went and got the he had to get a chair to get the paint he got the paint out, he got the brushes out and what you don't really see in these pictures is him working and sharing the materials with three other kids during that time and so I think my main point here with being intentional is it's not about it's not about having the increased amounts of minutes to make a half day from a full day it's what we do with those minutes in that full day because now like Christy said we have that luxury of a full day but it's what we really do and it's how intentional we are about how we teach kids and what is developmentally appropriate for our children and my Jason was saying with his developmentally appropriate curriculum that we created the kids really do bring the curriculum I have kids who don't have any early learning experiences and it's my job as a kindergarten teacher to not only close the achievement gap like Christy said but also close that opportunity gap close the opportunity gap that children like hope who don't have the opportunity to go to early learning have early learning experiences and to make sure that I'm meeting their needs intentionally so that they are successful through first grade and second grade and beyond so I thank you for this time to talk to you as a teacher and if you have any questions please write them down in the box to the right of your screen thanks so much that was a wonderful presentation and what a great way to end this discussion with an in-depth look at what full day kindergarten looks like close in your classroom you've really given us a sense of what it takes to deliver high quality experiences for children thank you again, it's been great I'm going to put up one more polling question quickly and while you are answering that I want to give you this opportunity to thank all our speakers for their thoughtful and input I think each of you has an input for thought as well as concrete examples of what it will take at all levels to ensure children have access that are of the highest quality and experience and support that our children need so thank you again, it's been a very interesting we're going to move to questions and answers next let's take a quick look and see what there is yes funding is usually the biggest hurdle and hopefully we heard some very compelling arguments today that you can take your policy makers to convince them that indeed taking an investment in full day kindergarten is well worth it in so many different ways so thank you for that alright let's move to questions and answers please I have one quick beginning question that I would like to ask by your group so any of you that wants to respond please do and here it is without such a strong comprehensive district system like the one in Boston what do you all of you think is the most important entry point or starting place for moving towards high quality kindergarten at the classroom level Mimi this is Christy before others answer your sound is coming in and out can you make sure you're sitting still and staying close to the computer please I'm sitting still as I possibly can and I'm sorry no thank you for letting me know that that's helpful I actually have it on conference I'm going to flip that off so that I'm talking directly into the phone maybe that will help so would you like me to read the question again so that people can understand it yes please so without such a strong comprehensive district system like the one in Boston is providing what is the most important entry point or starting place for moving toward high quality kindergarten at the classroom level if I could take a stab at that Mimi it's Nina thank you that's great thanks what I think made the biggest difference in Bellingham is having an early childhood education coordinator there was a classroom teacher a veteran classroom teacher that really knew developmently appropriate practice that stepped up to the district level and and that she was the voice and she has a direct connection to our superintendent and so she was our voice for our entire grade level and really started to make those changes and demand that early childhood was a big presence in our district and that we needed to make those clear connections so that kids could have you know could it was equitable basically across our our district in our system K-12 so having that point person was really critical to the development of our program great thank you you know and that brings up another question that I think a lot of people are wondering about and that this is probably again something that any or all of you could answer and that has to do again with this whole issue of leadership and talk about the role that you see principals in particular playing in terms of helping full day kindergarten to really be a successful program in a school sure this is Kristi I'm happy to answer that we we have found that principals are key to this because you can have really phenomenal classroom teachers like Nina but they if they are working in a context where early learning is neither understood nor supported then their efforts are really going to be sorted and so we actually here in Washington state and around the country are taking on a big push to help bring school based principals both principals and assistant principals along not only understanding full day K in and of itself but understanding how full day K fits in this early learning continuum and how high quality full day K is going to require that first grade teacher practices change which will then make second grade teacher practices to change and so we have long seen principals as really being central to this and I would argue that the national obsession with principal preparation right now is evident that other people are thinking about this a lot too thank you that's great well I see that we're almost oh go ahead Jason I'm sorry okay well I would just add that I think a lot of this has to do with sort of the way we are messaging our work I think that you know the public school was designed on an agrarian day and it was designed and it is designed mostly in a way for older kids and it is not you know there's a lot of science about how young children learn and I think what we have to do is to say we actually want to get to be in a place where we are more rigorous than the principal wants I think that most people are acting out of a place of well if I see them writing or if I see them doing their alphabet or if I see them sitting at a desk then I know I'm preparing them better and I think what we are slowly building is sort of the science says no actually young children learn different and you need to do it this way in order to be more appropriate and so I think the way we message and do the work with principals is really critical because I find that the principal you know can obviously help with time and setting the leadership but they're not really the instructional leader but they certainly can get in the way of strong development and appropriate practice so I think it's really important for them to come to a basic understanding of what good rigorous early childhood work looks like and what good rigorous early childhood teaching looks like and then they will sort of back off and let the teachers do their work it's generally that it's coming from a place of not understanding that if you do it this way then it happens. So it's just making the case for them in a way that makes sense to them that makes a lot of sense, thank you. Well I see that we're almost out of time I do want to mention that there was one question for Christy in particular with regard to her remark around the importance of teacher credentials and degrees and Christy do you want to take a few minutes to respond to that and then we'll close off. Sure I don't want to take a few minutes I'll try and be succinct but the sound bite obviously doesn't convey enough richness behind the statement but we do have pretty extensive research from both BIRST to FIVE and K-12 so wherever you want to sit kindergarten there's a research base behind it that degrees in and of themselves don't matter this is actually why K-12 is going through this huge push around creating new teacher evaluation systems we can't just measure we can't just do a resume review to decide if a teacher is effective or not so degrees in and of themselves don't matter which is not an indictment of the degree necessarily but more of institutions of higher ed and the wide variability of teacher preparation programs offered but we also need to realize that by just saying degrees many places don't even require a degree in education so for example a bachelor's degree in French doesn't translate into a high quality teacher and I would argue many degrees even from teacher preparation programs don't translate into high quality teaching what we do know is that specialized degrees matter and this is true in both BIRST to FIVE and K-12 and degrees matter even more when they are coupled with coaching focused professional development of the kinds that Jason enumerated teacher teamwork but isolating degrees as sort of in and of themselves being a clear predictor of effective teaching and therefore improved child outcomes as I said there's just an abundance of research in both BIRST to FIVE and K-12 Thank you Chrissy, thank you very much so that will end our question and answer period and we're going to put up one last question for you to respond to and while you do I just want to give a special thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for their support of the technology that has made this webinar possible the next webinar look for some information on the pre-K to 3rd grade working group website will be in April and we will have the most information on dates and content there very soon so take a look for that thanks again to all of you for participating today and we hope to have you on another on another flight soon thanks again and have a great day