Good afternoon. I'm Laura Bornfriend, Director of Early and Elementary Education Policy here at New America. And thank you all for joining us today for an important conversation. And while I'm still currently out on maternity leave myself and have another month, which I'm very fortunate to have, I wanted to be here to kick off this conversation. I'd like to give a special thanks to the Joyce Foundation for supporting the convening that the paper released today is based on and the Alliance for Early Success also for supporting today's event. I'm joined here today by Sarah Mead, a partner at Bellweather Education Partners, who will provide some background on a convening we had together last fall that led to the paper you picked up this morning and this event, and she'll come up in just a minute or so. So first, though, for those of you who are watching online and those who would like to participate in the conversation via Twitter, use bachelors4prek, or hashtag bachelors4prek, and number four, since we don't have it up there. No dashes. And for those of you who are interested in other events on topics related to the Early Childhood Workforce, stay tuned for future Early Ed Workforce events later this year from our team, and be sure to check out our blog, Ed Central, where we are currently running a series called Moving Beyond False Choices for Early Educators, and that's edited by Stacey Goffin of Goffin Strategy Group. Sorry about that. And for those of you who are not as familiar with New America, our organization strives to explain and uncover the implications, the challenges and opportunities inherent in a time of tremendous technological change. In our education program, we focus on equity for underserved students, while also taking a broad view, examining learning environments and public education systems of all kinds, starting with our youngest learners and continuing up through adulthood. And over the past several years, our early and elementary education team has focused much of our work on the adults who care and educate for children from birth up through third grade, as well as the adults who provide support for those working with young children in classrooms and other settings. On your way in today, you likely picked up a postcard showing how to access one of our latest projects, Transforming the Early Education Workforce, a multimedia guidebook. The guidebook includes key takeaways from each chapter of Transforming the Workforce for Children, Birth through Age 8, a unifying foundation report that was released back in 2015. The guidebook also includes videos, interactive tools, a glossary, and more. We designed it with three doorways for three different but overlapping audiences, educators who work directly with children, educators in higher education who prepare those educators in the classroom, and policymakers interested in improving early learning settings for children from birth to age eight. Now to today's event. We are here to zoom in on a very small slice of a large and diverse early education workforce. We're here to talk about teachers of three and four-year-olds in publicly funded settings. All pre-K aged children, especially those who are currently underserved, need high quality pre-K options and a big determinant of pre-K quality is the quality of the teaching and of the learning environment. Pre-K teachers need specialized knowledge and competencies to meet the needs of these young learners. The 2015 Transforming the Workforce report calls for all lead teachers in birth to eight classrooms to attain a bachelor's degree with specialized knowledge income and competencies. Now the early ed financing report released last week will surely provide insights for a path forward and our own Kim Diancy on our education policy team who served on that committee will provide a very brief summary on our blog of that report later this week so you can check that out. But we also have Kathy Glazer who will be on our panel today to provide her insights from committee work. She also served on the committee so we're happy to have her today. So how can we equip pre-K teachers with the advanced education and experiences they need in an equitable way? And how do we overcome the barriers for teachers and for ensuring strong preparation and training programs? These are some of the questions we will get into today. We Mary Alice McCarthy on our team has already started to think about how apprenticeships can play a role in this work. And so we'll along with her team on our Cessna the Center for Education and Skills here at New America and our teams are exploring innovations in this space. And we started really getting into these those questions more deeply last fall with a convening New America held in partnership with Bellwether education partners. And I'd like to now invite Sarah Mead up to tell us a little bit more about that convening. Thank you Laura. As Laura mentioned my name is Sarah Mead and I'm a partner with Bellwether education partners. We are a national nonprofit organization focused on dramatically improving education and life outcomes for underserved students which we do both by working directly with education organizations and by informing research and policy for the broader field. We were particularly excited to partner with New America on this event because teacher preparation across the P 12 continuum and early childhood education are both major focuses of our work both with organizations in the field and from a policy and research perspective. And I personally was very excited to partner with New America and this work because about eight years ago the vice president of New America for Education Kevin Kerry and I teamed up to write a paper about how innovative approaches to higher education could create opportunities to boost the skills of early childhood educators and workers. And we feel like that's a time when when this work seems really relevant and salient again. You know as as Laura has mentioned in the past this the goal in this paper today is not to litigate the question of should early childhood educators have bachelor's degrees. But we know that early childhood educators need knowledge and skills. We also know that innovations and changes underway in the broader teacher preparation landscape and in the broader higher education landscape can inform how we go about addressing that need for knowledge and skills. And so that was why we were really excited in September to bring together a group of about 40 leading experts practitioners and thinkers in the field researchers and people who've been researching this for a long time as well as higher education faculty folks from alternative teacher preparation programs and early childhood practitioners themselves to really have a conversation about what would it take to make it possible for more pre-K teachers in publicly funded programs with three and four year olds to complete bachelor's degrees or equivalent credentials. And so we heard in that conversation about innovations within the higher education system from some universities that are really leading innovative practice there. We also heard about innovations outside the higher education system such as apprenticeship programs. And we talked quite a bit about what are the kinds of supports and sort of wrap around assistance that folks are looking at providing for early childhood educators to earn those degrees. And so out of that conversation a set of key themes emerged some of which are summarized in the report we're releasing today. But that conversation also highlighted a lot of questions and sort of definitional issues that are still needing to be addressed in the field. And so following that convening we spent a fair amount of time following up with people who are in the meeting doing interviews with other experts to try to really hone in on what do we know and what don't we know. And what does that mean for the path forward. And so you'll see those findings synthesized in the report that's being released today. And hopefully we'll have a really robust conversation with our full set of panelists later about those findings. So thank you. Thank you Sarah. And I'll just add before we even start the conversation this is not the end of the conversation for for us here at New America for many of you in the field. And what will come out of after today is a series of briefs that will be digging into some of the ideas that we really start exploring today. And we look forward to future opportunities to continue our partnership with Bellwether as well. So one more before we launched into the takeaways from the report with Lisa Guernsey and Emily Workman and our panel discussion we wanted to really start with the important perspectives from the field. It's so powerful to hear what current teachers have to say about their wants and needs when it comes to their work as teachers and their challenges and successes in advancing their own education. So please turn your attention to the screen for a video. Children is how people perceive what you're doing as being unskilled something anybody can do. And so there's a real lack of respect. The children are just playing and how we say yes they're playing and when they're playing they're learning their learning is their work and we're guiding them in their work called play. And so the teachers who come along have to be skilled. And now in our workforce more than ever we're required that we have at least a bachelor's degree. So many times we're asking teachers to be psychologists and janitors and family navigators. And now we're asking people to do assessments and fill out forms and just we keep kind of adding more things we want teachers to do. There's a lot of turnover and teachers don't stay as long and we know that has a negative impact on the children. My name is Quenetta Lewis. I am director of a single classroom preschool in the heart of West Oakland. I remember when I first got out of school they were like what are you going to do with this nice degree you have and I'm like I want to go work in West Oakland. And it's mainly because I feel like these children need more and they need to have dedicated people to help them. What we found in a study that we commissioned with UC Berkeley is that not not only our teachers worried about paying their bills but many of our teachers are actually just worried about putting food on the table for their own families. 75% of early childhood center based teachers in the US earn less than $15 an hour. Mind you that you know more than a third have bachelor's degrees. They might drive for like Uber in the afternoon. They're working side jobs and then they're still trying to do work that they have to do here. Like why do we stay? We stay because we love it. But it's been a sacrifice. That's why I work in leadership now. We got to change this and we got to keep speaking but we have to put action to it. It says that questioning comes very natural for young children. And so we should expect them to be asking what's the science has shown us how much young children are capable of. But it's incumbent upon the teacher to know how to organize and optimize child learning through having developmentally appropriate activities. So people who teach early childhood classrooms and do it well and they know child development. It's a scorpion. What's on my head? What is it? I graduated with my associates from TCC and then I didn't really know how I was going to finish my bachelor's. We usually call that a chalkboard. I already worked here at Educare. There was no way really for me to be able to leave work. You know like I still needed that paycheck and I couldn't afford to take off work so much. So OU was the perfect program for me because I could just work my normal shift here at work and then when I got off I just went straight to class and it was just at the perfect time of day. What makes our students nontraditional is they typically are a little bit older. They have families. They may have full-time jobs. My topstone semester I had a baby as a surprise baby and my professors were amazing. Like she came with me two or three nights a week and she was like the cohort mascot. We also have funding available through the George Kaiser Family Foundation Loan Forgiveness Program and upon graduation for each year they work in early childhood in Oklahoma. They're density raised by 25% per year. It was awesome experience for me. I mean great learning environments. So I got to see the different dynamic in the classroom and the culture very diverse. I just wish that I could like show you guys what I saw there and what I heard and how it felt because OU selected the best of the best for us to be able to observe. Validation of things that I was doing in the classroom almost supported because you know I would do an assignment from one of these incredible professors you know that had signed and it was not only a learning experience but it was like hey that's why you know the light bulb moment that's why I'm doing this and it just was you know validation over and over in the actual classroom of the experiences I was having but so you were already good but you felt like it made you know why it was like you know it's okay I know why I'm doing this down and I have like the you know the terminology or whatever you put back up what's done so in a sense for me it was a lot of support to be able to take these courses even though it does take a lot of time balancing you know I can remember sitting doing a lot of work and my husband would come in and say are you about finished and I would say oh just a little bit longer you know just trying to get it get it all all done but I guess I really haven't ever realized that too much so till just this moment how much support it has given me you know in my in my actual work it really has. Thank you to Abby Lieberman on our early ed team and our new America Productions team for putting that video together and some of these these clips come from the full length videos that you can find as part of the Transforming the Early Education Workforce guidebook. So as states and local pre-K programs put additional degree requirements in place it's really important for them to be mindful of barriers for and the needs of the existing existing workforce. Now many of you may know that there is a current movement afoot to engage the field the early ed profession in deciding what competencies different roles need and what qualifications and degrees they might need. And I'd now like to just take a few moments to invite Rian Alvin the CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children up to tell us more about power to profession. Good afternoon it's great to be with all of you and Lisa and the team here I'm so thrilled with what is in this report and new America's work in keeping the most pressing and complex issues at the forefront of our policy priorities. This report is no different and points head on to the access to and effectiveness of higher education that we all have to confront. Power to the profession is a national grassroots initiative that seeks to build on the guidelines frameworks and standards that currently operate across programs organizations and states by establishing one shared framework of career pathways knowledge and competencies qualifications standards and compensation structures that will unite the entire early childhood education profession. We owe it to our field to move beyond a disconnected state by state system by system strategy where there's little consistency and agreement resulting in early childhood educators being highly qualified in some states and settings and not qualified at all in others. There are fifteen national early childhood organizations that are partnering as the power to the profession task force along with thirty five stakeholder organizations that have agreed to be collaborators co-conspirators and thought partners as we step through this process. We're through the first year of a two year deliberation to date the task force has agreed to the name of the profession you'd think that would have been easy tricky the roles and responsibilities of early childhood educators and the process for developing shared competencies and scopes of practice which is also underway. This is an iterative process designed to engage the entire field so when decisions are made they're released as drafts for vetting currently available for vetting is decision cycles three four and five which include where and how early childhood educators will attain their competencies the required qualifications and pathways and possible specializations up next will be the frameworks for wages and compensation required accountability and quality assurance for individuals and institutions of higher education and finally the supports and infrastructure necessary for the system to work. While we are midstream in this process many of our discussions have touched touched on the thoughts and recommendations that are so beautifully articulated in this report in particular a push for increased competencies has to embrace the entire workforce birth through age eight from family child care homes to public schools and if we whiten the workforce while we do this we failed which means confronting head on the real lack of access to higher education and mentors that African American and Latina early childhood educators have told us is their number one barrier. Alignment between national credentials like the CDA associate degrees and bachelor's degree programs are essential. Most early childhood educators do not begin in bachelor's degree programs and making sure there is uninterrupted alignment creativity flexibility in how the early childhood educators acquire these competencies is paramount. And finally we have to commit to a wage and compensation strategy that aligns to the competency strategy. Far too many women living in poverty maybe who were making ten dollars and forty cents an hour have their bachelor's degree and are now earning eleven dollars and forty cents an hour. Our goal to establish a profession will only work if there are aspirational compensation structures that attract and retain the most effective early childhood educators. We owe it to kids and families and the early childhood educators who've dedicated their lives to working in nurturing working for and nurturing young children. I'm so excited that this conversation has started I'm so excited that New America is doing such an extraordinary work in this area and we look forward to partnering. Thank you so much. Good afternoon everyone and thank you so much Rian glad we could have a moment to have you up here as well. The work that an AYC is doing is remarkable. So hello everyone I'm Lisa Guernsey I'm the deputy director for education policy at New America and director also of learning technologies project. I've been filling in for Laura who I think actually probably already went to check on her little babe as she's been on maternity leave and it's been a thrill to be able to work with the entire early elementary team on these projects as Laura has been out.  I'm Emily workman as a consultant here at New America with us. I want to take a quick minute to say a big thank you to Abby Lieberman who in addition to doing that video has basically orchestrated this entire event and just Abby thank you for all of your work on this. So as Sarah me described we've been pulling together ideas that came out of a convening that Bellwether and New America held back in September and that's what you find distilled in this report that's in your hands today. Emily is now going to take us through some of the key findings from that report that will lead us into the panel discussion that I know we're all anxious to have as well. So thanks again Emily for being part of this little. Thank you. Good morning everyone. So I'm going to make this pretty quick because we do have some excellent panels coming up and you have the report in your hands but we're just going to briefly go through what's included in the report and what we got out of that great meeting back in September. So we explore a number of questions throughout the report and central to the entire discussion that we had at the event and that we we've through the entire report is to think about and be sure to make clear is that this is not just about encouraging teachers to get bachelor's degrees there is it is going to be a waste of time to the field and even more importantly to the teachers themselves if we're putting them through programs that are of not high quality that have not integrated all the knowledge and competencies that we know that they actually need in order to be effective in the classroom so we take a little bit of time in the report to explore that. From there we look at the current requirements of lead teachers and public pre-k programs right now. We question whether current degree programs are capable of effectively preparing teachers. Am I supposed to be changing the slide so I don't know how to work the machine I'm sorry. We look at who is in the current workforce and I'm pretty much going to skip over that slide because Rianne just did such a great job talking about that but this is a really unique workforce and they have unique needs and will not just be able to step into a typical bachelor's degree program and be successful. And then we talk about some of the strategies that we discussed at the event and like Laura mentioned and I think Lisa mentioned and Sarah mentioned we had a lot of strategies that we talked about and we had people on a wonderful panel that talked about really encouraging things that are happening within their institutions or across states and we're really looking for ways that we can learn from those to help other programs or institutions or state build those up so that they're accessible to more early childhood teachers right now. So based on research from the National Institute of Early Education Research from NEAR we see that already 35 of the 59 public pre-k programs across the country are already requiring that pre-k teachers have a bachelor's degree. However when you drill down a little bit further we do find that only 17 of those programs require that the bachelor's degree has a specialization specifically in either early childhood education, child development or preschool special education. When it comes to the impact of the bachelor's degree there's no question that there is still a lot to learn just as there is in K-12 where questions remain about the association between a college degree and the effectiveness of that teacher but what we do know by looking at the research that is included in the report it is moving in a positive direction and there is an association between higher education and teaching quality. What we feel we need to know now is what level of impact with bachelor's with a specialization in early childhood actually has and how to define what that specialization really needs to be and how to incorporate that into programs. Participants at the meeting also suggested that bachelor's sorry that bachelor's degrees can serve to professionalize the workforce and we would hope that that would lead to increased pay and improved working conditions and opportunities for early childhood educators to move on to hire paying jobs if that's what it needed to be. Many, many questions remain about teacher licensure. We touched on those in the report but there we could have written an entire additional report on that. But what we do know is that when pre-K teachers work in public schools or our employees of public school districts they typically do obtain a state teacher licensure and state licenses can be seen as a way to ensure that teachers pass certain benchmarks or demonstrated certain competencies but we also know in the current form that they are that they produce even more barriers to a lot of the teachers who were hoping are going to be able to move forward and gain more training. So as I said I'm going to pretty much skip over this. We spend a little bit of time talking about who this really unique workforce is because they do have needs that need to be met in order to help them be successful as they pursue higher education. So from that I will just dive in very, very briefly into the strategies. We're going to have so many people talking about some of the promising things taking place that I'm just going to provide a couple of examples that we touched on. So the first one is to improve access and completion of these degrees. A big one that's been mentioned already is that advising services has to be a main part of these programs. These students need to be advised on anything from just how to navigate higher education and course selection and transferability but also just personal supports on how to access a computer or how to find childcare, get transportation to and from classes. There also needs to be flexible scheduling and we'll mention it in a minute, but online degrees in the same way they both provide a flexibility that's really important for teachers who need to remain in the classroom and continue to get paid. We are not talking about 19 year olds who are going to go into a bachelor's degree program, many of whom make that their full-time job. And then finally creating stackable credentials and articulation agreements. It's so important that we have smooth pathways where students aren't going to get stalled at one place or another where they can stack credentials on top of one another and also be able to articulate courses from one institution into another. Building on non-traditional instructional methods, again this is ways to just help students speed up degree to completion and also access those programs in a way that works with their schedules. So this includes competency based models that allow them to show mastery and coursework without having to sit for X hours in a seat or online education models that allow them to either take courses in their own time or at least be completing coursework in off hours on evenings and weekends. Financing is a huge one. Again the new report that just came out I think we're going to get a lot of really great ideas from that. We do know now that teacher scholarships are in more than 20 states and these scholarships are really effective with a lot of students and they're able to not only cover pretty much all of the costs that are associated but also do provide a lot of those wraparound services and supports. There are other financing models out there both at the federal, state and local level but research has shown that a lot of those do not cover even the large majority of the costs that are actually associated with those programs and so even with that funding a lot of these programs are out of reach for a lot of these students. And finally we're seeing promising new practices with philanthropies supporting early childhood education. We heard a little bit about the Tulsa Oklahoma example on the great video. So we spent a lot of attention focusing on improving access and completion to these programs but all of those discussions and all of those efforts will be in vain if we don't also talk about improving the quality of higher education of the programs themselves. So we know that courses and programs themselves really need to be built upon these knowledge and competencies that we know that teachers need and that coursework itself needs to be rooted in research to inform the students and have them really truly prepared to move into a classroom at the end. There are job embedded approaches that have been shown to be extremely promising and also allow for students to continue working and to be paid. Some of them are able to do this in the classrooms that they're currently in and we need to see a lot more of that so that teachers can remain where they are and get the training that they need. Other times they can and that would be more through an apprenticeship model and then other times they can join a residency program that both of which provide a lot of mentorship and support in addition to the coursework and working in the classroom the entire time. And finally there were some discussions about using observation tools perhaps not class but something somewhat related to that that could be used to both improve the quality of teaching and also identifying really high quality mentors that can work with these students. And finally we focused mainly on how to support the current workforce but it is essential that we recruit up encomers and high school students and show them that early childhood education really is a worthy field to join. And a couple of ways that some schools are already doing this is embedding entire CDA programs into a high school curricula so that when students graduate not only have they received excellent high quality training that could prepare them for moving into higher education and continuing to get higher degrees but they also leave with the child development associate that they can use in order to get a job the second that they leave high school and that's that's a really meaningful thing. And then also dual enrollment programs that students can enroll in that means that they can actually be taking courses at a community college start to gain credits towards higher education and just gain a lot of confidence in their ability to complete courses and matriculate into a higher education school. So I ran through that but with that I'm going to turn it back over to Lisa who's going to talk a little bit about the future research that we need. Thanks Emily. So really quickly then we're just going to point out that in addition to all of these great ideas that we are seeing emerging from localities and other institutions there's just still a lot of work to be done which is why I'm so glad this is a full room because we're going to need all of us on this project. The first that becomes kind of plain as you start looking at the report and what we've been talking about is that we've got to start thinking about strategies more strategies to improve quality bachelor's degree programs and teacher preparation programs for pre-K teachers. The second is that we need more sophisticated approaches for defining early childhood specialization and what that really means when we're talking about bachelor's degrees and we're adding that into the requirement for bachelor's degrees for lead pre-K teachers. The third our entire field needs a deeper understanding of the implications of teacher licensure but absolutely the policy makers in states who have their kind of finger on the levers that can change the way our teacher licenses are designed they will need to be looking much more closely at what's happening and our research institutions could help by looking more closely at what it means to have different licenses what are the barriers and what are the opportunities. There needs to be a lot more reflection now on how to motivate higher ed in this entire endeavor. What is going to allow higher education institutions to get excited about this prospect to feel motivated to change as many of our colleagues in our high education team know changing higher education institutions is an incredibly difficult project and many of them are some of the least or the most resistant to change. We need strategies for recruiting and retaining the next generation of pre-K teachers as Emily pointed out in the last strategy and lastly we need to be continuing the push for improving compensation and workplace quality for pre-K teachers because without that a lot of this is for naught. So with that we will stop talking and I'm going to introduce our amazing moderator for our panel. So what we're going to do now is move into a discussion with many of the leaders in the field who have been figuring out how to how to solve some of these problems and many of you who may have seen the New York Times magazine several weeks ago may have delighted as I did to find that the entire issue not the entire issue but certainly the cover story was all about this issue all about what it takes to be a pre-K teacher. The story was your child's preschool teachers may be the most important educators she'll ever have so why did they get paid the least. It was written by Jeanine Interlandi and I'm so thrilled Jeanine is here today to moderate this panel. She's that a journalist who has worked across many different publications in addition to working for the New York Times writing for the New York Times written for the Pacific Standard and Wired magazine and also is at consumer reports as an investigative health reporter. So I just want to say thanks to Jeanine and coming up and she'll introduce the panel. So I'm at home as a journalist right now because everyone in this room knows much more than I do about the topic and I swear I'm not texting my friends I'm all my notes are on here. Okay so I will start by introducing the panelists. Shania Koch is a policy analyst with the education policy program at New America. She was a member of the early and elementary education team and now works on learning technology project. Kathy Glazer joined the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation a non-partisan public private venture as president in January of 2012. Under her leadership the foundation promotes innovative initiatives and public private partnerships to ensure that Virginia's children enter kindergarten healthy and ready to succeed in school the workforce in life. Marnie Kaplan is a senior analyst on the policy and thought leadership team at the Bellwether Education Partners where her work mainly focuses on early childhood education. Prior to joining Bellwether Marnie worked as a policy analyst for a network of charter schools program manager at the District of Columbia Public Schools and a stonely emerging leaders fellow at the Education Law Center in Philadelphia. And lastly Sue Russell is currently executive director of the Teach Early Childhood National Center which helps states implement effective workforce strategies to create education compensation and career pathways for their early care and education workforce. Sue has over 45 years of experience in the early childhood profession most recently as the president and CEO of Child Care Services Association. Welcome everybody. Sorry my phone keeps ringing. So I want to start with a broad stroke question from the outside of someone who doesn't cover education regularly and is a bit new to this issue. It seems like there's more and more media coverage of this more and more lay people who are not experts in this area paying attention to it, talking about it, arguing about it. And what I want to know is from your perspective are we at a tipping point in terms of general awareness and actually forcing change on the system? It seems like this won't surprise you guys but we've been talking forever about the need to pay early childhood educators for money. This is not a new story but it seems newly urgent now and I'm wondering if that's just my perception or if you guys would agree with that. And if anybody wants to kind of feel free to elaborate. OK. So I've been doing this a long time. I think I'm probably the senior member of this group. And so it's very different now than it has been for a long time. There's a lot more attention on what it means to be a highly qualified, early childhood educator. And there's a lot more conversation about the compensation issue. And your story and others really pointing out how complicated the job is and how little folks are paid and appreciated and what that means for kids. I was recently in Arkansas and they were reporting on a workforce study of teachers and they, which they did this because they had done two years of doing training and technical assistance in the classroom with a group of teachers, spent a lot of money and at the end there were no teachers. Because the turnover rate and then they decided they needed to do a workforce study kind of backwards and found that 50% of the teachers turn over and that they looked at infantile teachers and that their turnover rate was equally high. But in addition, they had done a depression scale on the infantile teachers and 40% of those teachers scored as depressed. So the fact that Arkansas and other states are doing that, paying attention to that, realizing that it is the workforce, we have to address it, I think is transformational. I think we're at that point. And so just one more broad stroke question and then we'll get into the nitty gritty of the report. Actually, two more. Following up on that, what do you think it is that's leading us to that that's led us to that tipping point? Like why is that happening now? Is it a matter that we finally have more research? Is it some other change in the demographics of our country? Or is it some other force? And then if we're there, what's it going to take to push us over into actual action? Where's the barrier? The main barrier? Yeah, follow on to it, too. And what she said earlier, I think that we are seeing a perfect storm. And I think that the conversation has been brewing mostly from my perspective, sort of as a result of the brain science and the research that's come out over really the last 20 years that's to motivate this conversation. And then also combined with the clear understanding of the implications for our workforce and our economy that start in early childhood. And I think those forces, in addition to the leadership and the vision of groups like New America and Bellwether and NAAC who sort of keep it on the table for discussion, I think it's really creating that tipping point that now is the time to act. That's right. OK, so let's get into the actual report that's out today. And I want to start with quality because I think that's, you know, to me, that was the thing that left out the most. And I think that's kind of where this conversation has to begin. You know, as the paper notes lists of pre-K teacher competencies remain aspirational. So they state what educators should know and do. It seems like we have a pretty good understanding and a general consensus on what the skill set needs to be. But knowing that skill set doesn't necessarily mean that teachers are being held to those standards or even that educational programs are being held to those standards to instill those competencies. It's funny because this is my first question and it was kind of the end of the previous talk. How do we motivate colleges to revamp or upgrade their programs and to add structural supports that are essential for this workforce? And I know that's a big question, but I'm very curious to know what you guys' thoughts are, even if it's a small component of it. I think to answer the first question about competencies, there are states and institutions that have sort of asked this question of like, what are the competencies that pre-K teachers need? And then sort of worked backwards to like revamp what's already happening. So at least in the report that I put out about community colleges, I think both Illinois and New Mexico came to mind because they actually have done the work to say, like, if you go through any New Mexico or Illinois institution, like, these are the 56 or 13 competencies that every educator needs to have. So I think at the state level, this conversation is happening. Some states are much more far along than others, but there is work being done to think about what is it that people in our workforce need to have? And then the higher ed is part of that conversation, but it is often very hard to sort of get all of those people together to come together to to have new competencies in Illinois. That was sort of funded through Race the Top Early Learning Challenge and then New Mexico. The work went on for almost like 30 years. So you see huge investments in terms of manpower. And so part of it is that I think in some states the conversation has only just started and they have to work backwards to see like, what do we have already in our state to like bring people together to make this a new reality? That makes sense. And I want to follow up real quick with, oh God. Yes, please. And then just adding to that in terms of measuring whether how you're delivering those competencies in the higher education program is changing classroom practice and impacting children. That work is actually very difficult and very hard and is not being done on a large scale. Individual programs in higher education who want to be leaders in the field are conducting their own independent research studies to see if the courses that they're teaching are effective in classing. So one of the programs that I highlighted in my report on online grade programs for pre-K teachers is Early IU, which has conducted several independent studies to see how their teachers are responding to, you know, hybrid programs or a specific course. And then they're helping other universities adopt those courses because they know they're proven to be effective in the way they're being delivered. And so that measuring that quality in higher ed and translating that into child's outcome is very difficult to do on a large scale. Third programs are doing it, but we need more institutions of higher ed to really work on that. That sounds super intractable because when you say that, I think of if you're implementing a change in real time, are you trying to measure it even within one calendar academic year so you can see changes in the same students because you have a different class every year, so that must make it even more complicated, right? It might just be that you had a totally different, you know, student body that year and that changed it as well. Yeah, I'd love to jump in on this because what we've found in our work is that with sufficient buying power, you can leverage change even in higher ed. And what I mean by that is when, like with teach, we're like a single entity that buys a lot of higher ed, right? And because of that, then you have the power to say, well, only if this, only if articulation, only if you address student teaching, only if. And what we find is that in most states there isn't sufficient money coming into higher ed and because it comes in in little pockets, nobody can drive the change we need. And by putting our money together, we have more power in terms of changing higher ed to meet the needs of our early childhood workforce. And it sounds like what you're saying is some of it needs to be a thought change. We need to think of ourselves as consumers of this higher education. That's right. Exactly. Kind of behold it, we're the buyers. Exactly. Interesting thought. And Marnie, I wanted to circle back to you and talk a little bit, hear a little bit about the role of community colleges in this. You know, not just in addressing the affordability and access challenges, which is what people normally associate community colleges with, but also the innovation and the quality thing because I think it seems to me like it would be easier to innovate in a smaller setting and also to kind of affect change in a smaller setting to respond. Yeah, I think that in some ways a misnomer, like we think community colleges can sort of be more nimble or more innovative. I think they're more responsive to the workforce. But a big finding of my paper is that the landscape that community colleges operate in, especially early childhood programs, it's very focused on performance. It's very focused on, are your students going to make more money afterwards? And so there's very little incentive for most early childhood programs in a community college to come up with some great new program because there's no funding for what they're doing. And there's not really that focus at the state level to say our early childhood program should be more responsive. Now, there are places where community colleges are much more innovative, but that's because something else is happening in that landscape. For example, in Florida, where community colleges now can offer a bachelor's degree. So they're just colleges. But something else in that landscape has to make it easy for the community college to sort of be more innovative. I do think community colleges are really responsive to workforce needs. So they're going to come up with a CDA that works in the field or they're gonna work with people in their placement, but they're not necessarily able to innovate to create like a new great program without really the funding or the focus at the state level or just again, as was referenced, there needs to be the money from the state level or the federal level to say, like this is really important. And right now there really isn't that much sort of focus on these programs that are viewed as kind of producing low wage workers. Did you call on to that? Yes. In Virginia, I've been working with some community colleges and universities who actually have been really very interested in creating smoother pathways for this workforce. So we're working on designing two plus two articulation agreements and really using redesigned professional standards to design the coursework in both the associate degree and then for those who wish to go on to a baccalaureate degree, a concentration in early childhood. We have dual enrollment programs. So kids coming out of high school can graduate with an associate degree and it's an applied degree so they're ready for the workforce as well as registered apprenticeships. So we've had a great deal of real enthusiasm. The higher education community has been extremely supportive. The deans of education have said, we've got some great teacher prep programs in Virginia but we really have a long way to go for the early childhood workforce. So there's been so much activity around that. The conundrum is their charge is to prepare students for well-paying jobs. And because this is not at least not in our lifetime, a reasonable wage, that really creates a really difficult position for those higher education institutions to be in because that's not fulfilling the mission that they're charged to do with state funds. So one of the questions I wanna ask you for someone who's working at the state level is what do you see as kind of the most obvious solution to that and what do you think about the role of the business community in addressing that because it seems like that might be one avenue for it? So our business community in Virginia has been really our best and most vocal champions on this issue and they see the early childhood workforce as the brain builders and so this is the workforce that is guiding our future workforce and they're really impacting so many children who will then go through our education system and into our workforce. So they're really important players. I think that this grappling with this really difficult question has led us to really thinking the apprenticeship concept is one worth exploring because it does hit on compensation as well as really understanding the unique characteristics of this workforce and really protecting the diversity of the workforce that's so important for the families, these children they'll be serving. I'm fascinated by the apprenticeship program and I looked at the one in Philadelphia as part of my reporting and I wanna circle back to that later so hold the additional thought on that. Another broad question I have is just, obviously one of the problems it seems like or one of the big challenges is there's such a patchwork of standards and requirements across the country and it's so hard to assess like who's kind of getting it right and who's not and just which options make the most sense to try to scale and I'm wondering if anyone can speak to this, what lessons we've extracted from states like Michigan and Wisconsin where the bachelor's degree is already a requirement?  Anyone? I'll come here, come on guys. Or just talk about something else that you're interested in. Well one thing that I would say is and I'm somewhat familiar with those programs but I think that it's important to put I think of sort of the concept around the bachelor's degree is a provocative one and it's almost like sort of the flag at the end of the golf, what do you call it? You know, the fairway. And so it's something to shoot for but you know you've got the sand traps and you know it's not a clear destination. Now let's go to goofy golf where not only do you have sand traps but you've got dragons who are like, it's you know we're putting an important but a somewhat disingenuous goal out there for a workforce that's already very strained and yet we're counting on them to strive for this goal. It's an important thing to reach for but we have to recognize first of all that this is a marathon not a sprint. We have to think about very intentional based work toward that and we have to think about the onus being on a degree as meaningless unless it really supports and demonstrates competencies and mastery. That's what we should be talking about and so we need to be figuring out rather than you know spitting back from Tennessee so I can talk about spitting matches but instead of you know like sort of butting heads over that we need to make sure that our professional development pathways are strong and they're completely focused on these competencies. Rhianne I loved what you said at the beginning. We've just got to make sure that these supports are there for these women by and large who are supporting our young children and it's really all about making sure that they have affordable access to these competency building courses that lead to degrees or certifications that can then speak very clearly and with great authenticity to the mastery that they've achieved. I think that's a perfect segue into the access and affordability issue which isn't, okay I'm gonna move on to that. So you know as the report points out majority of preschool teachers earn poverty level wages and the qualify for public assistance out of 137 college majors, the bachelor's in early education generates the lowest lifetime earnings which breaks my heart because I have a needs that's becoming studying to be a preschool teacher right now. That creates this vicious sort of cycle that's familiar to everyone in this room where you need a higher education to earn more but you need to earn more to be able to afford a higher education and to me that's really the crux of this whole thing. Rhianne I'm hoping you can talk a bit about what you learned about online degree programs and what some of the key pitfalls and potential is. Like what separates the good programs from the bad because from my perspective it seems like that's one of the potential avenues to kind of address that access and affordability issue. So I'll start a little bit, I'll start by talking about the online degree paper. So the paper was called When Degree Programs for Pre-K Teachers Go Online, Challenges and Opportunities and it was released out of New America in the fall and online degree programs I think intuitively I folks know that they can be more accessible and more flexible within the higher education system particularly for working professionals who have busy work lives and home lives, child care needs have trouble traveling to a higher education institution to take in-person classes and so the flexibility can really help mitigate some of those barriers that we see particularly with non-traditional students but there are also drawbacks that we found to online degree programs. A lot of these programs are sometimes being provided at a higher cost than in-person courses and programs and there are definite barriers for the field in terms of accessing up-to-date devices. It's really hard to write a paper on a mobile device. You need a computer and you need access to high-speed internet. So those were some of the barriers that programs didn't necessarily think about for our field and to be involved in an online program you as an individual need to be motivated and keep yourself on track because you don't have that in-person accountability and so those were some of the drawbacks but then the flexibility and access particularly for folks in rural communities who didn't have access to higher institutions of higher ed that was one of the benefits. And in general online degree programs do not help with completion rates for non-traditional students so that's another thing to keep in mind. And so as I talked about earlier there were some programs that we highlighted like Early Ed U Alliance who's conducting their own independent research studies of their courses and online degree programs you offer that scalability and so that's something that we looked at. So we talked a lot about the challenges and opportunities with those programs. Now to answer your quality question is very difficult to or actually virtually impossible to determine, yeah as you know, to determine quality. The databases that we have available for higher ed don't lend themselves to be able to link easily to outcomes data. And so one thing that our higher education team at New America's advocating for in the new Higher Education Act is getting being written right now is for something called a student level data network and you would be able to depersonalize this data and the data could be used to analyze program level data which we don't have right now to link to outcomes which is really what we wanna know when we talk about quality. And so right now we can't answer that question but hopefully we'll be able to advocate for that and get that data because we desperately need it. Important, yeah. One of the things that left out when I read your paper showing was this idea that when you do the online program there's a lot of obvious advantages but the disadvantages you don't get those supports and those are so crucial especially for low wage workers and for people who come from communities where not everybody's rushing off to college and you don't necessarily have that model and Sue that made me curious to hear more about your work. You know you do the teach program and the wages programs and I'm curious to get your perspective on not only I wanna hear about those programs and how they address the access and affordability questions but also can you talk about what you see from your experience as the most crucial supports needed for this workforce getting them through college? So I'll talk about teach because I think that's where we've had the biggest impact in terms of getting folks to college. So what teach does or teach scholarship does is it provides debt free college education using an array of comprehensive supports. Economic support, tuition fees, books, travel or access stipends, social support, a counselor, cheerleader, coach who's gonna help you get through it, compensation. At the end of every year that you finish so many credit hours you're gonna get a raise or a bonus. It requires employer buy-in and support which has been shown to actually be effective in a degree completion and it leverages higher ed. So it's got to all those components. The slide that was up earlier about who our workforce is, if you put next to that slide who college non-completers are, it's identical. But that's not who our folks are. Our folks may look like college non-completers but most of our folks on teach become college completers in terms of those who sign up and want to get a degree. And so about half of our teach population are women of color, about half of them have nobody in their family who's got a degree in anything. I was in, I'll just tell a little story because I think stories must say it all and you asked me what makes a difference. I was in Arkansas talking to a diverse group of stakeholders about teach and they were interested policy makers and community colleges and folks on the ground and legislators and so I was describing what teach is and there were a woman raised her hand to one of the, I thought, ask a question and I called on her to one of about four or five African-American women in this room of about 40 folks and she stood up and she said my name's Elizabeth and I'm a teach graduate and I said, you're a teach graduate. We don't have teach in Arkansas, tell me your story. And she said, well, I was a teacher and head start in Michigan and I earned my CDA and then I went on and got my associate and then I went on and got my bachelor's degree and she said, and then she went on and said, you know, all those things you talk about they're what made the difference. I couldn't have done it without paid release time. I had two kids at home. I couldn't have done it without the money because I couldn't pay for college. I always wanted to go to college but I couldn't have afforded the books or the tuition and she says, and my counselors I couldn't have done it without them because every time I got stuck they were there to help me. She said, I'm still friends with my counselors. I still Facebook my counselors after all those years. She then went on to say, and this gets to the heart of it really. She said, I got my bachelor's degree and then my husband and I split up and I had to come home to Arkansas with my two kids and I brought my two kids and my degree and that said it all to me because she said, I came to Arkansas they didn't know what to do with me. Here I am, I have a bachelor's degree in early childhood education and now she's at meetings like that talking about the power of education. I wanted to ask one follow up before we move on to diversity which was you just talked about employer buy-in and I want to hear a little bit more about it because I think that that part of it kind of goes to a lot of the issues that we're talking about. We don't often focus on that. So Elizabeth talked about that too. And she said, my employers were there 100% behind me figuring out how to give me the release time helping me make it successful. And that's what we try to have happen by requiring it. We get employers engaged in the education of their staff and together they figure it out. They're their cheerleaders, they're their supporters and in general sort of the science of engaging employers in higher ed not just in early childhood, that the science says get them involved and you're gonna have better success. And so that's always been a part of teach. I'm curious about that, like how you actually do it though. So they pay a little bit so they pay part of the cost of tuition. They have to figure out release time will help them pay for it but they have to do it. They have to figure out when and how and what works best to make sure that the classroom's covered and then they have to help pay for some of that compensation at the end every year. Okay, so I wanna ask more about that part of it when we come back and talk about the apprenticeship program but for right now I'm gonna move on to diversity. 40% of preschool teachers are non-white compared with just 18% of K through 12 teachers. 43% of whites in their late 20s have bachelor's degrees compared with just 23% of blacks and 19% of Hispanics. So this is one of the things that early childhood education has going for it is they are more diverse at a time when we talk a lot about diversity and we finally recognizing the importance of that in all areas of work life. What do we lose if we lose the current workforce and how do we balance supporting them with the need to recruit more people into the workforce? And I know it's again a really broad-stroll question but I want like everybody's thoughts on it because it's a huge problem and I think it's really important. I think we have, is this working? Yeah, okay. I think we have lessons to learn from the K-12 system. Right now in K-12 there is a push to work, to create teacher pipelines, diverse teacher pipelines to help, you know, diversify the field so it looks like the students that they teach because there's a lot of research that shows that I mean teachers of color make an impact particularly for students of color and students who aren't of color seeing them in that leadership role in the classroom and in addition to that, a teacher who, you know, has all the core knowledge and competencies and skills, they just can't, you know, be of color but those two things together really make an impact in children's lives and that's something that we can learn from the K-12 system, you know, as a cautionary tale to really think about intentionally how to create those supports for our current workforce and making sure that we don't, you know, push folks out of the field because we don't want to do that and then if you dig a layer deeper within the early ed field, yes, we are more diverse but there's a lot of stratification within the field and so really intentionally as a workforce thinking about how we can make sure that our teachers of color are, you know, getting into leadership roles, how are we pushing our assistant teachers to become lead teachers? What are some, are we letting them know about the teach program? Are we, you know, giving them that knowledge and support and emotional support, you know, that we need to get folks in those leadership roles in the classroom and I think that that's something that needs to be intentional. Something that, you know, everyone can do the program level if you're a center director, you can think about how you can do that in your own life but that also needs to be supported in the policy arena as well by thinking through how we can intentionally craft these pathways and this whole push for the bachelors in a way that's not boxing folks out. Yeah, I'm gonna go back to Elizabeth because when she went back to Arkansas, she went on to earn her master's degree and she now is teaching in a community college in her area and the reason I bring that up is because the disconnect exists in our higher ed system as well in terms of who's teaching there and we've been doing teach in North Carolina for many, many, many years and now we're seeing women of color in every role, everywhere in our state because they've had the opportunity to get that education so they're teaching in higher ed, they're leading programs, they're on boards and on advisory committees in our field, they're doing professional development, they're doing technical assistance. Because they have that degree that's given them that mobility and the knowledge and skills to do that extra work. I was gonna say I think a huge finding is definitely that at least looking at the higher ed landscape of early childhood programs like the faculty is overwhelmingly white and that's a problem because all of the students are of a diverse background and so that's really important is that we diversify who's teaching in these programs. I'd also say something that was very surprising is that we know that at least not necessarily in pre-K but in childcare more generally we have a lot of women immigrants who speak other languages and it was very surprising to find that very few community colleges have programs for students who are English language learners and so when we think about supports and how we can ensure that people make it through these programs that's really important and so in my paper I highlight states where the community colleges do actually have programs in other languages and that's been really important to take the workforce they already have and move them forward. So I think all conversations of diversity really have to look into this issue of what languages are people in the childcare field speaking and how can we continue to take those people and the skills they have and move them forward along the pipeline. We'll just double down, I'd love to learn more about some of those states that are doing that because in Virginia, even though we have state general funds to cover scholarships for this workforce and associate degree programs and then now they'll be able to move into the bachelor degree programs that are specific to early childhood when they roll out. But what we have found, especially in Northern Virginia where there's such a rich diversity of language and culture and you want to support those women who are serving children who reflect them. In the community colleges they have to pass English proficiency courses to take the early childhood courses. It's great that the state general fund dollars can cover the cost of those English proficiency courses but why did we really need to put them through that when if they could just take the courses in their own home language and be able to turn around and deliver that makes a lot of sense to me. So we're almost out of time and I have two more questions. I want to make sure we get a chance to talk about apprenticeships because I think it's something that came up in so much of my reporting. Lots of people excited about it, even people that hadn't participated in apprenticeship programs and it seems to me like to go back to that kind of chicken and egg conundrum of like how do you get the degree if you don't have more money and how do you get more money if you don't have the degree. Apprenticeships seem like a particularly good way to kind of address that because of the way that pay increases in the Philadelphia program are tied to like each milestone that you meet you get an immediate pay increase.  Do you have thoughts? Do you have concerns, enthusiasm, anything about apprenticeships? No. By the only one excited about apprenticeships. I mean, I can talk about it, not because we're an apprenticeship program but because Teach has done that. And so we see our workforce gaining 8% a year on Teach not because we require it but because we require some of it but some of it comes because they're gaining better. They're actually going up that ladder that mobility ladder because of that. And to go back to the earlier thing we were talking about with how do you get employer buy-in, the apprenticeship program in Philly, a lot of what you're saying actually reminds me of that because they get employer buy-in and the employers have to commit to paying a portion of the tuition and also to paying these wage increases. And what strikes me about that is kind of amazing is how do you convince them to pay more when they're already getting the students in there and they're making whatever profit they're making and they're doing it at the low, like how does that, what's the incentive for them I guess besides being good people and wanting to have better education. When they see the teacher becoming better because she's going to school and learning it and there's a position open in their center for that teacher to move from an assistant to a teacher to a lead teacher, that's part of it. The other part of it is retention and like for Teach there's a retention requirement. And so why wouldn't they do that if they get teachers who'll stay? The teachers stay because that employer is supporting them and the employer gets a teacher who stays because of that. And if it's been half the time recruiting teachers which is what you're doing all the time. That's right, exactly. And you have low wage. I'll speak to the enthusiastic side, guarded enthusiasm about apprenticeships because to me it solves a number of problems. So for example, we do have wonderful diversity in our current workforce. And so how do we help the incumbent workforce increase their competencies and therefore their compensation? And so it's sort of a great way for folks who are already in front of our classrooms to get this sort of on the job credit, on the job training with a mentor there in their own center as well as our state funded scholarships pay for their classroom training. They are earning not only the national, the registered apprenticeship credential but also credit bearing designations within our higher education system and the employer driven wage bump. It's to me, we have so many challenges and this may be specific to Virginia but it sounds like maybe not. That in terms of field work and practicum classroom experience, that's a really difficult thing for this workforce to have access to. And so in some ways it is, they're able to apply what they're learning every day right in their own, as they're working on the job they're being paid for this. And so for this really distinctive workforce to me there are a lot of ready solutions within the apprenticeship program. I understand it's not perfect. It's a little bit of a mind twist to go from something that seems more like for a trade to something for the early education workforce but we think that there are more solutions than there are problems to it. One of the challenging issues that we found just thus far in our journey is that it's really hard for the childcare employers to do to serve the role within the apprenticeship program. And so what we're doing now is working with our community colleges to see if they can actually be the sponsoring organizations for a cluster of childcare programs and support cohorts of students and apprentices. So to be continued. All the time we have it. So we're gonna open it up to questions now and but we have respondents first, right? Two respondents. Oh. Yeah, good afternoon. My name is Ralph Grafana and I'm with the Council of Chief State School Officers that my prior position was with the Maryland State Department of Education was an assistant state superintendent and ran a division of early childhood. And in 2005 and six, we brought in all of childcare into the Department of Education. And so that opened up a lot of questions about workforce because we had of course worked in the past with our pre kindergarten teachers being in publicly funded pre-K programs. And they were required to have a teacher certification in early childhood education. There was pre-K to three. And so that really was for us a bit of a challenge to bring enough of those through the higher ed system into the field so that we could expand our pre-kindergarten program. Now we have to look at this within the context of childcare of early childhood education birth to five. And there were basically three areas that we needed to address. Those that are working with children, infants and toddlers on the three. That was a shortage area that we haven't really addressed for many years. The second one was the status of being in the field. There was a problem about self-perception, a professional understanding of what they were doing in the field that needed to be addressed. And the third one was to create pathways for those that are already in the field and making sure that there are, is an infrastructure in place to get through that. So in 2012 with the race to the top gave us an opportunity to put some funding behind some infrastructure work. And so we had a task force which was a state superintendent's task force. And the people that we brought in were the typical stakeholders in the field. But we also made sure that those responsible for the approval of teacher education programs were co-chairing. That those that are working in special ed are co-chairing because this is a specialized field that has its own problems in terms of shortage, preschool special education, and then regular ed, especially childcare, pre-K and the whole issues related to that. And so we came up with a number of recommendations that were addressing the pathway issues in particular. So we had a number of deliverables, if you will, that came out of that work and that went over about three or four years. So we basically decided that career technology and education programs in high school were finishing up with the CDA credential. So that was one. So you could take a portable credential that would take you to anywhere in the country and even internationally for some kind of opportunities for those that finish with a high school degree. And of course it would articulate in the community college. We had already worked with an AA in teaching degree that without further review would articulate into a four-year program. That was very important because it was not only affordable to get your first two years in a community college, but then to be able to go in a four-year degree program finish with a bachelor's. And then we did similar things that Sue was talking about, scholarship programs, things like that that would be supports to those that are in the field to get them degrees either at the two-year or four-year colleges. On the status piece was a big breakthrough to call the folks that are working in childcare, childcare teachers. I think that was even just something as symbolic as this, really I think, put everybody on notice because this was something that the teaching profession per se and especially the unions and others would really object to. So that was that piece that I think helped the status situation. So in general, to the recommendations that were made today, I think they're right on target. I would not necessarily just pare it down to pre-K. I think this is a larger issue than birth to three. K to 12 has its own issues related to teacher education in elementary and secondary education. But my impression or experience has been that the pathway issues, if we can get at least that result at a state level, then at least an opportunity for somebody coming to high school, working in childcare, have a way to advance the credentials in some fashion and not being blocked along the way. So if we can just move those barriers up a bit with first step. Good afternoon, my name is Kelly Reiling. I work at Appletree Early Learning Public Charter School. So Abby invited me today to kind of share what we're doing here at Appletree and trying to solve some of those problems. So we're a network of 10 schools here in Washington, DC. We actually partner with the Teach Scholarship along with Trinity University. So our teaching assistants can earn their bachelor's degrees. Once they earn those bachelor's degrees, they can have the option to go directly into our residency program, as well as we recruit outside for our residency program. So it's a two year program where by the end of that year, our teachers earn their master's degree and certification. So although we know the master's degree is not necessarily required when we think about high quality, we really see it as a recruitment tactic and a way to bring in high quality teachers into our program. So not only are they taking coursework at night, we're also doing deliberate practice. Once a week, we have the privilege to have them early released from their schools and we practice for three hours with the curriculum. So one thing that we were, did not want to happen when partnering with an Institute for Higher Ed was having that disconnect of not knowing how to apply what they're learning in their classroom, into the classroom with their students. So they come, they learn from me and also our partner, which is really like graduate school for education. We're able to work with them, not only to develop the curriculum, but to practice using Every Child Ready, which is the curriculum that we use. We are a charter network, but we also have an Institute where our curriculum, Every Child Ready, we're really doing a research or practice model.  And so that's one way that we're able to kind of regulate the high quality piece of what we're doing. We've also partnered with the National Center for Teacher Residency, which we're really excited about. So through their consulting over this past two years, we'll be able to really be the first Early Childhood Preschool Pre-K focused residency program to hopefully help support and expand that in other places outside of Washington DC. And I'm here if you have any questions about the work that we're doing. Thank you so much. Okay, we're gonna open it up to questions. Over here, please. Oh. You're turning it up there. But how do you actually motivate your students to say, this is kind of better than being with the long run. And then that, what is that specific of, oh by the way you're running a low paid career for income, you earn, what do you do for money? You don't have to have to have a lot of money. Well, I mean, I think for many women in our field, college has always been a dream. I mean, if you really talk to folks and listen to them, it's not that they didn't want to go to college. They just never thought it was within their capacity to do it. They may not have felt that they didn't have the money. They weren't sure of their own ability. And so trying to give them the opportunity to see that one, they'll have all the economic and social supports they need. You know, release time isn't just for you to go to class. It's for you to take care of your kids or to study or whatever you need. If classes are at night, you get three hours off during the day. So that gives them that work-life balance and it makes that possible. When you talk about debt-free college education, think about what college costs now and how so many teachers in our K-12 system are saddled with years and years and years of debt. That's a motivator when they think I can get a college degree and walk away without paying a dime at the end. And then the hope of earning more money, they see that process go as they go along. So they see themselves doing it. They see themselves getting stronger and better at their work and they feel better about themselves. And also, one of the things that I think is most important is that they realize they already know a lot. They're already teaching in the field so they know something and they bring something. When they go to those first early childhood classes, they gain confidence because they know they know a lot and then they learn more. And so I think all those things are motivators. Yet the National Black Child Development Institute, we administer teach here in the District of Columbia. I just had just one point to add to us who has already said we do a lot of motivating and supporting people who want to get their degrees to continue their education. And we've done a video where we interviewed some current teach scholars and we call our scholarship recipient scholars. One of them, what she said was it's also about her community and her family, that her advancing herself helps her to support the young children in her classrooms but also makes her an example for her children and her fellow educators. And so she sees it as something that's extremely important, not only for herself in advancing her career, but also in being an example to her fellow educators and to her larger community. Good afternoon. My name is Glenn Hopkins. I run a center in Virginia as well as an early childhood learning institute which helps to prepare childcare educators for college degrees. Starbucks, whenever they want to pay more money to their staff or they want them to go to college, they move their $30 per cup coffee to $35 per cup. So my question to the panel is the money. We all support, I believe, greater education for our workers. We support all the notions that you put out but as a provider, which could very well be a private provider, family home provider, the question becomes how do you pay for it all? And it's not cheap. I love paying teachers more money. Can't afford it in this downward pressure because parents who need childcare can't afford to pay more like the $30, $35 Starbucks.  I just wanna say that was the last question on my list that we didn't have time for. I'm really glad you asked it. Start. And then I hope my compadres up here will help. And I saw you looking at me, Glenn, when you're asking those questions. And it's a really important question. And I would say that kind of the devil in the detail is that we're talking about better compensation for the workforce within a conversation about how do we drive funding and financing for early childhood development. So this is just one of a number of ingredients that are cost drivers toward financing the system. So I'm grateful that there's a huge national discussion about how do we make sure that there is appropriate financing for early childhood development. We're decades behind on that conversation and really need to be pushing forward on how do we get creative about better public dollars as well as how can employers in the private sector also contribute to this conversation. Because until we crack that nut, it's gonna be really difficult to talk about increased compensation. And I think back to your question, I mean, I think this sort of very practical discussion of this all kind of shakes down to these women working in the centers who have children of their own. And it's just, it's a big, big system resting on the shoulders of individuals that we're trying to place this responsibility on. I have conversation with our state leaders. I think it's amazing that their state general fund dollars going toward scholarships for these individuals, but it's not enough. Just making their preparation pathway free of charge isn't enough. That still, they still need incentives to actually do that. They need higher pay at the end of it. And we can't get there until we, in this country, figure out how to better finance early childhood development. And I wish I could give you a solution right now. Yeah, so the report that came out this week is really this National Academy Committee looking at how to address that.  And again, this is where I was kind of going earlier that I think for all of us to recognize that the conversations on the table, the perfect storm is now, got a lot of good brains in the room and a lot of good understanding that this is something that the United States needs to figure out how to finance for our children. And for all of us, for society. And so I think that this idea of this is a marathon, you know, we have to figure out how to very intentionally move toward that goal, recognizing it's not gonna be overnight. I think there are, you know, really long held values that sort of hold us back in this conversation. And we have to bring sectors together to figure out how can we get over some of the cultural divides that are, you know, kind of behind this question and really figure out how to move forward with it. It's, you know, again, it's really important to talk about a degree. And you know, the title of this conversation is about, you know, bachelor degrees for pre-K. But again, that's just that flag waving in the distance. And we have to recognize that to get there, there are a number of things that have to take place in between now and then. We need to continue having conversations like this and continue pushing on all of our thought leaders and political leaders at state, local, and federal level, as well as corporate champions, employers, large employers who have a lot at stake in terms of early childhood development. Pretty quick, I'm an early childhood advocate. I am struck by, I don't, I don't like to talk about it.  You know, this issue is a matter of working a person in public schools and higher education, early care education, but we never question compensation when it comes to K-12, because even our brothers and sisters that have been in it are now on strike. But they do have these things that are self-sufficient. I mean, $6,000, I've heard that a few times. Never knew anything about that. I don't, I don't know how, but I did, I constantly noted one about minorities that they need to be careful that the narrative that is self-paternized is and or with. That's fine. The other part is it's difficult to encourage people to go into a field where it's low wage and low status. And then larger than that, I think we have to talk about child outcomes because we can't, a bachelor's for what? I mean, we really have to promise that we're going to improve outcomes for children and particularly children of color and children from under-resourced communities. And I think, I think I would jump back to the report, the transforming report that came out this week on finance here last week on financing, is that one of the 10 recommendations was about the need to bring a laser-like focus on watching what are the outcomes. If we're really driving in this direction, what are we seeing in terms of child outcomes and are we really getting somewhere, are we getting the impact from the work that we're doing that we're anticipating? So I think always sort of keeping eye on the prize that we need to, this is a big topic, it's gonna be a long time in coming and we need to stop along the way and reflect and make sure that we're going in the right direction. And as we raise credentials, we need to monitor what is the makeup of the workforce now? How is it changing? What supports do we have in place that are helping specific demographics of teachers? Catering to those specific needs, whether they be linguistic or cultural or otherwise. We really need to make sure that we're not seeing, what is it, the force for the field or whatever. That saying, we really need to look at the big picture and really have targeted policies, I think. We have time for one more question. Do you wanna shout as well? So speaking of demographic makeup, can someone please talk about the role of gender and how recent changes might encourage more men to enter this profession? Good question. Are you one? Speaking of that. Thank you. Now in this field, it's for almost 50 years. The reason, if men were in this field, this compensation issue would have been handled a long time ago. And so the problem is that we are exploiting women in a low wage, low status industry. True story. Also, having come through the last six or eight months with Me Too and Times Up and all of that, we need to realize how negative women are often seen by many, not everybody, but enough. And when you're in a field that is as much, women is really talented, although I'm always pleased because I always test any group I'm in by race, age, and gender that more and more men come to these meetings. And it's partly because they're at New America or at Brookings. They're not in a nursery school. That's important. It's very important. And so it's extremely important to realize that early childhood is at the base of many things that we don't have any idea of. And that many people think that caring for children, young children, is babysitting. And I've seen comments in the last year into reports and things that say people get paid like babysitters because that's what they are. We know that's not true, but it's the amazing thing is that so many people still believe that women should stay at home and take care of the kids, and that children don't belong in groups and all of that. We've learned that there's a lot more to life than that. And I think that these kinds of organizations New America has become a major player in my life because it really is addressing these things and bringing these people from all over the country. So I'll keep it up. That's a perfect note to end on. Thank you to the wonderful panelists.