By Grace Lee, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’23
As we move out of the pandemic, more and more attention has been turned toward the funding and support of social programs. Under the American Families Plan, President Biden has advocated for creating a high-quality, universal pre-K program. On March 15, 2022, the Center for Child and Family Policy welcomed Dr. Margaret R. Burchinal, a professor at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia, to speak about her work on early childhood education. Burchinal’s talk, “Creating More Promising Preschool Programs: Implications of Preschool Quality and Fade-Out/Catch-Up,” was given as a part of the Early Childhood Initiative Series.
Burchinal began her talk by discussing a study of Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K program, whose controversial results sparked questions about the long-term efficacy of preschool programs. The study found that, while participants in the pre-K program saw initial increases in academic skills compared to non-attendees, participants performed comparatively worse in English, math, and science by the third grade. This phenomenon is known as the fade-out/catch-up effect: while participation in pre-K programs gives students a major academic boost prior to kindergarten entry, this boost disappears after the first few years of elementary school. Researchers found that this effect was especially strong with rote academic skills, where fade out of rote skills such as reading and math is greater than fade out of abstract skills such as language and executive function (EF) (e.g. planning, time management, self-control and organization skills). While some studies have found positive long-term results in terms of college graduation and professional achievement for pre-K attendees, studies collectively demonstrate a fade out of skills gained in preschool programs.
In the next part of her lecture, Burchinal discussed three studies addressing the causes of fade out/catch up, correlations between the proportion of pre-K attendees and classroom quality, and best practices that can promote outcomes with less fade out/catch up.
Why does the fade-out/catch-up effect occur?
To address this question, Burchinal discussed the UNC ELN Project, a study of a targeted pre-K program for low-income children in North Carolina. These students were assessed on academic achievement and language, EF skills, and social and self-regulation skills. Classroom quality was also assessed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), which assesses the quality of interactions between teacher and student. In the beginning of the kindergarten year, pre-K attendees scored substantially better on reading and math measures, but these gains faded by spring. Language and EF gains, however, were sustained. These results support the Trifecta Hypothesis, which states that fade out occurs because “pre-K teaches foundational skills that are not the primary focus of subsequent instruction," since the study found catch up in rote academic skills but sustained differences in EF and language skills.
Does the proportion of pre-K attendees affect classroom quality and peer interactions?
In the second portion of the lecture, Burchinal explored the effect on classroom quality of having a greater proportion of pre-K attendees in a class. As a part of the UVA ELN study, researchers studied schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, and found that a greater proportion of pre-K attendees was correlated with higher CLASS scores and more literacy and abstract instruction, indicating higher overall classroom quality. In classrooms with greater pre-K proportions, students saw gains in language skills but declines in frustration tolerance. These results imply that while classroom quality increased, the effects on student skills were largely a result of peer effects and not classroom quality differences. Researchers concluded that schools with more pre-K attendees tend to be more diverse, have higher classroom quality, and improve language skills of students through peer effects.
How can pre-K programs promote outcomes with less fade out/catch up?
As a part of the UNC ELN Project, researchers assessed the quality of teacher-child interactions and the amount of time spent in large group activities. They found that 35 percent of student time was spent in large group activities while only 4 percent was spent in high-quality interactions with teachers. Burchinal stressed that “the biggest predictor of gains in abstract skills was the proportion of time spent in large group activities,” where greater time spent was correlated with negative gains in language skills and inhibitory control. Researchers found that children who participated in quality interchanges with teachers showed greater gains in language. In terms of academic skills, the study found that gains in decoding skills were positively correlated with the amount of direct instruction received, and gains in math skills were correlated with less large group instruction.
Grace Lee
Collectively, these findings show that among pre-K attendees, thereis more fade out of rote skills than abstract skills, and these gains and fade-outs are correlated with CLASS scores, quality of language exchanges between teacher and student, and large group activities. In terms of best practices, Burchinal concluded that “teaching rote literacy and math skills in pre-K is inefficient and potentially harmful” and that teachers in pre-K should use this time to promote abstract skills instead. Classrooms should emphasize rich teacher-child interactions, limit large group activities, and promote positive, not punitive behavior management. While the U.S. has a long way to go before achieving high-quality, universal pre-K, these studies and future work can inform evidence-based practices that will help children grow and flourish both inside and outside the classroom.
Grace Lee is a junior majoring in Neuroscience (B.S.) with a certificate in Child Policy Research. She aspires to be a physician-researcher working at the intersection of medicine, policy, and research regarding the social determinants of health, with a focus on child and adolescent welfare.
By Sophie Hurewitz, Child Policy Research Certificate student ‘22
Newly published research examining adolescent stress during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests parents can play a key role in helping their children develop resilience in the face of community-wide threats or public health crises.
The focus of the study, led by Ann Skinner of Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy, was to investigate how the pandemic affected young adults’ mental health symptoms, as well as possible factors for mitigating pandemic-related anxiety and depression in those young adults.
Ann Skinner
Researchers analyzed data collected from adolescents and their parents between 2016 and 2020 in nine countries to assess associations among pandemic disruption and perceived increases in anxiety and depression in young adults and whether positivity, future-oriented thoughts, or parents’ psychological control during adolescence impact those relations.
“The goal,” Skinner says, “is to try to explore family relationships in different countries and cultures to find out what will help families cope and overcome hardship.”
Consistently across all nine countries, the data revealed a link between the pandemic disruption and increased levels of anxiety and depression among young adults (~ 20 years old). This finding supports prior research during the pandemic showing the young adult population is especially vulnerable. Researchers also found that the strength of this relationship between the pandemic disruption and perceived increases in feelings of anxiety and depression depended on three factors that were reported by the same subjects three years earlier during their adolescence (~17 years old).
For adolescents who had higher levels of future orientation (e.g., planning ahead vs. “jumping right in”; anticipation of future consequences) and higher levels of positivity (e.g., “I am satisfied with my life”; “I feel I have many things to be proud of”), the relation between disruption and feelings of anxiety and depression were not as strong. “This means their future oriented thinking and positivity during adolescence had a protective effect during the pandemic,” explains Skinner.
A more surprising finding was the role parents played in mitigating these negative impacts on young adults’ mental health symptoms. Additional analyses revealed that parents’ psychological control, which Skinner describes as “parents using techniques that limit children’s autonomy” during adolescence may serve as a protective factor against pandemic-related increases in anxiety and depression.
“It does seem like those things are counter-intuitive,” she states. “How can an adolescent whose parents have high levels of psychological control… also have taken steps to plan and think about their future and have goals for it?” Skinner admits they don’t have the answers yet, however she points to a Dutch study as one possible explanation. In the study of Dutch adolescents and their parents, the authors found that although youth reported an increase in rules set by parents during the pandemic and a temporary decrease in autonomy, most youth reported they felt these additional restrictions were legitimate and warranted. Skinner posits that parentally imposed pandemic restrictions may have provided a sense of emotional and physical security that young adults appreciated.
“We know that in addition to early childhood, adolescence is another period of rapid brain development. It is not surprising to find evidence that parents’ behavior during adolescence can be associated with outcomes in young adulthood, particularly regarding something as serious as the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Skinner. These results may inform parenting practices, prevention strategies against negative mental health outcomes from crises, and techniques to maintain healthy familial relationships.
“The findings suggest the importance of supportive family relationships not just during times of crisis but at all times, as these supportive relationships built over time can buffer the effects of stressful, disruptive experiences,” says Jennifer Lansford, also of the Center for Child and Family Policy and co-author of the study.
Jennifer Lansford
Researchers were surprised that these findings were consistent in all nine countries, regardless of the country’s infection rates, government response, and personal experiences of adolescents and parents. Skinner suggests that readers consider these findings in tandem with other papers addressing confidence in government, substance use, and parent-child relationship quality in the context of the pandemic.
This study appears in Social Sciences’ Special Issue: Parenting in the 21st Century.
Building on this latest research, Skinner and team, which currently includes Center affiliate Kenneth Dodge and Child Policy Research Certificate student Sierra Jones ’22, will continue to collect data from families every three months throughout 2022 and will continue to track perceptions of pandemic disruption and adjustment over time.
Sophie Hurewitz is a senior at Duke University majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Global Health and a certificate in Child Policy Research. She plans to become a developmental-behavioral pediatrician to combine her interests in health and education policy with clinical medicine and child and adolescent development.
By Sophia Bruton, Public Policy Undergraduate, '22
On February 18, 2022, the Center for Child and Family Policy hosted a Careers in Child and Family Policy event focused on positions within state and local governments, with guest speakers Kelly Andrews and Alena Antonowich. Both speakers discussed their education and career paths, followed by a question-answer session relating to their jobs’ impact and professional trajectories. This event is one in a series dedicated to helping Duke students at all levels learn about careers and professional opportunities relating to child and family policy. Through this exploration, students gain exposure to a wide variety of jobs, as well as build their network with those with similar professional interests.
Kelly Andrews is currently a program coordinator for the Durham County Criminal Justice Resource Center and a creator of the Durham Misdemeanor Diversion Program. Before her work here in North Carolina, Kelly did similar work aiding juvenile populations who had run-ins with the law in Florida. Kelly emphasized that she did not set out to do this work, but through mentors, exposure, and passion projects, she found herself in the impact-causing role she is in now. When asked about times in which she felt like her job was having a positive influence on child and family communities, she spoke about the Durham Misdemeanor Diversion Program. Specifically, she discussed the young adults and their parents that found access to resources like college counseling through the aid that her program provided: “Having people cry tears of joy about these kinds of things…it makes the whole process really rewarding.”
The great part about working for local and state governments doing this kind of work is that you can find a job that interests you almost anywhere.
Alena Antonowich
Alena Antonowich is a current MPP student at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, and a former analyst at the New York City Department of Education. Antonowich spoke about the bureaucracy and politics that surrounds a big city’s education system, and the importance of learning how to navigate it. For example, she said that in NYC, there is a civil service exam that you must take to be eligible for many city government positions. She said this can be challenging for those not familiar with the system but suggested reaching out to people working in state or local government to learn more about how a given system is organized and recruits staff. She also talked about the reward that came with the work she did, and how this type of rewarding work is not hard to find in government positions. Her advice to students was to find something that you are passionate about in this line of work, know where you want to live, and combine the two, saying, “The great part about working for local and state governments doing this kind of work is that you can find a job that interests you almost anywhere.”
This meeting provided students with one major takeaway: while there is no one path to professional success, government work provides a great avenue for those who want to impact policy. Neither speaker set out to work in government, but both have found that working in government gives them an opportunity to affect change from the inside, which they both view as the most direct route to positively impacting the lives of the children and families. This ability to make a real impact is what they both find rewarding about their work and fuels their dedication to the career paths they have chosen.
Sophia Bruton is a senior at Duke University majoring in Public Policy with a Psychology minor and a certificate in Markets and Management. She aspires to do work in the intersection of the private and public sector by using policy solutions to solve social problems and will be working as a public sector consultant next year.
Why do you want to do what you want to do with your life?
A recent panel of Legal Advocacy alumni offered listeners a different starting line as they begin their career search into the world of Child and Family Policy.
The value of a law degree in public service and advocacy work is undeniable. Yet, once in law school, it can be difficult to stay on a public interest path in light of more lucrative, "flashier" jobs. Our panelists shared that starting with your "why" is a critical guide for staying on course when facing such tension.
"Why do I want to do this? What things do I want to accomplish? Who do I want to serve, and how does this experience serve me in terms of my sense of humanity, my sense of being a person? I think those questions can helpfully gauge where you want to go and what you want to do," offered panelist Chavis Jones. Jones is 2020 Duke Law alumni, currently serving as Associate Counsel for the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Jones asserted that if students don't come to law school with a "why," law school will generously give them one they may not have bargained for. "One interesting thing about law school is that it can give you a why… if you follow the regular stream, you'll end up a corporate attorney working at a particular path, and you'll do a lot of things that don't necessarily jive with why you initially came to law school."
Panelists took turns empathizing with this familiar pressure. "The allure of big law firm money is there," said Peggy Nicholson, a lecturing fellow and supervising attorney for the Children's Law Clinic at Duke Law. Shajuti Hossain, a 2018 Duke Law alumni and associate at a public law group in San Francisco, shared in the appeal of corporate law opportunities to pay off student loans earlier.
Shajuti shared candidly about the difficulties of staying on a public interest track. Starting out with a desire to pursue environmental justice work, she found herself easily swept up in the wave of more corporate opportunities. "I did the interviews for all the big law firms," she shared. "I didn't get any of them. In those interviews, I did not really feel like myself. I did not feel interested in any of them. I felt like I was acting, and it wasn't going well."
But to Shajuti, the closed doors weren't rejection; they were course-correction. It brought about a homecoming, a re-centering. "It was a reminder for me to go back to my original goal in policy and social justice and civil rights…." Shajuti said with clear eyes.
"Why do I want to do this? What things do I want to accomplish? Who do I want to serve, and how does this experience serve me in terms of my sense of humanity, my sense of being a person? I think those questions can help gauge where you want to go and what you want to do."
Chavis Jones Duke Law '20
The three panelists talked about moments that brought them back to themselves and their own stories, experiences, and original intentions. They shared the importance of defining a sense of self and staying in touch with one’s passion. They spoke of the integral part such practices played when enduring the pressures of the systems around them. Those pressures would have easily shaped them into cookie-cutter corporate law graduates if left unchecked.
They spoke about how good it felt to find ways to be themselves, keep their unique shape, follow their unique passion, and contribute to the causes that move their hearts.
Chavis Jones spoke powerfully to the importance of appreciating one's uniqueness when determining career paths. "The world wants to box you in… and operate on one path. But so many of us have different aspects of our minds. I think it's very important that you key into that, so you're fully optimizing the different aspects of who you are."
Chavis himself has a background in theology and ethics and a Masters in Divinity from Harvard. To the untrained eye, one might not see the value his unique past and passion could bring to legal advocacy. Chavis disagrees. "Studying religion and social ethics for me gave me a lens through which I could do social justice work in a more critical way… it broadened the horizons of my concern." He encouraged listeners to consider their own background similarly.
While knowing your "why" and revisiting it regularly is a powerful guiding principle to staying the course for a career in public service, it is not hard to guess what many students follow up question was: If I forgo the big money jobs, how can I fund my education and make a living after graduation?
How will I afford my why?
Panelist Peggy Nicholson offered optimism and encouragement for financial concern. Nicholson knew from a young age that she desired a career in public service and highlighted the power of simple strategic financial planning. She encouraged listeners not to fret but to ask pointed questions, like "What kind of support does this law school offer for public interest lawyers?" Nicholson encouraged and assured listeners that resources are out there. It's just knowing where to look and pursuing programs that offer those supports. "I knew I was going to be in a position where I would be paying those back," Nicholson notes of her student loans. Now around a decade into public service work with children and education, she smiled when sharing, "It is possible." Nicholson urged. "The allure of big law firm money is there, but this work is so rewarding, and it is also possible to be strategic… the trade-off is worth it."
Megan Forbes is a first year Masters in Public Policy student studying Social Policy. She intends to pursue family advocacy work focused on equitable public health strategy.
February 8, 2022 -- A bipartisan report released today on the challenges and opportunities facing children in America stresses the need to rebalance national investments toward children.
The consensus report, “Rebalancing: Children First,” is released by the American Enterprise Institute–Brookings Institution Working Group on Childhood in the United States. More than three years in the making, the report lays out actionable, budget-neutral policies for a number of areas that will improve the life of American children. The report covers facts, research evidence and policy priorities in domains that are crucial to children’s well-being and future: household resources, family structure and stability, early development, health, education and the teenage years.
The working group found significant agreement across many proposals: increasing the generosity of the Earned Income Tax Credit — a proven pro-work and antipoverty program; making the Child Tax Credit available to households with no earnings; expanding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by 20 percent for families with children ages 5 and younger; supporting policies to strengthen and encourage marriage; and providing a broader system of support for child health and education. These budget-neutral proposals are paid for by redirecting resources away from programs benefitting wealthier adults, corporate welfare including agriculture subsidies and tax enforcement.
While not every working group member agrees with each policy proposal, each member has endorsed the report in its entirety and stands by the evidence-based recommendations potential to improve the well-being of children in the U.S.
Lisa Gennetian, Pritzker Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies at Duke Sanford and affiliate of the Center for Child and Family Policy, was one of the members of the working group and acknowledged the challenge of finding consensus in some areas, particularly because there is not always one way forward for supporting the success for each child.
“Empirical evidence that points in certain directions reflects a ‘typical or average’ child, but no one child is typical or average,” explains Gennetian. “This contributes to creative tensions around how policy supports successful pathways and how to prioritize those investments. For example, is it cash? Is it education and information campaigns? Is it home visiting or early education programs? Or rather, is it all of these things?”
“To further add to this complexity,” Gennetian points out, “children’s well-being is an accumulation of investments that start early and cascade as children grow and develop; this holistic view is hard to map onto to any one policy.”
Nevertheless, Gennetian lauds the group for finding areas of consensus where there is clear recommendations for action to be taken, especially actions that provide economic cushion to children in low-income households including making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable.
Led by the working group co-chairs Michael Strain, director of Economic Policy Studies at AEI, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, nonresident senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, the group includes Natasha Cabrera (University of Maryland), David Deming (Harvard University), Veronique de Rugy (George Mason University), Lisa Gennetian (Duke University), Ron Haskins (Brookings Institution), Dayna Bowen Matthew (George Washington University), Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill (Brookings Institution), Kosali Simon (Indiana University), Katharine Stevens (Center on Child and Family Policy), Ryan Streeter (AEI), James Sullivan (University of Notre Dame), and W. Bradford Wilcox (University of Virginia and AEI).
By Imani Hall, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’24
Children are born ready to learn. Their development is influenced by the experiences they have and the people who surround them. Education has the power to close gaps in opportunity, help students obtain knowledge to succeed, and improve the lives of young people. The Education Trust, a group of “fierce advocates for high academic achievement,” believes that all students deserve opportunities to learn and grow.
On January 20, 2022, the Center for Child and Family Policy hosted Denise Forte, Eric Duncan, and Lynn Jennings of The Education Trust (Ed Trust) as part of the Sulzberger Distinguished Lecture series. Forte, Duncan and Jennings discussed their advocacy efforts to help eliminate the systemic inequities in the U.S. education system in a discussion entitled, “The Power of Advocacy: Leveraging an Unprecedented Opportunity for Education Equity and Justice.”
Forte is the interim CEO of Ed Trust, where she advocates to close the equity gap for students of color and low-income families. She brings strategic leadership to the organization's efforts to engage policymakers and a diverse coalition of advocates in demanding and securing equity-advancing policy change at the national and state levels.
Imani Hall
Ed Trust is focused on advocating for students, working hard to make sure every policy, practice, and dollar spent is effective in doing what is right for them. Ed Trust upholds its mission in three ways:
Collaborating with educators, parents, students, policymakers, and civic and business leaders across the nation, helping them transform schools to be more student-centered
Analyzing data and research to help build broader understanding of the gaps in achievement and opportunity, as well as the steps needed to close them
Using data analyses in building cases to inform state and national policy to help students strive for and achieve excellence
Featured in this presentation, Eric Duncan, J.D., policy analyst for educator diversity, discussed Ed Trust’s advocacy efforts to help eliminate the systemic inequities in the U.S. education system and how data can be used to elevate and alleviate the issue of education diversity. According to Duncan, data shows that if a student of color has even one teacher of color during their school experience, it increases their chances of graduating and going to college. Using this data and research, Duncan examines if students of color have adequate access to teachers of the same race.
At the state level, North Carolina has shown commitment to increasing diversity of the education workforce; however, a sizable gap between teachers of color and students of color still exists. The data from North Carolina focuses on five areas of policy:
Making educator diversity data visible and actionable to stakeholders
Setting clear goals at the state and district level to increase student access to diverse educators
Investing in educator preparation programs to increase enrollment and improve the preparation of teachers of color
Targeting resources to districts and schools to support efforts to intentionally recruit and hire a diverse teaching workforce
Investing in efforts to retain teachers of color, including improving working conditions and providing opportunities for personal and professional growth for teachers of color
From the data transparency perspective, North Carolina has done fairly well. Data systems are accessible to stakeholders, which allows advocates to work alongside decision makers, policymakers, and practitioners. The transparency of the data illuminates the needs of the workforce, which ultimately helps increase educator diversity.
Unfortunately, North Carolina still has a ways to go in the other domains. The state has made efforts to diversify the workforce through investing in scholarship, loan forgiveness programs (which target educators of color and help them to build wealth), investments in other areas of preparation, and holding these programs accountable. By spotlighting North Carolina’s efforts and sharing this data transparency, Ed Trust hopes to advance these policy areas to show other states what they can and should be doing to improve student outcomes.
Lynn Jennings, Ph.D., senior director of national and state partnerships, provided insight into how to implement change from the data and research. According to Jennings, advocacy and partnerships go hand in hand by ensuring communities most impacted by policy change are part of the connection between policy, data, and people. With the ultimate goal of increasing education justice and equity in our education systems, Ed Trust is taking steps to move forward by supporting state and local partners by holding trainings for teachers, bringing them together from across the state to hear from them directly.
A portion of the presentation focused on the pandemic, which has impacted virtually every walk of life, bringing about unprecedented changes in education, causing unfinished learning and difficult transitions to virtual classes. The pandemic also led to difficulties in retaining teachers, exacerbating specific teacher shortages—especially those of color—due to burnout and lack of support.
The unsettling disturbances of the pandemic have left many families in turmoil, specifically low-income families and families of color. Schools serving Black and Latino students were nine months behind those serving white students and this has only gotten worse due to interrupted or unfinished learning. Overall, communities of color and low-income families are unequally impacted by the pandemic and are facing many inequities such as underfunded schools and technology barriers, etc.
Encouragingly, this is also an unprecedented time of opportunity for education. Instead of focusing on remediating students' learning, Forte says we should focus on accelerating it by using evidence-based policy (EBP). To instigate change at the local, state, and national levels, Ed Trust uses EBP to engage policymakers and diverse coalitions of advocates in demanding and securing policy change that advances equity. School systems have the infrastructure to invest in the development of their students—a felicitous use of that money would be to invest in technology-based learning, especially for students who have been underserved.
Critically, students' relationships with their teachers and other academic role models can greatly affect their success in school. Building and maintaining a strong connection between students and educators is crucial to success both inside and outside of the classroom.
As a neuroscience major, this approach aligns with my interest in the brain and how it adapts to experience over time. I am inspired by Ed Trust’s goals of advocating for students and the long-term impact that can have on people's lives. I couldn't agree more that children, who do not have a voice of their own in policy, should be advocated for; particularly children of color or those living in poverty. Ed Trust is committed to helping expand excellence and equity for students to improve educational outcomes across the nation, which is vital to sustaining our democracy and strengthening America.
Imani Hall is a sophomore at Duke University majoring in Neuroscience with a certificate in Child Policy Research. She aspires to become a developmental-behavioral pediatrician to help children and families at the intersection of clinical medicine and child development and health policies.
By Ainsley Buck, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’22
Everyone knows Sesame Street. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind the children’s television show, has harnessed this ubiquity to create powerful social change through an accessible platform. On Jan. 18, the Sanford School of Public Policy welcomed Jeanette Betancourt, who delivered the 2022 Crown Lecture in Ethics, “Equity and Inclusion on Sesame Street.”
Betancourt serves as the Senior Vice President for U.S. Social Impact at Sesame Workshop, where she leads both the design and implementation of Sesame Workshop’s community engagement initiatives.
Ainsley Buck
The 1960s was a decade characterized by tumult, passion and change. This historical context provided important momentum for the birth of Sesame Workshop in 1968, which boasted an ethos of equity and inclusion.
Sesame Workshop was one of the first programs to use television and entertainment as a means of education, particularly through outreach to marginalized communities. One of Sesame Workshop’s first partnerships was with Head Start, where they would physically bring TVs into Head Start centers so that enrolled children could access the program.
Sesame Workshop’s initiatives look slightly different now, but the overarching goal is the same: “to help all children grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.”
Betancourt provided attendees with a closer look at SSIC, which uses national and local partnerships to reach children, families and providers throughout the country. She describes the model as “parent and provider facing” but “through a child lens”, meaning that they deliver complicated concepts that caregivers need to know with simple, child-friendly messaging.
Coming Together, a recent racial justice initiative, aptly exemplifies this approach. This initiative is driven by “a vision of a world where all children can reach their full potential and humanity, and do so in celebration of their race, ethnicity, and culture and within the communities in which they live,” Betancourt described.
To ensure that this message transferred from the TV screen to the children’s lives outside of programming, Betancourt and her division implemented the ABCs of racial literacy:
A shared language: accurate, accessible vocabulary for identity
Being an upstander: understanding of how to respond to unkind, unjust behavior
Conversations and conflict resolution: learning how to navigate complicated concepts
Sesame Street has introduced multiple new Muppets from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to help in this initiative, including Elijah (Eli) and Wesley (Wes) Walker, a Black-identifying father and son. A conversation between Elmo, Eli and Wes explicitly addresses race, teaches scientifically accurate vocabulary, like melanin, and uses a metaphor of different colored leaves to make the concept of race more digestible to young children.
Elijah (Eli) and Wesley (Wes) Walker, a Black-identifying father and son
Their full conversation, titled “Explaining Race,” can be found here.
Critically, while the programming makes it clear that the Walkers’ race is an important part of their identity, it is not their whole identity. Through other media, we learn that Wes is a pre-K student who loves pretend play, movies, Halloween and architecture.
Elijah, fondly known as Eli the Weather Guy, is a meteorologist who loves exercising, movies and trying new vegan recipes. Creating these personalities helps children understand that, while race is visible and important, identity includes other aspects as well.
SSIC also places a large emphasis on addressing and coping with traumatic experiences. This is especially important today, as the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the effects of these experiences by interfering with and decreasing buffers, like preschool enrollment and school readiness.
Our oversized, yellow-feathered friend, Big Bird, models the “Big Feelings” that children might feel when experiencing trauma and teaches providers and caregivers strategies to respond and help children cope. SSIC develops and enlists the help of other Muppets to tackle more specific, potentially traumatic experiences, like foster care and addiction.
Currently, approximately 160,000 children under 6 years old are in foster care, and 5.7 million children in the U.S. under age 11 live with a parent who struggles with addiction.
In 2019, Sesame Street introduced Muppet Karli in areas with high addiction rates to help reduce stigma, shame and isolation that children and families may feel. These, and like programs, are built on public awareness, rather than public policy. This is because, as Betancourt expresses, “Policy is built from adult perspective, and we often lose the focus on young children.” SSIC’s programming strives to give children a voice in these complex issues.
Finally, in addition to its broader initiatives, Sesame Workshop rapidly creates programs in response to current circumstances. Caring for Each Other was launched with the onset of the pandemic and has a three-phased approach: the “new normal” (during the pandemic), transitioning back to typical life and long-term effects. These programs include prevention at the physical and social-emotional levels, with tools on handwashing, disease education and support for coping with worry, missing friends and more. The last stage, long-term effects, is still in progress and will address the national emergency in children’s mental health, which pediatric health experts declared in October of 2021.
I was struck by Sesame Workshop’s ability to weave initiatives seamlessly into their programming. While the policy world tends to be adult centric, this approach to policy through public awareness better includes children. While they may not be able to directly contribute, Sesame Workshop’s education and intervention methods allow children’s emotions, experiences and knowledge to be incorporated into policy development. As a Child Policy Research student, this aligns with my beliefs that children should be a priority in the policy sector.
Ainsley Buck is a senior undergraduate student studying Neuroscience (B.S.) and Child Policy Research. She intends to pursue a PhD in Child Clinical Psychology and is excited to integrate research, practice and policy in her future work.
By Olivia Bond, Master of Public Policy Candidate ‘22
On December 7, 2021, the Center for Child and Family Policy hosted Drs. Michael Maher and Jeni Corn as a part of its School Research Partnership event, The Road to Recovery in N.C. Public Schools: Comprehensive Planning, Strategic Investments, and Charting a Path Forward.
Drs. Maher and Corn lead the Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration (OLR), a new office established in March 2020 within the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) to address the widespread learning loss and achievement disparities caused or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The office specifically seeks to support public school units (PSUs) through research and evidence-based decisions in addressing persistent challenges facing the public education system. In their address, Drs. Maher and Corn outlined the office’s purpose and created a unique opportunity for open communication between NCDPI representatives and the academic research community.
The OLR has thus far pursued two main types of activities: learning recovery, and research and evaluation. Its learning recovery efforts have included three formal programs: a school extension program, offered in the summer of 2021; a summer bridge program, to be offered in the summer of 2022; and a career accelerator program, also to be offered in the summer of 2022. All three programs provide learners the chance to regain instructional time and enrichment opportunities that were lost over the course of the pandemic.
Olivia Bond
OLR’s research and evaluation function has sought to identify promising practices used by districts throughout the state that could be scaled to assist a wider swath of PSUs. Further, members of the OLR have worked in conjunction with a team from SAS to conduct a lost instruction time impact analysis. In addition, the office has recently issued a call for proposals to conduct a three-year longitudinal analysis of existing learning recovery extension programs. Dr. Corn also highlighted OLR’s extensive draft research and evaluation plan that ultimately aims to get, “the best and most rigorous data into the hands of the people making decisions for students and teachers in North Carolina.”
Funding for OLR endeavors has largely originated from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) III funds as a part of the American Rescue Plan Act. Of the $320 million distributed to the state of North Carolina, $72 million has been allocated to enrichment programs and programs addressing learning loss.
This presentation offered a unique opportunity for academic researchers to learn about the role and goals of the OLR and for discussion around the potential for data sharing, prospective research projects, and relevant job openings that members of the academic community would be well-suited to fill. Because OLR is a new and relatively small office, getting input and ideas for collaboration from academics could exponentially increase the office’s impact on PSUs in North Carolina. Also, because one of the office’s core principles is making evidence-based decisions, crafting partnerships with academics who have the capacity and interest to produce that evidence could help the office execute its mission. As learning recovery will assuredly remain a priority for public schools in the coming years, efforts to foster strategic partnerships, such as those discussed during this event, should continue.
By Ainsley Buck, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’22
Depression is one of the most prominent psychiatric conditions today, affecting approximately one in three adults in the United States (Ettman et al., 2021). During the pandemic, mental health conditions have become so common that this statistic may not seem surprising. But something major is missing from the statistic: children.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is not exclusive to adolescence and adulthood: it can occur in early childhood, too. On November 10, 2021, Dr. Michael S. Gaffrey joined the Center for Child and Family Policy for his Early Childhood Initiative lecture. This initiative aims to convene scholars whose work focuses on optimizing outcomes for all children. Gaffrey is currently the primary investigator of the Duke Early Experience and the Developing Brain Lab (DEED), where he employs behavioral and neuroimaging methods to study neurobiological underpinnings of risk and resilience in early childhood. Gaffrey strives to integrate research, policy, and practice in the early childhood mental health sphere and believes that this style of collaboration will help maximize the potential of all children.
Gaffrey’s talk, “Early Childhood Depression: What We Know and Where We Are Going,” highlights how MDD manifests itself in early childhood, as well as interventions on both the brain and behavior level. Perhaps most importantly, experience of early childhood depression is associated with depression later in life and, consequently, with greater burden of illness. Simply put, this is because early life experiences become embedded in our brain architecture. Anything that disrupts normative processes has downstream effects. Thus, knowledge of MDD’s appearance in children allows us to better identify and, subsequently intervene upon, early childhood depression, increasing the chances of positive outcomes later in life.
What are the signs?
While MDD in adolescents and adults is characterized by significant sadness, children more often display frequent irritability. Other typical signs (for example, anhedonia [the inability to feel pleasure], changes in weight and sleep, fatigue, etc.) look similar to adults in early childhood depression. Children suffering from depression also often experience impairment in functionality and development.
What can we target?
Gaffrey found that experience of positive and negative affect is associated with different developmental trajectories. Specifically, functional connectivity, or how different brain regions communicate with each other, affects the frequency with which a child feels positive or negative. Gaffrey used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine the relationships between levels of regional brain activity and experiences of preschool depression. fMRIs track blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals, which reflect changes in blood flow throughout the brain and thus indicate regions of activity and inactivity.
The amygdala, often referred to colloquially as the brain’s emotion center, is known to activate in response to facial expressions. In Gaffrey’s study, preschool-aged children were shown happy, neutral, sad, and fearful facial expressions, and researchers tracked amygdala reactivity as a measure of emotion regulation. Across all emotions, children with depression showed increased amygdala activity in the right hemisphere of their brains. This means that children with depression felt stronger emotion toward these faces than their healthy counterparts.
Gaffrey then examined the connectivity between the amygdala and the rest of the brain and emotion regulation. In doing so, he found that the more the amygdala communicated with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a subregion of the frontal lobe, the better emotion regulation was. We can think of the mPFC as our regulation center, which becomes stronger as we learn to control our feelings. Putting those findings together, Gaffrey ran a mediation model where he determined that amygdala-mPFC connectivity mediates the relationship between emotion regulation and experience of negative affect. In other words, the amount that the emotion center communicates with the regulation center affects experiences of negativity.
How do we intervene?
While interventions are constantly evolving, they generally focus on developing skills to regulate emotions. One prominent example is Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, which aims to diminish negative experiences by equipping the child with the skills needed to tackle those emotions.
As mentioned above, early experiences become embedded in our brain architecture. But this also means that our brains are still malleable in early years, so there is ample opportunity for intervention. Using Gaffrey’s findings, we can work to decrease risk for early childhood depression by employing interventions that target communication between the emotion center (amygdala) and regulation center (mPFC) of the brain.
Ainsley Buck is a senior undergraduate student studying Neuroscience (B.S.) and Child Policy Research. She intends to pursue a PhD in Child Clinical Psychology and is excited to integrate research, practice, and policy in her future work.
By Grace O'Connor, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’22
A new study co-authored by Ann Skinner looks at how the relation between COVID-related personal disruptions as reported by mothers and young adult children was associated with increased anxiety, depression and aggression experienced by both. Positive, healthy relationships between the two, though, moderated some of the effects of these disruptions.
More open communication from the young adults, supportive parenting, and less conflicts ending without positive resolution between mother and young adult protected mental health and aided the adjustment of both young adults and mothers.
“Family relationships built on trust, acceptance, openness, warmth, and positive conflict resolution –not avoiding conflict but resolving it in a positive way— can help families be more resilient during a public health crisis,” says Skinner, lead researcher of the study. “The family… help[ed] to shield young adults and mothers from some of the more worrisome aspects of functioning [during the pandemic].”
The study, recently published in a special issue of Developmental Psychology, surveyed participants as part of a larger, nine-country longitudinal study of parenting and child development. Data came from families in five of the nine countries: the U.S., Italy, Sweden, the Philippines, and Thailand. Mothers and youth completed evaluations shortly after March of 2020, when countries had varying COVID-19 death rates and responses to the disease. Although not a representative sample of each country, this diversity of families demonstrates how the results transcend U.S. and Western contexts and families, varying death rates from the pandemic, and different national responses to the pandemic.
Unlike many parenting studies, which look at the parent-child relationship when the child is young, this study highlighted the relationship between young adults and their parent. Pre-pandemic relationship evaluations occurred when children were 17 years old, and youth were 20 years old at evaluations during the pandemic. The results of this study, claims Skinner, emphasize the need to continue to research development and the parent-child relationship late into adolescence due to continued impact on both parent and child.
Results from the study inform best practices for clinical practice and for prevention against negative mental health outcomes from crises. Building and maintaining strong, healthy relationships within families are key to supporting individuals with personal disruptions in their life.
Mental health treatment ought to “take more of a ‘family systems’ approach rather than the individual deficit model [often used today,]” says Skinner. The relationships within a family can also act as a protectant against negative mental health impacts due to crises in one’s life.
Inevitably, disasters and pandemics will continue to occur across the world. Families need “proactive and preventative” interventions and supportive parenting to build familial resilience for those crises.
Grace O'Connor is a senior at Duke University seeking a Program II degree in Child Rights, Policy and Development. Grace worked as a research assistant for the Center for Child and Family Policy during summer 2021.
By Ainsley Buck, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’22
Prior to the pandemic, wealth and income inequality reached a record high. COVID-19 only widened these gaps, resulting in the most racially stratified economy that the United States has ever faced. While they are peaking now, these disparities are far from new. Over the last generation, the systematic devaluation of labor has resulted in flattening wages, which has disproportionately impacted people of color due to their overrepresentation in the labor workforce. The “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, deeply embedded in U.S. culture, suggests that laborers’ financial struggles are a choice, disguising the fact that “people are working, the economy is not” (Natalie Foster).
On November 9, 2021, Natalie Foster, co-chair and co-founder of the Economic Security Project, and Dr. Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, tackled the topic, “What Happens When You Give People Money: The Future of Economic Security for Children and Families,” as part of the Center for Child and Family Policy’s Sulzberger Distinguished Lecture Series.
Foster founded the Economic Security Project in 2016 in response to the labor devaluation and resulting stratification described above, with the goal of ameliorating economic instability. Dr. Nyandoro launched Magnolia Mother’s Trust in 2018, which currently boasts the title of longest-running cash support initiative in the country. Magnolia Mother’s Trust directly targets racial disparities by focusing on low-income Black women, whose needs have been especially dismissed in our history.
Ainsley BuckBoth the Economic Security Project and Magnolia Mother’s Trust advocate for guaranteed incomes, which ensure that eligible people receive money on a regular basis. As Nyandoro expresses, “needs are individual, the cash is ubiquitous.” Cash has built-in flexibility, allowing families to cover whatever they deem to be their most urgent needs, immediately decreases experiences of poverty and food insecurity, and reduces stress levels. Pilot programs have long demonstrated that guaranteed incomes are an effective way to pull people out of poverty and provide economic security. Dr. Nyandoro replicated these results with women enrolled in Magnolia Mother’s Trust. These women received $1000 in cash on a monthly basis, no strings attached, for 12 months straight. With this assistance:
On time bill payments increased from 27 percent to 83 percent
Mothers’ ability to create emergency funds increased from 40 percent to 88 percent
Reports of having enough money for food increased from 64 percent to 81 percent
Dr. Nyandoro urges us all to help shift the narrative on poverty by amplifying the voices of those experiencing it. Women in Magnolia Mother’s Trust have the opportunity to share their stories in Ms. Magazine twice a month. This spotlight ensures that their side of the story is heard. Thanks to this initiative, Dr. Nyandoro shares that, beyond her impressive statistical outcomes, “we are seeing joy.” Magnolia Mother’s Trust has provided its women with more than just economic security: the financial benefits are amplified with agency, stress relief, and happiness.
Despite its success, policymakers have been hesitant to rely on cash support. “We have become rooted in what is, rather than what could be,” says Dr. Nyandoro, on stagnation in the economy and welfare system. Currently, the welfare system punishes people for being poor, according to Dr. Nyandoro and Ms Foster. The pandemic, however, has required the welfare system to shift toward cash support as a tool for providing economic security. In fact, the distribution of benefits as part of COVID-19 relief demonstrated how quickly the government can address and alleviate economic instability with cash: “[it] is the currency of urgency,” Foster says.
Guaranteed incomes have come into the spotlight recently with the Biden administration's American Rescue Plan. Enacted in July 2021, the Child Tax Credit, which essentially serves as a guaranteed income for families and children, has the potential to cut child poverty in half. However, the credit will cease at the end of the calendar year unless Congress passes an extension. Foster and Nyandoro urge us to support this extension. Why? Because giving people cash works.
Ainsley Buck is a senior undergraduate student studying Neuroscience (B.S.) and Child Policy Research. She intends to pursue a PhD in Child Clinical Psychology and is excited to integrate research, practice, and policy in her future work.
By: Sophie Hurewitz, Child Policy Research Certificate student '22
Billy Shore, founder and executive chair of Share Our Strength, was the featured speaker at the October 27, 2021 installment of the Foundation Impact Research Group seminar series, co-sponsored by the Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Center for Child and Family Policy, and the Duke World Food Policy Center. Shore and his sister founded Share Our Strength, a leading anti-poverty organization, in 1984 as a small entrepreneurial enterprise.
“We were really focused on creating what we called then—and what we still call now— ‘community wealth.’” This kind of wealth, Shore stated, “is a different kind of wealth that goes directly into the communities that we serve.” In 2010, the organization pledged to end childhood hunger in the United States. Under Shore’s leadership, Share Our Strength has raised more than $1.25 billion to fight childhood hunger and poverty in the United States. The key principle of the organization: partnership.
Sophie Hurewitz
Shore began his talk by highlighting a silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic—that it has been “unbelievably rich in lessons.” “We’ve learned a lot about how we can extend our impact,” he explained. “We are in a stronger position than we have ever been in before to actually end childhood hunger.” Since the start of the pandemic, the organization has added approximately 3.2 million children to the federally sponsored school breakfast program and helped families enroll in programs like SNAP and WIC.
How was Share Our Strength able to have such an impact during such a complicated, unfamiliar global event? Shore described how COVID-19 drew renewed attention to childhood hunger, an extraordinary level of generosity from community members and community institutions, and a prioritization of policy solutions and regulatory flexibility at a federal level. The combination of these three factors, Shore explained, ushered “the largest infusion of private capital into the school feeding system in history.” “We were prepared to do this not because of things we did during the pandemic,” he added, “but the things we did in the five or ten years before the pandemic.”
The pandemic sparked a “default to action” philosophy, Shore explained, emphasizing how Share Our Strength had to respond quickly to the desperate need that suddenly arose as the pandemic led to the virtual freezing of the U.S. economy. Such immediate action involved fostering partnerships with organizations like Save the Children and Urban School Food Alliance and corporations like Fanatics, partnerships that “normally would have taken months to hammer out.” Such partnerships required flexibility and trust, but Shore described how “the speed of trust gets accelerated during a crisis.” Shore cites Congress as an example: laws and regulations regarding reimbursement for school-sponsored food assistance were all shifted to reflect pandemic realities—students could be served outside of the school building, children were allowed to receive more than one meal per food distribution, and parents were allowed to receive some nutritional support as well.
Shore described the power of public policy in a dual public health and economic crisis: “Policy is a force multiplier,” Shore stated, explaining how the organization “had to engage in a really meaningful way in public policy.” Share Our Strength has opportunities that many government agencies do not: the ability to take risks, foster innovation, and pursue close relationships with the communities that they serve. “Once we create something that we know works, it becomes imperative that public policy help[s] us scale it,” he emphasized. “The role of community organizations, whether they’re local, state, [or] national… in connecting to those policy issues, helping policymakers get those policies right, and being the boots on the ground and actually connect[ing] people to them, is absolutely vital.”
Shore also recalled how the pandemic demonstrated that the organization’s core values “need to remain healthy, no matter how devastating the pandemic is.” Share Our Strength’s core values to act boldly, share strength, embrace diversity, and have fun served as constant touchpoints amid the disruption of the pandemic. Lastly, Shore reflected on how the pandemic has encouraged an understanding of the “interconnectedness between so many of these issues… and with all of us.” The pandemic helped many realize how “hunger is a symptom of a deeper problem of poverty, inequity, [and] structural racism.” Shore highlighted how, through the lens of the pandemic, these other issues became even more pressing to Share Our Strength and the broader American public.
Such a focus on the interconnected nature of these issues is what allows non-profit organizations, government agencies, and corporations alike to begin to address the root causes instead of the symptoms. “If organizations are willing to embrace this, I think we can get to a much more powerful place of impact,” urged Shore, “...there’s not another voice for these kids.”
Sophie Hurewitz is a senior at Duke University majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Global Health and a certificate in Child Policy Research. She plans to become a developmental-behavioral pediatrician to combine her interests in health and education policy with clinical medicine and child and adolescent development.
By Olivia Bond, Master of Public Policy Candidate ‘22
On October 28, 2021, the Center for Child and Family Policy hosted Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor of population health sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as a speaker in its Early Childhood Initiative Series. Dr. Green’s talk, “Income Gains, Pregnancy-Related Health, and Birth Outcomes: Evidence from the Marcellus Shale Economic Boom,” summarized the research and findings of a study completed with co-researchers Alexander Chapman and Molly Martin of Penn State University.
In recent years, researchers have increasingly sought to identify a causal link between increases in income and improvements in health outcomes. Dr. Green’s research specifically explored the link between income gains and reproductive health outcomes by examining not just changes in health metrics like birth weight or gestational weight gain, but also in behaviors that have been shown to ultimately impact reproductive health outcomes like rates of prenatal care usage and smoking during pregnancy.
Olivia Bond
To do this, Dr. Green and her team used the economic boom incited by fracking efforts at the Marcellus Shale formation in upstate Pennsylvania as an exogenous shock to income. Gas extraction efforts first began in 2005 and pumped $3.5 billion into the Pennsylvania economy before drilling stopped in 2012. Residents who owned property in “core” areas, where the majority of fracking efforts were occurring, received royalties for allowing oil companies to drill on their property. Those living in non-core areas did not receive these royalties. Further, job growth directly related to the fracking operations and in the hospitality industry contributed to the economic stimulus experienced by many area residents during this time.
Using state tax records, Dr. Green and her team were able to estimate the incomes of individuals living in core areas above the Marcellus Shale before and after the economic boom. Using vital statistics birth records, the team was also able to identify health outcomes like rates of smoking, preconception weight, occurrences of preterm birth, and low birth weights. They noted similar starting points for Pennsylvanians living above core and noncore areas.
The findings revealed mixed impacts of income increases on pregnancy-related health behaviors and maternal and child health (MCH) outcomes. While an increase in income did not produce a significant impact on prenatal care use, it did seem to incite a small increase in the probability of receiving adequate prenatal care (0.02 percentage points). Experiencing an increase in income did seem to reduce the probability of high weight gain during pregnancy, a measure often correlated with adverse maternal and child birth outcomes. Additionally, though previous research on the impacts of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) found that increases in income decreased rates of maternal smoking, Dr. Green’s team found no significant impact of increased income on rates of maternal smoking.
The variability in findings may suggest the need for cash transfer and guaranteed income policies that are shaped to fit the needs and behaviors of a specific populous rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. As calls for policies like universal basic income or unconditional cash transfers continue to increase, research like Dr. Green’s that seeks to determine the potential efficacy of these programs will continue to grow in its importance.
By: Bella Larsen, Public Policy and Psychology student '23
The Careers in Child and Family Policy speaker series hosted a graduate student panel that provided the group with the pleasure of hearing from Gayane Baziyants (Ph.D. Candidate, Sanford School of Public Policy), Maya Escueta (Postdoctoral Associate, Sanford School of Public Policy), Liza Rodler (MPP Candidate, Sanford School of Public Policy), and Adam Stanaland (Ph.D. Candidate, Sanford School of Public Policy and Department of Psychology and Neuroscience) about their journeys from undergraduate studies to graduate school. All of the panelists are pursuing careers in child and family policy.
Each of the speakers conveyed an overarching sense of excitement about the many different ways that work, school, and curiosities can fit into the world of child and family policy. Being able to take what you are curious and passionate about and pursue it in school and in a career is something that many of us strive to do, but it can often feel challenging to find opportunities that allow us to follow our curiosities. Gayane, Maya, Liza, and Adam shared their various experiences with navigating the process of the transition from undergraduate studies to graduate school while keeping in touch with values and a sense of curiosity about the world.
The full panel shared an emphasis on self-reflection and connecting to personal values when making the decision about how to best pursue work that you are passionate about and continue to grow as a person and a learner. Sometimes that means attending graduate school, but it can also mean finding meaningful work in another capacity.
All experiences before graduate school have the potential to build skills that can bolster the ability to succeed and thrive as a graduate-level student.
An important lesson that these graduate students shared was that all experiences before graduate school have the potential to build skills that can bolster the ability to succeed and thrive as a graduate-level student. Hearing about each distinct experience was really informative about the different pathways to graduate school and how they can be so meaningful:
Gayane’s experience at Child Trends helped her gain invaluable research skills and affirmed her interest in child and family policy.
Maya’s work as a professional dancer, her work with kids in many different capacities, and her work with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in India helped her develop a skill set for ways of solving issues of child policy across many different dimensions.
Liza’s work with MEF Associates helped her form a new perspective on public policy as a way of putting research to action.
Adam’s teaching job and subsequent work with the New York City Department of Education helped him see issues of child and family policy from a teacher’s perspective and a policy perspective and fostered an interest in the intersection of policy and psychology.
Getting to hear the wide range of possibilities for putting our interests in child and family policy into action after our undergraduate years was exciting, and it reaffirmed the notion that there are many diverse ways of doing so. It was really inspirational to hear the personal stories as they made the transition from undergraduate to graduate studies. It was also great to hear the tips they shared about navigating this transition. I learned a new perspective on what it means to make the decision to go to graduate school. As the panel described their processes for determining whether to return to school, they all expressed a logic of reflecting on whether you have all of the skills to do the work you most want to do. Thinking critically and deeply in an impact-oriented way about going to graduate school was new for me, and something that I will carry with me as I go on to work after I graduate.
The graduate students offered insight on how to determine your strengths and operate within the child and family policy sphere while maximizing your ability to make a meaningful impact on issues that you care about. Maya phrased it eloquently when she described the policy world as an “ecosystem,” in which each individual brings a unique set of skills to the table. Learning how to reflect on your own capacity to make change is challenging, but something that is crucial as we learn and grow, and eventually as we prepare to build a career in child and family policy.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to have heard from Gayane, Maya, Liza, and Adam, and for their willingness to take time out of their busy graduate-student schedules to talk with the group. The panel was inspirational, and I am so excited about their work, where they have been, and where they are heading.
Supporting the Professionals Who Care For Young Children
By: Sophie Hurewitz, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’22
On September 30, 2021, the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy welcomed Daphna Bassok, associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia, as a guest speaker in the Center's Early Childhood Initiative Series. The series aims to bring together scholars to address challenges related to early childhood and convene experts interested in bringing cutting-edge science to bear on policies affecting young children.
Bassok currently leads the multi-year evaluation of Virginia's $10 million federal preschool development grant, which aims to expand access to stable, affordable, and quality early childhood education (ECE). As a part of this evaluation, Bassok and her team are conducting the first randomized controlled trial measuring the impacts of financial support for early childhood educators on rates of teacher turnover. This work "has taken on a lot of urgency and significance during the pandemic," explained Bassok, where "childcare settings have been hit really, really hard by the pandemic… and issues of workforce have become incredibly salient."
Sophie Hurewitz
Bassok reminded the audience that, although ECE workforce challenges have gained attention in our current pandemic reality, these challenges are not new. "The challenges of being an early [childhood] educator were salient way before the pandemic hit," she emphasized, highlighting that there are "massive disparities between the work conditions that early [childhood] educators face, relative to teachers working in the K-12 system."
"Why have we built a system in which educators working with three and four year-olds [and] those working with infants and toddlers receive such different kind[s] of work conditions?" Bassok questioned.
The work conditions that she refers to are the long hours, low pay (many ECE teachers earn less than $10 per hour), and limited benefits typically associated with the ECE field. Such work conditions, she added, lead to many early childhood educators living in poverty, struggling with depression, and facing food insecurity. Work conditions only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, as childcare and early childhood education centers remained open, limited the number of children they could serve, and placed early childhood educators at higher risk of COVID-19 infection.
Circumstances like these lead to high rates of burnout and turnover among early childhood educators. These realities, particularly teacher turnover during the school year, create instability and uncertainty for young children and their families and undermine investments in and commitments to quality improvement efforts, mentorship programs, and policy initiatives, Bassok said. Very young children are "extremely reliant on close connections with the adults in their lives," Bassok added, emphasizing the reality that "improving quality in early childhood education has a first-order step of reducing instability."
Bassok's research, which focused on providers based in Louisiana, utilized a unique quality rating and improvement system to better track teacher development and turnover. This longitudinal study, the first of its kind in tracking lead teachers in publicly funded early childhood education settings, involved in-classroom observations of more than 5,000 teachers at more than 1,600 sites between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2019. Analyses reveal exceptionally high ECE turnover rates when compared to K-12 teacher turnover rates: two-thirds of the teachers in this statewide cohort left their ECE programs between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2019.
"Almost all teachers who leave an early childhood education site in Louisiana are leaving publicly funded early childhood programs altogether, rather than transferring from one site to another," Bassok added.
While ECE turnover rates are high across the sector, turnover rates are dramatically higher among childcare providers as compared to public school pre-K teachers.
What factors may be contributing to such stark differences in turnover within the ECE field? Bassok suggests that both the large wage gaps between assistant teachers and lead teachers and wage gaps across ECE sectors may be a significant factor. These findings inspired one of Bassok's other studies, which is evaluating the effects of financial incentives on teacher retention in Virginia.
"We need to find ways to get teachers higher compensation," Bassok said. "There are a lot of challenges around higher compensation for early educators," she added, "because of the costs for the sites and the inability to charge families more than we currently do."
Such nationwide challenges prompted federal level discussion of alternative funding mechanisms, such as stipends and other incentives, but there is limited research on whether such alternative funding mechanisms have any impact on the ECE workforce.
This is where the $10 million Virginia preschool grant comes into play: over the one-year period, $4 million was to be allocated directly to early childhood educators as supplemental "incentive" payments to reduce their personal financial stress, promote staff wellness, strengthen teacher-child interactions, and increase job satisfaction and stability. Bassok and her team collected data from a diverse sample of more than 1,000 early childhood educators in Virginia, and the results revealed that participating in the incentive program increased retention probability by nearly 11 percent, driven substantially by the impacts on childcare centers. How did teachers use the incentive money? Bassok described how the top three uses of incentive money were for personal or family needs such as housing, food, or bills; paying off debts; and purchasing materials for their classrooms.
There are several policy implications of this work, especially now that COVID has exacerbated longstanding ECE workforce challenges. First, Bassok highlighted the immediate policy implications of childcare programs struggling with staffing shortages. Second, COVID relief dollars from the American Rescue Plan and the Build Back Better Act could work to support ECE programs across the nation. Lastly, this work has inspired researchers, teachers, community stakeholders and legislators to consider how best to leverage funding in order to create an equitable ECE system, support the workforce, and foster quality learning opportunities in safe environments.
In my own experience as a Duke Child Policy Research Certificate student, I have spent this past semester in Professor Katie Rosanbalm's course in which students are paired with ECE organizations in the Durham community. My group, paired with Marsha Basloe and her team at the Child Care Services Association, has been tasked with brainstorming ways to implement an ECE apprenticeship program here in North Carolina. As Dr. Bassok emphasized in her presentation, "compensation strategies are a critical pathway to ECE access and quality improvement efforts" and one of the first steps to creating and maintaining a stable, qualified, and diverse ECE workforce. Strategies to do so include professionalizing the field by increasing wages, offering benefits such as health insurance, creating a clearer job trajectory, and improving connections between community organizations through interdisciplinary collaboration. Dr. Bassok's work will provide important insights that we can deploy to support the early childhood education workforce of North Carolina and elsewhere.
Sophie Hurewitz is a senior at Duke University majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Global Health and a certificate in Child Policy Research. She plans to become a developmental-behavioral pediatrician to combine her interests in health and education policy with clinical medicine and child and adolescent development.
By: Ainsley Buck, Child Policy Research Certificate student ’22
The Center for Child and Family Policy welcomed Durham native and Duke alumna Dr. Sarah Rabiner Eisensmith on September 24 as part of its Exploring Careers in Child and Family Policy series. In her role as a forensic social worker, Dr. Eisensmith sits at the intersection of families and the justice system. She works closely with families facing issues that have brought them in contact with family court, social services, and/or child welfare. She reports that in the vast majority of cases she has worked, the families have been reunited. In a field that can be emotionally overwhelming, this serves as a prime reward.
Ainsley Buck
Her passion for social work can be linked back to the gang presence she witnessed as a young middle school student. Dr. Eisensmith remembers listening in on conversations of two recently initiated gang members in her science class. This experience inspired her to work to prevent adverse circumstances, such as early gang participation, in childhood and adolescence. While her subsequent career explorations contributed to her profession today, her path was indirect. Dr. Eisensmith stressed the idea that linear career paths are not only unnecessary, but may prevent you from discovering unexpected ways to explore your interests, “You will learn something in any job that you have post college,” she says.
After graduating from Duke with a degree in sociology, Dr. Eisensmith worked as a teacher in St. Louis and Durham, as a researcher at a social-emotional health firm, and earned her master’s degree and PhD in social work. In doing so, she discovered her highest values:
“…a lot of my decisions, I felt like I was stumbling upon them but actually, I think are informed in some way by… core beliefs that help carry me…believing in the inherent worth of all humans, belief that each person is capable of success and growth. And a belief that both natural and formal support and validation encouragement are essential for people to be in a place where they can thrive.”
Dr. Eisensmith ultimately decided that “…social work seems like the direct application [of these values]… where the rubber hits the road.” While her daily work life varies, the overarching goal remains true to her core: to optimize child outcomes and promote healthy, beneficial parent-child relationships.
Ainsley Buck is a senior undergraduate student studying Neuroscience (B.S.) and Child Policy Research. She intends to pursue a PhD in Child Clinical Psychology and is excited to integrate research, practice, and policy in her future work.
By: Sophie Hurewitz, Child Policy Research Certificate student '22
The Breaking Barriers virtual event on September 15, 2021, featured author Stanley Litow, Duke visiting professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy, and ShuDon Brown, a 2016 graduate of the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) in Brooklyn, New York. Moderator Jay Mathews, education columnist for the Washington Post, led the guests in an engaging discussion on the benefits of student-led and teacher-supported learning, the impressive scalability of the P-TECH educational model, and the future of high school and college education, both in the U.S. and around the world. According to former U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Litow’s book, Breaking Barriers: How P-Tech Schools Create a Pathway From High School to College to Career, is “a necessary read for anyone who believes in the incredible potential of young people and what is possible when sectors unite.”
P-TECH began as a collaboration among the New York City Department of Education, The City University of New York, New York City College of Technology, and the IBM Corporation to reimagine a STEM curriculum that extends two years beyond traditional U.S. high schools to “Grade 14.”
Sophie Hurewitz
“P-TECH blows apart the notion that high school is grade 9 to 12, and then students go off with a high school diploma to enroll in a college,” shared Litow. Instead, P-TECH creates a novel, integrated high school and college program. Due to the vast scope and intentional sequencing of P-Tech courses, students gain not only a high school diploma but also an associate degree. Graduating students are typically first in line for jobs from prominent industry partners— Litow cites IBM, Thomson Reuters, Tesla, and Corning as a few examples. Such a program has significant relevance in both the American past and present.
“Coming out of the recession of 2008,” Litow shared, “there weren’t enough people who had the right skills, the right education, to take the kind of competitive jobs in a changed economy.”
This American reality led to the opening of the first P-TECH school in Brooklyn, New York, at a time when the Great Recession had pushed American unemployment to a peak of nearly 11 percent (Source). In the current age of the COVID-19 pandemic and with 266 schools adopting the P-TECH model the across the country, Litow described the skills crisis as being “on steroids across the United States.” Amid the pandemic shutdown, unemployment peaked at around 16 percent in the second quarter of 2020, with higher rates for women and people of color (Source). There are several factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that have contributed to this crisis: college enrollment declines; prolonged elementary, middle, and high school closures; and inequities in access to educators and advisors for minority and low-income students.
“What was done with P-TECH,” Litow explained, “was starting off with the initial school, build[ing] into the design as many ways to eliminate the barriers to replication as possible.”
Such design processes include an open enrollment model; inclusion of community, education, technology, and government stakeholders; and alignment with existing school district curricula. “That’s why [P-TECH] started going to scale almost immediately,” Litow stated. Now an international model in 28 countries, Litow said that students of color who graduate from P-TECH programs are graduating college at rates that are more than 400 percent higher than the U.S. average.
Litow posited an important question: how do we continue to scale up this innovative program? The answer: individual stories. P-TECH graduates, Litow explained, can share their experiences and simultaneously “dispel all myths about who can succeed in college and career.”
ShuDon Brown, among the first P-TECH graduates from the Brooklyn program and now a current shared services robotic process automation specialist at IBM, explained how she was initially “wary of P-TECH” and “had no idea what [she] was getting [herself] into.” Brown was remarkably candid during this discussion, sharing how she was very shy as an adolescent. When asked about her academic abilities prior to entering the P-TECH program, Brown acknowledged that her confidence was at an all-time low. After P-TECH, however, Brown stated that she “completely broke out of [her] shell” by being given the chance to explore and “push [herself] past [her] limits.” When asked what was so special about P-TECH, Brown emphasized how the P-TECH program instills confidence in its students and encourages them to “not be afraid to fail.”
“At P-TECH,” she continued, “you’d think it’d be really tough and aggressive… but that’s not the environment at all, it’s almost the complete opposite.” Brown shared how her experience as a P-TECH student helped her to believe in herself and her resilience.
“That culture, that environment, is really what forced me out of my shell to say ‘I can try anything. If I fail, it’s okay; I’m going to pick myself up again and keep going.’” Litow added, “there’s a culture in the building that every student will succeed, and there’s also a culture in the building that the teachers will support the other teachers.”
Brown reported how P-TECH teachers strive to make every student feel supported, listened to, and optimistic about their futures. For example, Brown shared how one of her teachers went out of her way to schedule meeting times to accommodate her extracurricular activities. Furthermore, Brown shared how her P-TECH teachers applied the math class material to her own way of learning, her own existing schemas. “It was understanding that I could also apply that [way of thinking] to other subjects,” shared Brown, “and rewire how I needed [to see the material] for myself.”
Being a P-TECH student extends both beyond the typical academic year as well as beyond the traditional high school curriculum. Brown herself completed trigonometry over the summer before her sophomore year and shared how completing summer coursework was “a normal thing… in P-TECH it’s like, ‘Okay, I’ll see you in summer school!’” She also remembers IBM mentors coming to the school’s auditorium to talk to students about their work, similar to a job fair. Additional opportunities included worksite visits, workplace learning courses, and paid internship opportunities. Such connections with mentors allowed students to think outside of the box regarding work opportunities that included travel and the many different disciplines within the technology industry.
“That’s why this pipeline is moving such a large number of young people of color into these positions,” observed Litow.
With collaborative technology and college partners, P-TECH schools and P-TECH students have the opportunity to have working professionals as mentors in their field of interest, take college courses as high school students, and build robust support networks of mentors and peers from other P-TECH programs.
So what is the future for the P-TECH concept and P-TECH students? Litow highlighted how the Biden administration has lots of opportunities for impact: P-TECH students could gain eligibility for Pell grants while they are in high school to defray college tuition costs and those enrolled in college courses could become eligible for federal college work-study grants. Brown encouraged incoming P-TECH students to not be afraid “because you’re going to get through it and no one’s going to let you fall, no one’s going to let you fail, everyone’s going to support you.” “At the same time,” she added, “be afraid… you should always be challenging yourself and looking for those new opportunities.”
As I think back on my own challenging high school experience (thank you Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC) and my past three and a half years here at Duke, ShuDon Brown captured the essence of a comprehensive, progressive, fully supportive educational model.
Sophie Hurewitz is a senior at Duke University majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Global Health and a certificate in Child Policy Research. She plans to become a developmental-behavioral pediatrician to combine her interests in health and education policy with clinical medicine and child and adolescent development.
The slew of stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have taken a serious toll on youth mental health. But now that students have returned to the classroom, N.C. schools don’t have enough resources to support their emotional and behavioral needs.
Sophia Bruton is a senior at Duke University majoring in Public Policy with a Psychology minor and a certificate in Markets and Management. She aspires to do work in the intersection of the private and public sector by using policy solutions to solve social problems and will be working as a public sector consultant next year.
Megan Forbes is a first year Masters in Public Policy student studying Social Policy. She intends to pursue family advocacy work focused on equitable public health strategy.
Grace O'Connor is a senior at Duke University seeking a Program II degree in Child Rights, Policy and Development. Grace worked as a research assistant for the Center for Child and Family Policy during summer 2021. 
