HRSA/MCHB 2005 FEDERAL/STATE PARTNERSHIP MEETING

PUBLIC HEALTH ACROSS THE LIFESPAN

Maryland : Sustaining a Successful Multi‑Agency State Partnership

ELIZABETH KELLY: Thank you, Bernadette. Thank you, Bonnie. It's a joy to be here this afternoon and to be able to tell you about a very unique experience we've had in Maryland. I'm also running this myself, so you're going to have to bear with me just a little bit.

We call the experience that we're going to be talking about and you're going to hear a lot of details about, The Maryland Leadership and Action Program. This is the cover of a wonderful document which was the out growth of about 18 months of work in Maryland.

In Maryland, we had always been hearing about the concern about the early years, about the importance of young children, about the importance of being concerned about the early years in young children; but we really never had a mechanism to be able to determine when our kids are ready for school, how will we know how many children in Maryland are ready for school.

Rolf, when he gets here, will be talking a little bit more about our Maryland Model For School Readiness, but it's the assessment instrument we use in Maryland to determine the readiness of children for school. We started using our Maryland Model For School Readiness into the 2001/2002 school year, and as you can look at this graph, you will notice that in 2001 we had only about 40% of our youngsters ready for school, that in school year 2004/2005 and we assessed kindergarten youngsters in the October of the kindergarten years, we had moved to 59% of children being ready for school, a 9% increase; and we were projecting by the year 2007 we would get to 75% of school‑readiness, recognizing that that still left over 25% of our children not ready for school.

And here's another graph that I think very carefully depicts school readiness as it has moved from 2001 to 2005 in Maryland. Notice we gauge youngsters in three different areas. They're fully ready for kindergarten. They're approaching readiness or they're developing readiness, and I think this is a very good illustration of the kind of data we had as we received an opportunity to participate in a very exciting opportunity in Maryland.

Why in Maryland? We had a Leadership in Action Program, and I think some of us may slip into saying LAP, and that's the euphemistic phrase we kept saying when we talk about our program. The long term is Leadership in Action. Sometimes we just refer to it as LAP. It's a leadership development program. It's a partnership in Maryland between Annie E. Casey, national foundation which is a national foundation but happens to be based in Baltimore, the Subcabinet for Children, Youth and Families; and the subcabinet is the child served, the secretaries of the child's serving agencies. And the Council for Excellence in Government here in DC.

It had two goals for young children. One was that it would accelerate the rate at which children enter school ready to succeed in Maryland and one of the reasons that we were prime opportunity for our partners was because we have the school readiness state and I think many of you probably come from states where you may not use the same kind of data we have. Rolf, when he gets here, who is really the architect of that assessment instrument can give you a lot of information. And we're one of the few states that have that opportunity to look at the readiness of youngsters around those three areas.

The leadership in action program was also emphasizing leadership development among middle managers who would be responsible for changing that indicator for young children.

Why in Maryland? Of course, Annie E. Casey was in Maryland and I think that helped. But we also had a history and a commitment of, concern about the status of young children, and we were concerned about early care and education over a number of years.

We had good data. We had the Maryland Model For School Readiness. We were already engaged in a spirited discussion with the National Governor's Association, who had provided us with some resources to look at ways to build political will and public will around investing in early childhood education. And, further, we had the Joint Committee for Children Youth and Families, which is a committee of the General Assembly in Maryland, that had directed the subcabinet to develop a strategic plan around school readiness for all of Maryland 's young children.

So that's the history of why we're here. The Leadership in Action Program started in December of 2001. I think I'm going to go back for that for a second. It was comprised of over 45 people from the public and private sector, from the state and local organizations, many of whom had previously worked in early childhood development. Many of whom were on the periphery of early childhood but we knew if we wanted to take a comprehensive approach to looking at school readiness, we needed a lot of new players at the table.

When we looked at the 49% of children entering school ready to learn we knew that we wanted to approach our work very systematically, very carefully, very collaboratively and very coordinated integrated way, because we knew that there were a lot of components to school readiness, rather than the old standby, which sometimes tended to be the cognitive development.

Since that time, and we're now four years young into our leadership in action program, and as my colleagues talk about some of the work we've done and our goals that are part of our leadership in action program, I think you'll realize that a tremendous amount of work really has been accomplished. Since that time we've seen improvements in the outcomes for young children. We've seen a 9% increase in the number of children ready for school. We've now replicated the process in two more areas, one in Baltimore City, which is the largest urban city in Maryland, through what we call BLAP, which is the Baltimore Leadership in Action Program, which is now housed in one of our local management boards. And then we, the partners, wanted to try the concept of a leadership in action program in a regional approach.

So we worked with Southern Maryland, and Southern Maryland is the Calvert, Saint Mary's and Charles Counties to see if regional approach with three counties working individually and together could impact and accelerate the rate of children entering school and ready to learn. We keep going back to our partners and inviting Casey to continue investing in our project because we think it's been successful. We think it's working, and we know there are 20 other jurisdictions in Maryland that haven't had an opportunity to participate in the Leadership in Action Program.

So in 2006 we anticipate that we will be able to start two more leadership in action programs. We're optimistic. Casey also has been using Maryland as its prototype as it rolls this out to be a national model. They've already started a Leadership in Action Program in San Antonio, Texas and interesting enough they're not using school readiness as the work they're trying to accelerate but rather economic self‑sufficiency. So the Leadership in Action Program for Maryland has been around school readiness, but it's really a model that can be applied to any indicator that a state organization, state agency or a state wishes to get involved with.

Right now the Leadership in Action has morphed into the Early Parent Education Committee of the Subcabinet, which has recently been renamed to the Children's Cabinet. It's chaired by the state superintendent of Maryland schools, Nancy Grasmic. We do ‑‑ we meet monthly. A lot of the work is conducted, goal groups.

Our 45 original members have now included and brought in about 15 new members, because as we looked around the table we knew that there were some players that weren't at the table that we needed to have there in order to accelerate our progress.

The focus of our work has been our five‑year action agenda. And that's the cover, I think, that was originally up here. It lists our progress. It lists all the players that were originally involved. It lists all of our goals. It lists all of the individual strategies and activities. And if any of you are interested in a copy of the action agenda, I know that you can get it on Ready At Five's website which is www.readyatfive.org and all you need to do is click the communities button on our home page. You have the slide presentation here today, but it's about a 26 page document. We are in the process of doing an updated progress report, which we hope to have available in about a month or so and that will show all the updated information. Practice he have so our action agenda has six goals. 25 strategies and 106 activities. We were very ambition. When we looked around the room we knew there would be a number of people able to carry out those activities. It was a very comprehensive approach. We were looking at all the indicators and all of the things that affect a child's development so that he or she will be ready for school. Our work is now done through the committees, through goal groups, executive committee and through everyone who does their workday in day out in their home communities and through numerous phone and e‑mail conversations. I think my colleagues at the table and I are in contact with one another every hour of everyday just about because the work we're doing through our own jobs is the same work that's moving and accelerating school readiness for young children.

So with that I think I'm going to revise things a little bit. Rolf is responsible for goal one I know he'll be joining us but if perhaps I could move in and talk to you a little bit about goal two and then we'll proceed and I think revolve will pick up at the end. And let me just get to that spot, if you'll bear with me just a minute.

When we developed the action agenda, we were trying to figure out a way that we would be able to capture all the important aspects of school readiness, that we would be able to break up our work into integral parts that would have focused work attributed to each of them. We asked the original 45 members to participate in goal group most closely aligned with their knowledge, their expertise and their home environments.

Since Ready At Five is really dedicated to improving school readiness, I've been very involved with goal number two, which is parents of young children will succeed in their role as a child's first teacher.

We had four strategies and 13 activities. Our work is really centered on ways to support parents and provide them with information, with resources and to conduct outreach, particularly to the hard to reach families. We've worked to expand the number of school readiness fairs held in communities, in public settings, in libraries, health departments, shopping malls and in schools.

We've developed an abundance of materials to help parents understand their role as first teacher and to give them tangible ways to help their children have the skills they need to be successful in school.

The content of all our materials is aligned with the Maryland Model For School Readiness, and the seven domains of learning, which are the components of the assessment instrument.

Support for parents has been provided in a number of ways. Some of it's written publications. Other is through hands‑on activity, school readiness activity boxes, through learning parties, which offer parent‑led or professional‑led interactive support groups for parents where activities and guides are given to them on things that they can do to increase their children's skills and knowledge for school.

We are focusing on early learning, early literacy initiatives in partnership with the network of Maryland public libraries, to provide reading support to parents through library story hours, through two federal funding streams in Maryland. We have some early reading first grants that have provided opportunities for parents, and we have a number of early learning opportunity grants that are available in Maryland. We've encouraged elementary schools to create ‑‑ to identify creative ways to reach parents and young children before they enter school by connecting with parents.

The early childhood community professionals and representatives of other community venues, the libraries, recreation, parks, health officers and home visiting programs.

Ready At Five and MSD, the State Department of Education has co‑developed its time for school which helped ease the transition from children in sending environments, head start programs or child care programs, into our public school settings, which are our pre-kindergarten or our kindergarten settings.

And we've encouraged families to become involved in their children's education by being involved with PTA and PTOs, by being involved with the policy council in head start programs, by working or participating in the parent leadership councils which are part of our parent information centers in Maryland.

Have we been successful? Yes. Do we still have more work to do? Yes. This slide shows some of the efforts that we've taken, which is to catalog what's happening in Maryland. It's just a peek at some of the wonderful things that are happening in Maryland. They show cooperation, collaboration; and yet we know we're not reaching all children. We have about 362,000 children in Maryland, birth to five. So that gives you an idea of how many children and how many families that we're trying to reach.

We have some examples of best practices. We have materials and tips that are essential to give to parents as first teachers. But we're struggling to reach those children, those parents who are not enrolled in programs. It's easier for us to reach parents if they're enrolled in a child care program, if their children are enrolled in a head start program, if they're participating in a Judy Center Program or home visiting program. But over half our children are not in a preschool program. So how do we find them? We're trying to use the churches. We're using health clinics. We're using the public libraries, anywhere we know that parents with young children might be availing themselves of some kind of services.

We know parents need the support of other parents. And we're trying to help the professional early childhood community recognize the vital importance parents play in making a network connection between the home and school.

And some of our lessons learned and some of our next steps: Is we know we need to link some of the initiatives that are happening in one program or in one jurisdiction for greater utility into other jurisdictions. Copy, replicate, modify. But if we know something is good, why not let it grow in other jurisdictions, to identify, to pilot and then to replicate targeted early childhood initiatives that we know have good outcomes for young children.

We need to find ways to address the family literacy issue of many of our non-English speaking parents, many of whom who are not literate in their home language and to help many of the parents who do not speak English to learn the English language, because we need to have them support their young children. And we need to help the early childhood professionals who don't speak another language but are serving children who are not speaking another language to be culturally and competent services to those children. We need to find ways to catalog what's going on so we can replicate and share the effective practices of what works and we need to continue to carry the message that the early years matter to reach the hard‑to‑reach populations.

Our work goes on to support families with young children, and I think you're going to be hearing now from Mary LaCasse, followed by Rosemary in terms of the work they're doing to support young children around issues of, Mary is going to do health and Rosemary is going to do accountability and hopefully we'll catch Rolf at the tail end. Thank you.