Last week, early education leaders from around the country met at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (HGSE) for “The Leading Edge of Early Childhood Education: Expansion and Improvement for Impact.” The goal: to discuss “the delivery of high-quality early learning at scale and its benefit to children and society.”

Now, a video of the full, seven-hour meeting is available on line, thanks to its host, HGSE’s Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative.

The meeting was kicked off by HGSE Professor Nonie Lesaux who explained that early education’s landscape has four pillars:

– the persistence of the economic opportunity gap

– the developmental force of the early childhood years

– the promise of high-quality early learning experiences, and

– the challenge of making good on the potential and promise for ALL children

Citing Sean Reardon, an education professor at Stanford University, Lesaux said the challenge today is building “equality of quality at scale.” In other words, every young child should have access to great preschool programs.

The meeting’s agenda touched on a range of topics, including:

– today’s early education landscape

– a national strategy for early education

– breakthroughs in transforming early education learning environments

– lessons from other policy initiatives and problems for transformation in early education, and

– supporting children and families experiencing adversity through high-quality early education

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, was the featured lunchtime speaker. Check out the full agenda for a list of speakers and speaking times, to locate their presentation in the video.

Great tweets are also available. Google #ZaentzLeadingEdge to see pictures and quotes from the event.

And a short recap of the meeting is posted on Facebook. Among the meeting’s take-home lessons, Lesaux says, is “how much early education and its policies depend on… better coordinator with other policy domains. Issues of food security, housing, employment, and tax credits… all of it matters.”