>>MS. TANNY CRANE: Good afternoon! It is great to hear this chatter. My name is
Tanny Crane. I'm the president and CEO of Crane Group, and like all of you, I am a
long-term advocate for early learning. I am delighted to see all of you there, and we
welcome you to the inaugural symposium on children, where our focus is bringing
top science-research scientists together here at OSU to....
there's some nice music here! I could sing to this as well!
(audience laughter) To bring the top researchers here to OSU to discuss the state of
research concerning preschool expansion. This event today is co-sponsored by the
Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, and by the City of Columbus.
It's a wonderful co-sponsorship. So thank you to the City of Columbus for that.
Today, pre-school expansion is on everyone's mind. Expansion policies are brought
forward by the federal level, the state level, and the local level, and we're hearing
about it from President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Governor
Kasich, and our own Mayor Coleman. And that is great. We feel momentum really rising.
Providing access to preschool for all children is absolutely critical, as we can
help kids prepare for success in education. By promoting school readiness, is also
important in closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children.
As we move to provide access to all children, we need to ensure that the policies that
we put in place work together. I'm really looking forward to today's presentations
and panel, as we can take this information back to our community. Thank you for
participating, and now it is my distinct privilege to introduce Dr. Laura Justice, who
has really been the heart and soul behind the symposium. Dr. Laura Justice is the
executive director for the Crane Center, as well as the executive director of the
Schoenbaum Center. She is also a Distinguished Professor here at The Ohio State
University's College of Education and Human Ecology.
Dr. Justice is an applied researcher who focuses her time and talent on identifying
effective intervention for children at risk. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Laura Justice. [applause]
>>DR. LAURA JUSTICE: This is so fun to have everybody here today. We have been
planning this event for a long time. Thank you Tanny Crane for really kicking off this
event today. Those of you who don't have the pleasure of knowing Tanny Crane,
she's one of our city's most amazing businesswomen, but she's also a really fierce
advocate of early childhood education. So to have someone in our city, who can really
is really just a bonus or all of us. I'd also just like to acknowledge the City
of Columbus, who's here today. Rhonda Johnson,
who is the education director for our city is here today, has partnered and helped
shape this event. This is, as was mentioned, the first annual symposium on children
and I'm really hopeful that we're all going to be back here in ten years.
That this, I mean that we'll be coming together between now and then [laughter] See you in a decade! [laughter]
But we really want to do this regularly. The original impetus
behind this was to really highlight, for me, to highlight at Ohio State the incredible
research that goes on in early childhood education and to provide a context to bring
people together at this university with these interests and so what we've done today
is brought two of the greatest minds who study child development and early childhood
education to our space to share with us what they're doing. We can learn from
our visiting experts but let's also think about mobilizing ourselves as a community
of researchers. I am thrilled at how many people are here today from our community
as well because when we think about early childhood, research is one
piece of the puzzle and the other two pieces are policy and practice and in this
room today we have all three sets of people represented. We have researchers, we have
practitioners and we have policy makers, and that's incredible. My job is to
let you know what today is going to look like. The first hour was to get you together,
let you make friends and re-visit with one another, have lunch. I'm glad you're all
here and have been sitting and spending time together. What I'm going to do now is
turn the floor over to two very well acknowledged researchers we brought to Columbus
today, I'll introduce them shortly. After their presentations, each one
will be about 45 or 50 minutes, we will take a break, and we have refreshments.
And then what we're going to do is reconvene for the second part of the event,
which I think is very very exciting. We have two distinguished lecturers, after the
break we're going to have a panel that represents the perspectives of research, practice
and policy. So we can really bring to bear, when we think about early childhood,
these differing perspectives. I'm going to start by introducing our two speakers today.
We're starting the day with Dr. Andy Mashburn, who is visiting us from Portland
State University. He's a faculty member in applied developmental psychology. Andy's
here because he has written some the most influential research papers on
what aspect of program quality contributes the most to kids learning within early childhood
education programs. Frankly he has a paper that he wrote in 2008, I'm happy to send
you a PDF if you write me, that really deeply influenced me and the work in the Crane Center.
You'll probably talk a little bit about that. So we have Andy Mashburn kicking
off the afternoon's distinguished lectures, followed by Dr. Hiro Yoshikawa from
New York University. And he's here today because he's doing some of the most
profound work, some of his work is set within Boston public schools pre-k expansion
and he and his team have been studying what happens when a city goes to
scale with pre-k. Does it actually benefit kids? And so he'll be walking us through some
of his work in that setting. Both of these I think you're going to find truly fascinating.
Our panelists today, who we'll meet after our break, are representing the
world of research as Dr. Stephanie Curenton an assistant professor with a heavy
hand in policy research from Rutgers State University. We also have Senator Peggy Lehner.
She's the senator for the 6th Ohio Senate District, which is not Columbus.
But we wanted Dr. Lehener (Senator Lehner) to be here, the Dr. Senator to be
here [laughter] because she chairs the education committee in our state senate.
So she really has her hands on the pulse of education in our legislature. Finally we have
Mr. Jack Fette, who is here to represent the perspective of practice and Jack is the
director of curriculum instruction with Olentangy Local Schools. And we went after
him to represent practice because Olentangy, number one it's huge, so he has
a perspective that governs a very large school district; it's seventh in the state.
He's very nearby but it's a very very successful district. And so when we think
about pre-k expansion, let's see what we can learn from districts that are doing pre-k
expansion and instruction, very well as it is. So let me turn this over first to Doctor
Andy Mashburn and get you set with your slides, and welcome Andy. [applause]