Dr. Cynthia Osborne on Impacting Literacy Through Policy
Dr. Cynthia Osborne is the founder and executive director of the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Peabody College. In this episode, she discusses the importance of early childhood development and the impact of state policies on families and children.
About Dr. Cynthia Osborne
Dr. Cynthia Osborne is the Director of the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt University, where she leads a multi-state team dedicated to improving outcomes for children from birth to age three. A nationally recognized researcher in early childhood and family policy, she brings over two decades of experience translating rigorous research into practical tools for legislators, educators, and communities. Her work spans key areas such as child care, paid family leave, economic supports, child well-being, and family stability, with a strong focus on Tennessee’s leadership in child and family policy. Through partnerships with organizations like the Nashville Public Library Foundation and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, Dr. Osborne ensures that evidence-based insights move beyond academia to create meaningful impact for families nationwide.
About the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center
The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center is a nonpartisan research hub dedicated to understanding what children and families need to thrive in the earliest years of life. Based at Vanderbilt University and supported by a team spanning 13 states, the Center produces evidence-based research that informs—but does not prescribe—public policy.
Key areas of focus include Child Care Access and Quality, Paid Family Leave, Income and Tax Policy, Health Insurance and Early Intervention, Family Stability and Child Well-Being.
Through initiatives like Begin Bright—a partnership with the Nashville Public Library and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library—the Center connects research with on-the-ground solutions. Begin Bright provides Little Libraries and caregiver training to child care centers while also tracking outcomes, helping to build a scalable model for boosting kindergarten readiness and literacy.
Resources
Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center
Begin Bright
Dr. Osborne CV
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Spencer: Dr. Cynthia Osborne. Welcome to Signature Required.
Dr. Osborne: Well, thank you for having me.
Spencer: You are the founder and executive director of the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center. You're also a professor of Early Childhood Education and Policy at Peabody College.
Dr. Osborne: That's right.
Spencer: We have somebody really smart here. Carli, like I'm a little intimidated on this. You should be.e
Carli: We both should be.
Dr. Osborne: No, that just means I've had a lot of years of education. It doesn't [00:01:00] necessarily increase your intelligence, it just, you know how to study a lot.
Spencer: Well, I appreciate that Carli went to Peabody.
Spencer: Mm-hmm. And so it's kind of like that moment where you see your professor, you see those teachers out in the real world, and you kind of don't know what to do with yourself. You feel a little awkward of like. Okay. You actually are a real person outside of the classroom.
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. And when our students see us outside the classroom, we're like, oh, well we might look a little bit different than we do.
Dr. Osborne: No, it's great. And our students at Peabody and in the HOD program in particular, who I teach in undergrad, are just fantastic. They're so curious, they're so interested in the world, and they're gonna go out and be amazing leaders. And so it's kind of fun to get to know them both inside and outside the classroom.
Spencer: alright, so you do Prenatal-to-3 policy. Um, did they give you a range of like prenatal to five, prenatal to one? Like what is it about Prenatal-to-3? What is that and why is that? Special.
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. I get [00:02:00] asked this question a lot because our, the title of our center is very long and very specific that we are the Prenatal-to-3 policy impact center.
Dr. Osborne: And the reason that we focus on the prenatal-to-3 period is twofold. One, no one else really was at the time that we were launching in 2019. Um, when we thought about early childhood people were mostly focused on pre-K. And so three and four year olds, maybe up to five, um, which is a really important developmental age period.
Dr. Osborne: Uh, but what we wanted to do was to focus on. The period of development that is actually the most rapid and sensitive period of development that children will experience across their life course. More than 90% of the brain is developed during that period. And the brain is actually the only part of your body, the only organ in your body that's not fully formed when you're born.
Dr. Osborne: It, you know, so your heart, your lungs are all just kinda small versions of what they will do [00:03:00] across your life course. Whereas your brain is expecting input from its environment to help it to understand, well, who am I? What language do I speak? What's safe? Who are my people? What's scary, what's smelly? I mean, all of these things are learned from your environment in these earliest years.
Dr. Osborne: And the key is these nurturing interactions between the, uh, caretaker and the children that. Really stimulate healthy brain development. And the science was becoming really clear about how important this developmental period was you know, it leads to, it sets the foundation for all health and wellbeing across your life course.
Dr. Osborne: But what we wanted to do was to help states answer the question, well, if we know that this is an important developmental period, what can we do to create the conditions in which our children will thrive from the start? And so that's where we came in and we wanted to focus on those earliest years. [00:04:00] And identify the policies that states can implement to make it easier for parents and children to, um, get off to a healthy start.
Carli: Hmm. That's really interesting 'cause we've traveled quite a bit and I remember sitting in a lecture with data, talking about which states are the most family friendly. Mm-hmm. Right. And then tying that to the economic markers of how small businesses thrive, how mental health thrives. I could imagine this going so many different directions when you are impacting mental health, families, economics, business growth, all of it.
Carli: Where do you specialize or do you do a little bit of everything?
Dr. Osborne: That was where we had to figure it all out at the beginning. Boy, you know, this was kind of, uh, open field. Um, there had been folks before us who had identified what are the things about pre-K that make it effective, and they gave states a list of do these 10 things and you'll have a, you know, healthy pre-K system for your, [00:05:00] uh, students, and which will lead to better school readiness.
Dr. Osborne: Well, for this developmental period, it was just a wide open field, and the science was telling us that it really does take a system of support that includes broad based economic and family supports, as well as targeted interventions to meet those specific needs that families have in order to really make it so that children are gonna thrive.
Dr. Osborne: So we stepped back and we, um, made a list of dozens and dozens of state level policies to say, alright, what are states actually doing? And those range from expanding Medicaid so that lower income families have access to health insurance, to earned income tax credits to supplement the federal tax credit.
Dr. Osborne: To early intervention services that, um, uh, help kids with special, uh, needs or developmental delays. It was a range of policies and we turned to [00:06:00] the evidence as a researcher, I said, this is what I know. And we conducted comprehensive reviews and looked at all of the, um, causal studies that had been conducted on any of these policies, and then identified, uh, 12 that have a strong evidence base that when states do this, it leads to better outcomes for children and or their parents.
Dr. Osborne: And those are the ones that we focus on. And so there are 12 and they are some of the, include the ones that I mentioned in terms of health insurance, income supports, but also things like paid leave, having an access to a doula, um, early head start home visiting or parenting programs. So it's a real range of policies.
Dr. Osborne: And across the states, there is huge variation in terms of which policies they are actually implementing, as well as how generous those policies are. So there are 14 states, for instance, that have enacted a, a paid family [00:07:00] medical leave program. So after someone has a baby, they get to have, um, up to 12 weeks off in most states that have enacted these programs to heal and bond with the baby.
Dr. Osborne: And this leads to a range of positive outcomes for the, uh, children and the uh, parents. And, but the way that states vary, you know, who's eligible, how much they're reimbursed during that time, how many weeks off the range is just pretty wide.
Dr. Osborne: Mm-hmm.
Spencer: Dr. Osborne, one of the main guiding principles for Carli and I, especially when we had our first kid, is that we were counting on the fact that they would not remember anything until they were five or six or seven years old.
Spencer: And that always gave us great comfort. 'cause we were like, well, you know, you're learning on the job here. I mean, like, we would leave the hospital and we were like, I cannot seriously believe that we are being trusted. To leave this place with this infant.
Dr. Osborne: Same, yeah, a hundred percent.
Spencer: Yeah. And, and, and so there's an [00:08:00] element of hearing, okay, Prenatal-to-3 is this exceptionally vital period of time in a child's development.
Spencer: And I think we all understand that on some level. Like they're learning the basic mechanics of how to be a human, but I've never really thought much as to them having psychological imprinting during that time. Is there a distinction between the two? Like, help me understand without going, you know, too scientific of it, what the, the difference that you're trying to, to ferre it out in the teaching is there.
Dr. Osborne: Yeah, so what the science says is that the brain is forming more than 1 million neural connections per second in those earliest years. Oh my gosh. And. I, I'm really glad
Carli: I didn't know that. Yeah. I,
Dr. Osborne: [00:09:00] exactly. I'm not here. My youngest is five and I'm like, really glad
Carli: I didn't know that even two years ago. I'm,
Dr. Osborne: I'm not here to stress out any parent.
Dr. Osborne: I remember that ride home from the hospital sitting in the back, basically like holding her as my husband drove, you know, 10 miles an hour. Yes. Home, home from the hospital. Um, and I had studied this. I, I understood it, but still, you're all learning on the job, which is why it's so great that the way that nature kind of made us is that it's really just about these nurturing relationships.
Dr. Osborne: This is what we call serve and return. Mm-hmm. It's reacting to what your child is doing that is telling them, wow, when I do something, the world responds back to me. This is what, um, I'm in a safe place. Yeah. I can predict my environment and, um. So there is both neural connections being formed. There is both psychological safety [00:10:00] that's being created.
Dr. Osborne: Um, and it's actually, um, not to get technical, but we're all born with a set of genes, and then on top of those are what we call our epi, epigenes or epigenetics. And environment really turns on and off those kind of gene markers. Um, so it helps us to, um, you know, during this developmental period, you're sending signals about whether it is, um, kind of safe for the body to, to turn on this sort of marker.
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. Or to be more protective. Um, so there's real, you know, it's, there's gene environment going in, interactions going on. There's, um, psychological development. There's actual neural connections that are all being formed. And they literally set the stage, meaning that if we don't create those nurturing environments for our children in those earliest [00:11:00] years, that that actually impedes their brains development.
Dr. Osborne: Um, if you look at images of brain, scans of kids who are born in kind of resource rich environments, meaning not just money, but that low stress of the parents, lots of interactions, um, that the kind of number, the amount of gray matter in their brain is actually more, it's more developed and there's more of it in terms of measurement.
Dr. Osborne: That's all that kind of squishy stuff that you see on brain scans. Whereas kids who are. Exposed to environments that are, um, violent or um, uh, low in resources. So they're unpredictable about where they're going to sleep or who their people are or what, where they're gonna eat. Um, that actually the amount of gray matter that is formed is actually less in those brains.
Spencer: That makes so much sense. 'cause it sounds [00:12:00] like there's a fundamental safety component that before anything our brains are assessing, am I safe? If I cry, I paid attention to, is my need met on just the most basic level? And that makes sense on some level that even as adults, if you're not safe in your setting, you're not gonna be able to learn, you're not gonna be able to participate socially.
Spencer: And so as an infant coming out into this world, you're. Just at a basic level of where am I finding myself in this moment?
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. You know, there's a lot of folks, um, in the K-12 system and in the higher ed system that I've spoken with who are really trying to focus on what, you know, those soft skills.
Dr. Osborne: Those skills that every business person is looking for. Um, someone who can work in a team, someone [00:13:00] who can both follow directions but think independently of the critical thinking, the delayed gratification. All of that. When you try to teach that to a, mm-hmm. A 13-year-old, or a 15-year-old, or 22-year-old, the literally just the amount of energy that it takes the body to learn is so much more, it's not saying that they can't learn it, but it is so much more difficult.
Dr. Osborne: And those are all the things that are happening in those earliest years, which, um, often motivates policymakers to think about investing a little bit differently. Mm-hmm. Sometimes folks think of those earliest years as you're just cute and cuddly. The parents are there to take care of you. I mean, all you do is kind of, you know, eat and poop and cry and like, what do you need, really, right?
Dr. Osborne: Well, the truth is you need a lot. You, you know, you need those interactions. You need, um, when your parents are at work, you need a safe and nurturing place to be. So you need high [00:14:00] quality childcare. Um, you need the opportunity for your parents to not be so stressed so that they need to make sure that when they're working, that they have enough money and enough food and stable housing.
Dr. Osborne: Um, and so when they think about the fact that it's actually, you know, there's, I always say this is not rocket science, but it is brain science, like the brain is developing. That's a reason to invest. Um, for all those reasons that you care about later, uh, for kids' success and for economy success and our kind of social, um, interactions as our community.
Dr. Osborne: It all starts there.
Carli: What I hear you saying, which I find really interesting too, is. Intervention for prenatal through age three is actually much more systemic. It's family intervention. It's making it so that the parents have the bandwidth and compassion to have those interactions. So it sounds like a lot of the things that you research is showing and that your're recommending [00:15:00] is more holistic family and parental support, not just, here's how you hold your baby.
Carli: Here's the right formula, breast is best, formula is best, all of that. That could be a science component, but you're advocating for the social component.
Dr. Osborne: That's right. I mean, it's all necessary, right? But the social component is really. The important piece, it's the ability to engage in those nurturing relationships, um, the serve and return to, um, have the confidence in yourself as a parent that you can read to your child, um, that, that you know how to respond to them.
Dr. Osborne: Again, they don't come with a a, a manual, right? I wish they
Carli: did.
Dr. Osborne: I wish they did too. And some of the quote unquote kind of manuals that are out there are so stressful. You have to be a perfect parent and you have to thank you for saying them all these things and so forth. And. Again, that's not actually what we are [00:16:00] talking about.
Dr. Osborne: We're talking about an environment that, um, parents are able to both care for themselves to work and balance the, well, I don't know if there's any balance, but to keep them mm-hmm. All those plates spinning at the same time, um, so that the children can have that sort of, um, environment that has what we call tolerable stress.
Dr. Osborne: Every child needs some stress, every child needs to learn that not every need in the world is met and that there are going to be times where you can't, you know, um, get what it is that you want. But we wanna, um, prevent those children from being exposed to what we call toxic stress, which is kind of this chronic adversity that they experience, um, whether it is that, um, their parents have mental health issues or that there might be violence in the household or severe poverty.
Dr. Osborne: Uh, or, uh, housing instability or food insecurity. [00:17:00] These are the types of things that, um, make it so that children are not able to thrive in the way that they were born to. You know, we are literally leaving human potential on the table when we don't, um, kinda optimize everyone's brain's development.
Spencer: Who consumes the research that you all produce, because I could imagine you could write it in such a way that it would be extraordinarily academic and would be only accessible to other researchers in the space, which can have value in and of itself.
Spencer: I heard you mention about a target on policymakers. Mm-hmm. And so there's part of me that thinks that you could write it to a high level there for policymakers and then also. A much lower level in that none of them are academics, or at least most of them are not. That could have command over the subject area.
Spencer: [00:18:00] So who are you targeting towards and. What does, how does that influence how you communicate and the work that you do?
Dr. Osborne: Uh, the, the answer is that we have a wide range of audiences, and you're exactly right. Um, so we have an academic audience in that we want to establish that the policies that we have identified as effective actually have a strong.
Dr. Osborne: Causal basis. So we write kinda lengthy, comprehensive literature reviews, if you will. Okay. To, to summarize what the evidence says and critique it and say, you know, here's what we know, here's what we don't know. Um, here's the areas that have been explored and they've found to be effective. Here's what they've explored.
Dr. Osborne: And, you know, the results are null. And those, um, we have a clearing house and those are mostly read by students or other academics. Um. Uh, they're kind of the background [00:19:00] research, if you will.
Spencer: Very statistics. Very, yes. Mathematical, scientific.
Dr. Osborne: Exactly. Yes. We're, we're critiquing the most rigorous studies that have been done.
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. And, um, uh, you know, we, we try to write it so that anyone could read it, but we know that not everyone's gonna be reading those. So then the ones that are effective, those 12 that we've identified, and we're actually, um, identifying more, um, kind of all the time. We have a few more that will be coming out.
Dr. Osborne: Um. Then we have put them on what we call this annual roadmap. And the roadmap has a profile on each of those that goes in to explain in pretty lay language, what is it, what is the impact that it has on children's development, what are states actually doing, um, in terms of implementing this policy. And so that's on our website.
Dr. Osborne: And again, there's a lot of information there for, um, mostly those would be for advocates who wanna make [00:20:00] the case for, um, uh, selecting this particular policy to try to advocate for in their state or for staff of legislators who need the background information to be able to write good legislation or to help their member make an argument for, again, something.
Dr. Osborne: Um, and then we have, you know, shorter and shorter and shorter versions of each of those, um, to the point that most legislators, you know, they're gonna take a vote on whether to have a tax credit for families at 11:00 AM and then at 3:00 PM they're gonna vote on whether to expand the water district or something like this, right?
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. Mm-hmm. So one page that summarizes the basic facts gives them a figure of possible. Hmm. Um, with numbers that represent their state, um, so that they can see this is what the impact of the policy would have on families in your state.
Spencer: And then after all of those things, you [00:21:00] come on signature required.
Spencer: Right? Like that should be the That's right. And conclusion.
Carli: That's right. Bullet points. I think it might be helpful as we were talking about these 12 things, and I think we're talking. High level about them. Do you have an example of maybe one policy here in the state or perhaps a different state you've helped give them the research and then it has been acted and then you've seen results?
Carli: I think it might help to have a tangible example.
Dr. Osborne: Sure. And we work with every state in DC and recognize that the states are all very different Sure. In terms of, um, what their priorities are and so forth. But everyone wants families to thrive. Mm. You know that that is common ground. So there are some states that, um.
Dr. Osborne: Uh, for instance, right now we've been working with Pennsylvania because they've been debating whether to, um, have an earned income tax credit, which is a tax credit for working families. That helps those with the lower, lower levels of income, basically to offset their payroll taxes. Uh, puts a little bit more money back into your, [00:22:00] uh, family and, um, it actually encourages work.
Dr. Osborne: So it has a lot of support, bipartisan support. And so what we did for Pennsylvania was a benefit cost analysis for them. So we could show the elected officials by investing this, this is what the return will be each year and over the life course of the children that it will help. Um. And then we can also do some cost modeling for them.
Dr. Osborne: This is, this is how much it's gonna cost, um, for families or, or for the state. And, you know, kind of, this is how states are paying for it, for instance. Um, so we can do everything from a landscape scan of here's what other states that you guys gonna can compare yourself to what they look like. Mm-hmm. Um, so here's what Ohio's doing in New Jersey or New York.
Dr. Osborne: Um, and we can also help them to write, um, legislative testimony. We, we are not advocates. We never, um, are there to support a particular bill, [00:23:00] but we can help them to write talking points about, well, here's what the impacts. Of an earned income tax credit too. So we work often with, um, the key coalition member or advocate in the state that may want our assistance or, um, in this case it was one of the, uh, committee chairs that wanted us to actually testify to the committee to help them to understand what the credit was.
Dr. Osborne: Um, and we don't charge for those sorts of things. This is something that we are funded to be able to do, to be able to be responsive as states are trying to implement things.
Spencer: I wonder, as you all are thinking about what policies you want to devote your resources towards. That selection is really done because I could imagine one world in which you all choose the policies and issue the research on things that interest you all. Or alternatively, I could imagine where the outside comes [00:24:00] and says, Hey, we want you to go and explore this particular topic.
Spencer: And I imagine that's a pretty tough issue because if I imagined myself as the director, there are a number of kind of quote unquote third rail issues where you wade into this area and there's no non-partisan element to it. It's just very partisan. And so I could imagine there's a part to say, well, our research is needed most there because this is a very hotly contested issue and we need to provide data versus another force saying.
Spencer: Maybe we shouldn't go anywhere near that because even if we're right in the data, it's gonna be weaponized and our reputation. Is going to potentially suffer as a result of that. So can you speak about that tension and how those issues are decided?
Dr. Osborne: Yeah, [00:25:00] it's a really important tension. Um, and again, we really are non-partisan.
Dr. Osborne: Um, I always say that we're not at all neutral to the goal. The goal is that every child thrives from the start, but we are neutral to the policies that get us there. Meaning that we did not come in saying, well, this is, these are the policies that we really want. States to do. What we did is we turned to the evidence.
Dr. Osborne: And that is helpful, um, across the, across both sides of the aisle to be able to just know this is what the data tell us, right? We are not making this up. This is not, if the data said that underwater basket weaving was the way to go, that would be on our roadmap. Um, the research hasn't been done on that yet, so, you know, the jury's still out.
Dr. Osborne: But, um, and there are limits to the evidence base. It had to have been evaluated. It had to have been evaluated well, in order for us to make it draw a conclusion. But we do stick just with, um, those that have a strong evidence base. But that's [00:26:00] not really enough because even on that list it can sound more, uh, progressive than conservative.
Dr. Osborne: Uh, expanding Medicaid, a higher minimum wage. Um, and I will say when we first started our advisors, we had folks from across the political spectrum and. Different areas and you know, they all basically, um, I, when I go into certain states, I'm told, do not use the word Medicaid. Yeah, okay. I won't, I'll say health insurance for, you know, families with lower levels of income.
Dr. Osborne: Um, because there are just some words that get people's tackles up for various political reasons. Yeah. And we try not to go, um, you know, to, to offend anyone because the children in conservative states need us just as much as children in progressive states. Like we want to be available, um, in red, blue, or purple states.
Dr. Osborne: And, um, I think that the important piece of all that you're saying is [00:27:00] that we don't tell any state what they should do. Mm-hmm. We ask them what their goals are and then we can tell them what the evidence is. That can help them to meet their goal. Okay. So if they want healthier births, then I can say, well, here are the three or four policies that the evidence says will make a difference for improving birth outcomes.
Spencer: That makes
Dr. Osborne: a lot of sense. If you want parents to work, here are the policies that increase work and in fact, paid family medical leave is one of the most pro work policies that, you know, we've been able to identify. So we start with what their goal is, um, and then tell them what the evidence says. That
Spencer: makes a lot of sense.
Spencer: 'cause you know, something like maternity leave and paternity leave is a relatively new concept in its expansion and appears, at least from my perspective, to be increasingly bipartisan Where. At least in Carli and i's company here that we run, we [00:28:00] are huge believers in both. Uh, some of that comes from being a father and being a mother and knowing that after six weeks or after three days for the guy, sometimes like you are in no position to return to work in the six week scenario or in the three day scenario, and seeing the impact that it has in the real world upon our employees.
Spencer: Convinces us that there's no better way to do it. And so that makes a lot of sense that you're kind of a research vending machine in a way. Say, I like that. That's
Carli: such a flattering way to put it.
Spencer: Like, I wanna understand something about literacy or I wanna understand something about, uh, birth rate or whatever it is.
Spencer: And then you can present a menu to say, alright, if you are California, you're probably gonna be asking about these things and I have a menu for you. That's right. And if you're Tennessee, you're probably gonna be asking [00:29:00] about these things. And I also have a menu for you. And I think that's a, a really.
Spencer: Healthy place for research to come from because then you're able to serve the needs of your quote unquote customer. That's right. Uh, in meeting them where they're at.
Dr. Osborne: That's right. You either want your salty snack or your sweet or your sugary beverage. That's right. We got it all. Yeah. The vending machine
Spencer: doesn't judge you as you put in and be like, thank goodness.
Spencer: Yeah. You've selected Kit Kat. Could I recommend a fresh salad? You know? Exactly. It's like, no, I want the Kit Kat. So back off.
Carli: That's really funny. So you touched on literacy. Tell me, 'cause I think a lot of people think, oh, literacy from Prenatal-to-3, like they can't even tell you what an A versus a B is, let alone read a book.
Carli: What are you, what are you seeing in literacy for kids at that age?
Dr. Osborne: And this is really where literacy begins. So, um, the things that are required to be able to learn to read [00:30:00] are being able to kind of make sense of your environment, being able to, um, listen and understand what folks are telling you to be curious with what's in front of you.
Dr. Osborne: Um, these are all skills that are being developed in these earliest periods. Um, and they're, it's all being developed through relationships and play. And, you know, you, if you ever walked into a childcare center and you saw, um, two year olds coloring on forms, you run away from there as fast as you can, right?
Dr. Osborne: That is not the type of environment that we're talking about. What we're talking about are environments in which they are, pretending and make and, uh, you know, involved in make believe. Um, that's the basis of stories that they're listening to, stories being read to them, and they start to pick up on just the cadence, um, to even understand, well that was a sentence.
Dr. Osborne: Okay, I paused and now there's a new one. And you string those all together and they make [00:31:00] stories. Um, when you're singing to a child, I don't know if your children did this, but my daughter, I remember when she was about 15 months old when she would want us to sing, uh, blah, blah, black Sheep, she would say.
Dr. Osborne: Yes. Yes. Because that was a yes or yes sir, part. Aw. You know, that was the way that she could say, that's the song I'm wanting you to sing. Um, And there's so much developing during that period, um, of just that curiosity and understanding that our whole world is full of things that we read and make sense of and process in order to make decisions about, in order to be entertained with, in order to learn from. And none of that begins out of a textbook.
Carli: Hmm. You know, as a young mom, we'll just say our oldest is quite spirited. Okay. And so I remember trying to sit down and be that mom, And read them the books. I love children's books. I studied children's literature at Vandy. And them throwing a complete fit, right? [00:32:00] Because nobody wanted to sit still in my house, three kids in three years, like it was bananas.
Carli: And I think there was a period where, if I'm being totally honest, I kind of gave up. Like we always had books in the house and they liked the textured ones. It's like Moo and Oink. But trying to read a story felt scary. And there were moments where I felt like a really bad mom because the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and read a book and fight with them to pay attention.
Carli: And I was so grateful that we had the privilege of sending our kids to really great mother's day out programs, really good little preschool centers where they got read to and they learned the structure of how to sit and listen to a book in a way that I didn't feel equipped a baby having babies to do.
Carli: And I have great respect for these. Childcare givers, these teachers that really taught my kids how to sit and listen and read in a way that I felt too overwhelmed to do as a young parent. And so I know a little bit that you guys are supporting Begin Bright, which my sense is that [00:33:00] is giving tools to childcare workers to bring literacy to this age group to help those overwhelm moms like I was.
Carli: Could you talk about that a little bit?
Dr. Osborne: Absolutely. And I think your story resonates with so many parents that it is, it's just seemingly impossible. Yeah. Um, although it is always chaos, those things where, you know. Your sister comes in or you send them to childcare and they sit like angels and you're, well, hold on.
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. It's not, it's really not fair,
Carli: but I'm grateful
Dr. Osborne: it happens. Yeah. But, um, and really the trick there is most kids can't sit through a whole book that it's, it's in fits and starts and it's not necessarily sitting and reading a whole book. It's talking about the color of the cup and, you know mm-hmm.
Dr. Osborne: That it's full and all those sorts of things. So what you, I'm sure that your children are very, very, very successful and they're reading at this point. Um, so Begin [00:34:00] Bright, the Nashville Public Library partnered with the, um, Dolly Parton Foundation, her Imagination Library, and their goal is that every kid is reading ready for kindergarten in, in the city of Nashville or Davidson County.
Dr. Osborne: And, um. Dolly Parton Foundation is going to donate a little library to every childcare center in the whole city. And, um, the Imagination Library is, um, a program in which you can sign up and for free, a book is mailed to your home, um, every month. So your child can really look forward to it, um, from the time that they're born up to the time they turn five.
Dr. Osborne: And they're gonna have that now in every childcare center. And they're going to encourage all the parents at that, that attend the childcare center to also apply. So they have the books at home and at school, and they have created a series of videos that they're [00:35:00] using. Um, for both the educators or the TE childcare teachers as well as the parents and that they can watch to try to learn some of those, um, skills or tricks about, well, how would I get my little one to read?
Dr. Osborne: Some parents may need to understand why it's important to read to someone who can't read, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, I get asked that question all the time. Well, why would I read to my kid? They, can't even read. Um, and so those series of videos or little trainings, um, you know, short trainings over a series that will help to both provide the skill and the confidence to the educators, um, both at school and at home, right the parents as the educators too.
Dr. Osborne: And, um, and they're also going to be, providing a, um. Some expanded activities for each of those books for the childcare teachers so that they'll know here are some of the games that you could play or extension activities [00:36:00] that you can do alongside this book. So it's really exciting. It's the only city in the nation that is doing this.
Dr. Osborne: And, um, the fact that the Nashville Public Library is taking this on, they've been such a presence in the community of, um, being a place where families can come and now they're taking it more to the families, um, where they're sending their children. And we, my center has a privilege to be able to evaluate this program.
Dr. Osborne: So we're actually doing a rigorous randomized control trial. Um, we've recruited our first centers. They're all participating, but they don't know yet. We don't know yet if they're gonna get the program this year or if they have to wait a year to get it. 'cause it can't be rolled out to everyone at once.
Dr. Osborne: Um, so, uh, we're randomizing who gets it, and then we're going to be able to evaluate both, um, what the teachers think about it and their skill development, what the parents think about it, and their skill development, and [00:37:00] then how the students, um, their literacy skills grow over the year.
Dr. Osborne: How
Spencer: amazing is it that Dolly Parton is making such an incredible impact upon the state Queen Dolly?
Spencer: I mean, it's just phenomenal because
Dr. Osborne: amazing.
Spencer: Part of what makes it so fantastic is that people that are not from Tennessee, that see Dolly Parton and all the caricature that she is being one of the leaders in education and looking after those that many other people have long forgotten about, and she's doing it so boldly and so well.
Spencer: Too. I mean, she is executing on it absolutely at the highest chief executive officer level that it could be done. And I just love it because I feel like it fries the circuits of some people that aren't from this part of the country to say, how is this like Dolly Parton? And I thought, and this, and, and it works.
Spencer: [00:38:00] And it's part of just what I love and I'm so thankful that it's being studied and, and it's being done. So at a level that is going to be academically approved and impactful for other places that if they just saw Dolly Parton doing it, they'd probably say, well, you know. I'm glad that's working, but that's the extent of where it goes.
Spencer: But the fact that they're gonna have your research behind it, I'm confident that it's gonna show results that will allow other places to say, even if we don't have Dolly Parton, we weren't blessed with Dolly Parton in our state, this is gonna work.
Dr. Osborne: Absolutely. I, I think the imagination library's in 27 states right now.
Dr. Osborne: Um, so she has been expanding. Uh, Tennessee was the first Yeah. And it's the largest. And she is one of my idols. Just, I, I don't have a long bucket [00:39:00] list, but meeting Dolly Parton is definitely on that. Me
Carli: too.
Dr. Osborne: Me too. But let me tell you, evaluating Dolly's program is a little like, whoa. Okay. Um, it's gonna work, right?
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. It's gonna work.
Spencer: You've never been tempted to fudge the numbers at any point in time. I'm gonna, more so than now gonna find something that works. Now the,
Dr. Osborne: the way that they're going about this is so smart. Yeah. Um, I have, you know, every, um, confidence that there's going to make a difference. Mm-hmm. I think what I'm also excited about is it's very courageous to evaluate yourself.
Dr. Osborne: Um, most programs put it out there. They kind of think that they know. Yeah. And they never, um, take the chance and to evaluate themselves. So to do that is really important. And whenever I work with an evaluation partner, client, you know, I always tell them, I, I cannot tell you what the results are gonna be, but I will walk hand in hand with you through the whole process.
Dr. Osborne: [00:40:00] so we're, we're working closely alongside with them, um, to try to make it as successful as possible and to, um, also make it as rigorous as possible so that, like you said, they can take it to scale and they can go to other states and, um, really help families and, um, children learn to make sure that they're ready to read by the time that they start kindergarten.
Spencer: Hmm. Dr. Osborne, Tennessee does a lot of things well, um, but. Education has been something that Tennessee has been striving to get better at. And one of the things that Carli and I have had the privilege of doing is interviewing a lot of people that are focused on early age literacy. And what feels achievable about this is that we know how to teach people to read.
Spencer: You know, there are some things that we could try to tackle that, you know, there's no cure for that disease. [00:41:00] It's not financially feasible. I mean, things that are just great causes, but you feel helpless in it. Mm-hmm. But it feels as though here in Tennessee we have the opportunity to tackle this literacy component from a legislative perspective.
Spencer: There's the appetite for it amongst the state as a whole, and there's a real need for it. So can you just talk about anything that you see as. The potential for us to take a step forward in tackling this?
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. Early literacy is something that every state is paying attention to, but um, states like Tennessee and other of its sister states are really focused on this.
Dr. Osborne: Um, that they see it as one of the key developmental milestones that if children can read at an early stage, that that's, um, the literature is actually pretty clear on this, that they're set up to be successful in school. [00:42:00] And work in their, um, society, you know, in their community and their families, that it is important part of, uh, our developmental process.
Dr. Osborne: And, um, learning to read does not start at kindergarten. It definitely starts as right from birth and over this, um, early period. Uh, it happens through play, it happens through reading. It happens through these sorts of interactions. And what, um, our legislators are kinda coming to see is that by investing in high quality childcare, that that's promoting early literacy.
Dr. Osborne: Yeah. By investing in programs like Begin Bright in which you are, um, making it so that both families and childcare teachers have the skills and confidence that they need in order to promote those early skills that they're seeing that those are the types of things. That will make a difference, um, in [00:43:00] students' academic achievement.
Dr. Osborne: Um, the research unfortunately, is really clear that where you start in kindergarten, those, you know, those gaps that exist in kindergarten, they just persist really throughout. Every kid is learning about a year's worth. But if you start behind, you're not gonna, it's very hard to learn two or three years worth, um, over the course of your education.
Dr. Osborne: And so, um, we wanna make sure that when kids are starting school, that they are all around the same level. And, um, so we do that through pre-K, we do that through things like Begin Bright. We do that through policies that support families, reduce their stressors so that they can focus on all of those good things that parents want to be able to do with their children that we know helps their kids thrive from the start.
Spencer: Hmm. Well, Dr. Osborne, we close out every [00:44:00] podcast with a quick fill in the blank game. Okay? So I'm gonna read you three sentences,
Dr. Osborne: okay?
Spencer: And it has a blank at the end that you can finish with either a word or a short phrase that completes the thought.
Spencer: Okay?
Dr. Osborne: Okay.
Spencer: All right. You haven't seen these ahead of time, so uh, these are coming to you live. Alright, here we go. First one, if I could change one thing about how Tennessee supports families, it would be blank
Dr. Osborne: if I could change one thing about how Tennessee supports families. It would be making large investments in new parents and their children.
Spencer: Mm-hmm. There's huge need.
Dr. Osborne: It's huge need
Spencer: Number two. One thing I wish more people understood about prenatal to age three is blank.
Dr. Osborne: One thing that I wish more people understood about the [00:45:00] prenatal to age three developmental period is that it is the most rapid and sensitive period and sets the foundation for lifelong health and wellbeing.
Dr. Osborne: Hmm.
Spencer: And lastly, the most rewarding part of my work is blank.
Dr. Osborne: The most rewarding part of my work is seeing states enact and implement policies that are going to benefit families. Hmm.
Spencer: Dr. Osborne, I really appreciate having you here today because the temptation for really smart people like yourself that understand the data is to.
Spencer: Preach down from an ivory tower and say, this is how it should be and I'm right and everyone else is wrong. And to do so with kind of a air of arrogance. Um, and you're really the [00:46:00] opposite of that in that you have been very intellectually honest here to say, Hey, we wanna meet you where you're at. We're learning and you are learning.
Spencer: You're a real human being too. And sharing those stories, I think makes everybody more comfortable with the guidance that your institution has to offer. Um, because nobody likes to be preached at, right? Everybody is doing the best job that they know how to do as a parent. And I really like how tangible.
Spencer: You gave some examples that some of them are for the private sector to accomplish. Some of them are for the public sector and our legislators to accomplish, and some of it is just for parents. That's right. And, and I think also you give some pieces that don't make the burden heavier mm-hmm. On parents.[00:47:00]
Spencer: But instead you said several times like, you know, cut yourself a break a little bit. Sometimes it's just you might get in six words. That's right. But you're actually. At 1 million neurons a second, you completed 6 million neurons, and that's something to celebrate about. Woohoo. And I just really appreciate the spirit that you bring to the conversation.
Spencer: So, um, I hope you continue to teach for a very long time and teach a lot more students to adopt the type of disposition that you have towards teaching and education. Uh, thank you for being here with us today and uh, thanks for coming to Tennessee. Welcome, uh, and showing. Uh, people from across the country, uh, that we do love our families here and we love our kids.
Spencer: That's, and we want to be able to offer them a fantastic life. Uh, and you're showing us some pieces in the playbook to do so.
Dr. Osborne: Well, thank you for having me. This has been such a fun conversation and I [00:48:00] really appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk a little bit more about what we do and, um, to, I'm excited to see where things are gonna go in this great state.
Spencer: Hmm. Awesome.
Spencer: Dr. Cynthia Osborne, founder and executive director of the Prenatal-to-3 Policy impact Center over at Peabody. She really did a great job of combining tremendous knowledge with the ability to explain it to people that don't spend every day thinking about. The academic side of Prenatal-to-3 years old.
Spencer: Um, you and I say it all the time that the mark of someone that understands their craft is to be able to explain it to a five-year-old. And until you're able to do that, you don't understand it [00:49:00] well enough yourself. And I appreciate that. She knows that she is walking through a minefield of partisan issues.
Spencer: Mm-hmm. And she gave a clear nod to that, recognizing that the goal of the institute is to be nonpartisan. There are some pieces of data where one side is right and presenting that data is something that maybe people don't wanna see or don't have the appetite to see right now, but. Having the integrity of the research is something that it's available for those willing to consume it, and I think for an academic institution that has all sorts of different people pulling at it in order to have it directionally focused on a [00:50:00] particular partisan issue to weaponize their research, I think she does a great job of bringing it back to a focus on having families thrive.
Carli: Hmm. What I really liked, and I think she's right, is that universally people love their families. Yeah. And want kids to be successful. That is bipartisan at its core to be a human being. A healthy human being is to want families. And kids to flourish. And so I think the biggest issue in politics, and I see it all the time, isn't that we don't want the same things per se.
Carli: It's that we just really disagree on how to get there and what markers to prioritize and not prioritize and how best to get there without damaging other things. And I think she did a really good job of saying, I have a menu for blue states. I have a menu for red states. I have a menu. Regardless of what your paradigm is for how you think you should get there, I have a way for you to get to the common goal.
Carli: And I really appreciated hearing that. And I think [00:51:00] in a lot of people, we've met a lot of things you see on the news. I wish there were more institutions offering menus and agreeing that we are starting from a more similar place. There's more that unites us than divides us. We just disagree on how to get there.
Spencer: The data. Is the key part of that. Mm-hmm. Because if the message is coming from an academic institution, which mostly they lean left, and so if the message from them is coming without data, then already half of their audience is going to feel alienated.
Carli: Well, but there's also, I will tell you, there is a contingency that doesn't trust data.
Carli: I think if you look at the paradigm, especially since 2020, I mean there is this healthy skepticism of numbers can be. Played with Massaged. Yeah. Yes. And [00:52:00] so what I really appreciated about how she talked with integrity was that she has the data but then offers opportunities regardless of how you wanna get there, to use the data to your advantage.
Carli: And so I think she neutralized that skepticism that, Hey, here's data come out of Vanderbilt University, that there's a lot of stuff out there right now that it is left-leaning. She did a really good job of kind of tempering that and saying, I can help you either way. Let's do this. And I, I just loved that it actually, I'm leaving this podcast feeling hopeful because as a mom of four, I remember how unbelievably overwhelmed I was for the better part of a decade still sometimes.
Carli: And I had every resource imaginable. I had a true partner in my life. We have health insurance, we've had jobs, we had stable housing. We had the best case scenario of a very chaotic time, and so I really appreciated her looking at all the [00:53:00] menu of factors and saying, we maybe not can't address all of it, but let's pick one.
Carli: Let's pick literacy here in Tennessee. Let's make sure that the outcomes for our kids with kindergarten readiness sets them up for success in the future. That is an economic predictor we can do something about. And I left hopeful instead of drained
