Gabriel DellaVecchia
To the Classroom: EPisode 8
April 10, 2023
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Today I welcome Dr. Gabriel DellaVecchia, who has reviewed decades of research about retention to answer the question: on the whole, do third grade retention laws, which are on the books in some form in 27 US states, help or harm literacy outcomes? Later, I'm joined by my colleagues Darren Victory and Lia Mercantini Leibowitz to discuss practical takeaways. This is the To the Classroom podcast. And I'm your host, Jennifer Serravallo. Gabe, welcome.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Good morning.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
I just read your chapter titled, "Retention in Third Grade and Third Grade Trigger Laws." It's comprehensive, covering the history reasoning flaws with and impacts of these laws and more. Let's start with the why. What's the problem these laws are trying to solve, and what are the erroneous assumptions on which they are based?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. The issue with these laws is based in a very real concern about literacy achievement. So there is a long standing worry that we are not teaching reading in the proper way in the United States, and that a much larger percentage of students are struggling with reading than should. This is a noble and a very real concern. In some ways, the flaw with these laws is usually in their way of being connected to the lever for change. So most of these laws have some components that really will lead to positive outcomes. So discussions of more teacher professional development, hiring additional literacy interventionists, implementing in-school tutoring or summer school programs, these kinds of things that really will lead to change in outcomes for kids. However, there is a feeling among certain legislators that there has to be some sort of pressure on both educators and families in order to make these things happen. And so that most often takes the form of retention, usually mandatory retention in the majority of states. And so the idea is that if a learner does not reach some sort of preset benchmark, which is usually a score on a standardized test that they will be forced to remain in third grade, will not be able to move on to fourth if they don't hit some sort of score. So the idea is that the threat of this punishment will be so great as to cause change, and that particular lever to me is the piece that is most concerning.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
So listeners might wonder if there's any proof, any research evidence that retaining them actually helps them to achieve better literacy or social emotional outcomes or just general schooling outcomes. And you talk in the paper about a few different themes that we can consider. So let's talk first about whether research shows that reading achievement is improved when children are retained just reading achievement specifically.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah, so the interesting thing about retention is that now it's connected to these reading laws, but retention is not a new thing. Retention has been around since the advent of graded schooling. Over a century ago when educators couldn't figure out how to improve outcomes for kids, they left them back and
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Just repeat the grade, just have another go at it. Just
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah, try again. And in some cases, again, and again and again, so much so that in my research for this particular volume, I didn't realize the first comprehensive report on the outcomes of retention was published in 1909.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Wow.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
So we're talking over a century. There was enough concern in 1909 for someone to write an entire book about what was happening with just at that point was like, oh, they discussed "overage" children. So you're 14 years old and you're still in fifth grade. And so what we find when it comes to outcomes is that retention is a very blunt instrument. And so expecting to leave a child back and then for their reading achievement to increase, there's a very weak connection there. So what we find overall, or what the research has shown over the years is that as you'd expect, there's usually a bump in the immediate year after and maybe the year thereafter. So you would hope that if they're going through third grade for a second time, their outcomes in third grade, the second time around are going to improve. Just like if they've learned anything
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
And they're just older too. They're older and they had a whole other year of practicing it,
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Another year of practice, another year of, they've already seen all of that material, hopefully once, so their third grade achievement is going to be better. It may also hold over to fourth and fifth grade. Any sort of bump or improvement that is noticed is usually, it usually fades within a few years. So for any sort of longitudinal study or they try and follow these kids after their years of being retained, usually by the time they get to high school, it becomes very difficult to see any difference between students who were retained and those who were socially promoted.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
So let's talk about high school. Some might say, all right, well then let's look at high school graduation rates. Maybe that's where we're looking at proof that these laws helped kids. Do kids who are retained tend to graduate at higher rates than their peers?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
There's no evidence that that's the case. And in fact, what you just mentioned is often used as the justification for these laws. So it's a connection between you can't read in third grade, you're not going to graduate high school, and then the sky is falling. And so the idea is like, we're going to keep you in third grade so you're a stronger reader because this will improve high school graduation rates. And in fact, one of the most highly cited like white papers about this issue is from the NE Casey Foundation, which came out about a decade ago, and it talks about how poverty and third grade reading are connected to high school graduation and the fear thereof. There's actually some fairly compelling evidence that shows that being retain reduces high school graduation rates
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Oh that's not good.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
because you find that you are, you're older than your peers. You see your peer group graduating and you end up dropping out, or your connection to schooling is so disrupted by being retained. Your love of school is so affected that you don't want to be there anymore. And so yeah, rather than increasing high school graduation rates, there is some evidence that it decreases. But some of these things are very, it's very complicated. So just trying to trace all of these things to your reading rate in third grade, when you start talking about things like intergenerational poverty and systemic racism and all of these other just huge societal forces that are at work, it becomes very, very difficult just to draw this very neat and straight line between these things.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Yeah. And you alluded a little bit to this idea of social emotional impact, talking about looking around, seeing your peers in high school, and the emotional impact that has. How about even shorter term? Is it positive for kids socially, emotionally to be retained and just feel more success temporarily maybe as a reader? What does the research show about that question?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
One of the most striking things in the research about retention is how infrequently student voice appears. People don't bother to ask kids how they feel about it. It's always about the economic health of the nation or some gigantic thing. And we forget to say, this is a child's life. This is their one time through their schooling. How do they feel about this? And as you well know in your own work, that reading has a lot to do with community. It has to do with the connection you have, not only with your educator, but also with your peers. And so when you're left back and all the learners you've been working with now move on. You have a new group who comes in who are a year younger than you, you now you have an entirely new reading community to build connections with. So there's that loss that happens when a child is left back. So that's one piece. Another is, there were a pair of studies done in the eighties. This is one of the few times where a researcher actually was asking kids, how do you feel about being left back? And this was whether they were or were not. And what they found was that learners were talking about, they were ranking the trauma of being retained as being second only to losing a parent.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Oh, gosh.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
So in the minds of a kid, as bad as it gets, and there was actually an unpublished study. It's mentioned in the literature, it never got peer reviewed and never came out in that way. But they were talking to some middle school students, like sixth graders, who actually ranked retention as being the worst thing they could imagine. Worse than losing a parent, worse than losing a sense like going blind or deaf, like retention was the number one concern. So if we talk about social emotional impacts, particularly for slightly older children, they think it's the worst thing they can imagine, you lose all your friends. It's horrible.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Do the policy makers just not know this? If it's it's traumatic to children, it's not making any kind of positive outcomes in reading achievement long term and high school graduation rates. How does this take hold and just keep getting replicated from state to state to state?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah, it's a great question. And unfortunately it's not a rational one. So it doesn't follow that same chain of logic, because the logic is really that it's easy. If you retain a child, you're not putting in any additional infrastructure. You don't have to think about training and recruiting literacy specialists. You don't have to put in place effective professional development, just leave 'em back. We already have third grade. Just do it again. And so that's the one big piece. Another piece is that some scholars discuss it, and I think this is a really brilliant way of thinking about it, as you're laundering the cost of what it means to intervene with children who are struggling. So let's say you as a politician put forth a bill that has some kind of reading program, whatever is in it, some mix of PD and new staff members, and it costs $40 million a year, and let's say it doesn't work very well, all of a sudden that's on you. And they say, Hey, the big splashy reading program, it was expensive. We spent $40 million a year. Oh my gosh. That's on you. Well, when you retain a child, that still costs money that year.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Sure. It's expensive. Really expensive.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah. Let's say in the average state, we're getting close to $10,000 per pupil per year is usually the per pupil funding. So that's another $10,000 for that 13th year of school that year after their senior year of high school. It's another year of schooling. We're providing for all those kids. So in a state that's retaining a few thousand kids, that could very easily be $40 million a year. However, that money, rather than being separate and being obvious is just pushed
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Nine years down the road.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Nobody notices. It's part of the general fund. And in fact, because schools are the ones that pay that per pupil money, no one notices it. It's not on the state books. It's just, oh, those kids stuck around. It becomes invisible. So it's an easy way to look like you're coming down tough on education or you're trying to intervene, but it doesn't really do very much, but it's easy to talk about and point to as like, oh, I implemented the reading law. We're now tough on reading. We're showing those teachers what they're supposed to actually teach reading.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Yeah. Oh gosh. For all that money, even though it is deferred for all that money spent. In your reading of research, what would actually ensure better progress, better literacy outcomes, better social emotional development for, I mean, this is a huge question. There's so many things, but what would be a better way to spend that money rather than make these laws that are very punitive in nature?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
That's the unfortunate part about them, is that most of them do include components that are decent. So when we talk about better preparation, more professional development, both for pre-service and in-service teachers, that's great.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
That's good.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
When we talk about targeted interventions and having literacy interventionists who have training, fantastic. There's some mixed information about tutoring programs and summer school depends on the quality of the program, the implementation, those kinds of things. But if it's put into place, well, those things are all wonderful as well. One of the things that I'm sure you, you've talked about in your work and certainly comes up in mine, is that if you have a solid reader, they look generally the same. On the flip side, though, struggling readers all struggle in independent ways. So their trouble with reading might be that they are still not successfully matching the sound and the symbol. It might be that their habit, it's falling down on syllabication and multi-syllable words are what they really are struggling with. It might be a memory issue, either short term or long term. It might be simply that they have a lack of background knowledge and the texts are not properly matched to their own cultural background and so every time they're trying to read something, they don't have enough background knowledge to help build understanding of the text. All those things may be why that individual child is struggling. So having a one size fits all solution to someone who's struggling is never going to work because every child who's struggling is struggling a different way. And it takes the classroom teacher, a specialist, somebody to identify where are those points of struggle and to support that learner where they need to be supported, not just, Hey, try third grade again.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
So can you tell us a little bit about your documentary project that is focused on these issues and how people might be able to help?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah, sure. Well, one of the things that we found as we were advocating in Michigan is that, it's actually has changed since we started our advocacy is efforts there. But in Michigan, at the time, there were people in place in the legislature who didn't want to hear about amending such a law. They didn't want to hear when I was showing them research about retention and why it harms children and all these kinds of things, they weren't hearing it for a variety of reasons. And so in our efforts to amend the law, we felt that we had hit a wall. That if those in the legislature were unwilling to even listen and have a hearing for an amendment, there was no way the law was going to change. So as an advocacy group, we had to make a decision. What was the best way to invest our energy to try and move the needle when it comes to the issue of retention? So we decided to make a documentary that would help us to educate not only people in Michigan, but people in other states who have similar laws just as a way of putting the problem into perspective. There are 27 states plus the District of Columbia that have a reading law on the books. And 17 of those states plus DC have mandatory retention. So we're talking about a pretty good chunk of the country. So what we did was we traveled around Michigan, we had some interviews in person, we had some over Zoom, and we talked to a wide range of people who were invested in literacy. So we talked to legislators, but we also talked to scholars, we talked to community activists, we talked to teachers, and we were really trying to reframe the narrative around literacy. This whole idea that it is something that is supposed to be measured, that's linear, if you don't hit a certain benchmark, you should be punished. That's not what the conversation is about. We're literate beings because we like to communicate. We tell stories to one another, we share information, we communicate for a purpose, and it's a beautiful thing. It's a humanizing thing. It's something that brings us together as family members, as community members, and it's how we change the world. So literacy is vitally, vitally important, and it gets lost in these conversations. It's this really anemic view of what it means to be a literate individual. And so in our documentary, we really want to talk about what does it mean? What does it mean to read with your family? What are your memories? If I talk to you about your memories of literacy, it's probably not taking the standardized test at the end of third grade. It's probably sitting in your parents' lap or a favorite book that you have that opened your mind or those kinds of things. And so we've been working on the documentary for about a year now. The intention is to make something that can be broken into little chapters, so you can watch a brief little bit online, so maybe an eight to 10 minute little bit, but then if you watch all the segments together, it really creates a new story of what does literacy mean? What is literacy?
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
I think that's so important. I mean, we didn't really get into this, but this whole idea that you're being retained as a third grader because you're supposed to meet a particular benchmark in that moment based on a singular test, which... is it valid? Even the test, what is the test testing and what is literacy even all of that is layers of an onion, right?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Excellent questions, all of them. They all really tie back to a difference in perspective. That was actually another thing that we realized in our advocacy efforts is that there's a difference in paradigm. It's a different in lens and even how you view the world. And there's that whole idea of punishment versus support that goes very, very deep and often runs not through literacy, but through other issues as well. If you're talking about how to remediate drug use or crime, there's all these ideas of is it punishment or support? And that flows into this idea of literacy. And the same thing with what is the purpose of schooling? Is the purpose of schooling to create productive members who are going to help contribute to the G D P and this kind of thing? Or is it to actualize yourself to be the best that you can be, to be a productive and happy citizen? All these kinds of, what is it? Why do we even engage in this complicated endeavor? And too often, whether it's literacy or even there's been similar movements in science where the verbalized reason for the change is usually competition. We're falling behind. It's very rarely about wonder, beauty, love, community, these kinds of things. That to me, that's why we do well, any of it. It's why we live our lives. That's why we go to school. It's why we become literate individuals is to fully immerse ourselves in our own being and our relationship to others. And that's not a conversation I often have with state level politicians.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Well, and also I think is maybe the difference between a politician looking at things from the outside where it's about outcomes, numbers on a spreadsheet, pass rates, versus somebody like you or like me, who's in classrooms with teachers and children, watches development day over day over day and understands literacy in a more complex, nuanced way. And I just thank you for the project that you're working on and for your advocacy work to try to help shift this conversation.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Of course. Thank you. Thank you for listening, and thank you for having me.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
And I know you have an exciting update to share about Michigan specifically.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah, so as of March 24th, Governor Whitmer signed a new law that has actually rescinded the mandatory retention for struggling readers. So after all these years of hoping for that change, that change has actually gone into effect.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Well, you weren't just hoping for it. You were working for it. So you should take a little bit of the credit too, I think, for your activism and for speaking up and helping lobby for this...
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
I would like to think that we helped to keep it at top of mind, but the change really, I often give credit to a woman named Katie Fayhee who ran a group called Voters, not Politicians. That group did some really tremendous work to create the independent redistricting commission in Michigan. And so the work that they did led to the changing of legislative boundaries for this last election that directly resulted in a Democratic majority in both the Michigan Senate and the Michigan House, which also then resulted in having Democrats as the chairs of the education committees in both of those chambers. And that is what allowed the bill to be introduced so quickly in this session. So there's now a former teacher that is the chair of both the Michigan Senate and the Michigan House. And so the bill to revise the reading law was their very first priority. It was introduced as soon as the legislature sat in January, and it still takes a little for a bill to make its way through the legislature, but it did as quickly as possible. And so after years of advocacy where we could barely get the education committee to even listen to us, this time around, it had a hearing, it got voted on, it went through both chambers and ended up on the governor's desk, just one after the other. No roadblocks signed into law. And this year, Michigan, there's no worries of Michigan families or students that they're going to be retained due to scores on a reading test.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
It's so important to have representation and to understand all the issues that are important to the people that you're voting for and to get out and vote. So... how about other states, Gabe, do you think that this change will have any impact in other states?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
I hope it will. An instructive example is actually Ohio, which in many ways has nearly identical to demographics to Michigan, similar size, similar breakdown, maybe a little bit center right instead of center left, but similar in so many ways. And last fall there was a huge push both in the Ohio legislature and a bunch of grassroots groups were agitating to drop the retention portion of Ohio's reading law. And despite all of the concerns, all the same concerns we raised in Michigan, that bill went nowhere. And for those exact same reasons the Republicans support this issue, they do believe in retention. They wouldn't bring up those bills for conversation. And so that bill died at the end of the legislative session at the end of 2022. It doesn't always have to be partisan in that way. So the other state where there's a big conversation happening right now about a change is Tennessee, which is essentially the symbol of conservative laws at the moment. There are concerns about government overreach there. So it's coming from a different angle than we usually discussed with our campaign, but there's some concerns there. There's concerns about cost, and so there's actually the other state that might legitimately have a chance of changing the law is Tennessee. So it's very, very interesting to see those two very different poles being the two states that where there might be a change everywhere else in the country. I don't see anywhere at the moment where there's enough either movement among grassroots organizations or political will among legislators to make a change.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Well, hopefully some of them are listening to this podcast and are going to start to understand the impact that these laws have.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah, absolutely.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
One last question, just to end on a kind of positive activisty kind of note. With these laws or some version of these laws in 27 states, it's likely that people that are listening have these laws on the books in their state. First, I'm just wondering how would they know whether or not they do? Teachers probably will, but if there's a citizen listening, how could they find out? And then those who understand the research, understand your arguments, and want to push back on these laws, what could they do? What could advocacy look like in their states?
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Yeah, so if you're wondering about if there's a law in your state, there's a handful of clearing houses online that I think it's the National Commission of State Legislatures think I have that right. But a quick Google search will often reveal a map that will show you if you have one in your state, and what is the statute and what is it, what does it require? So the first way to start the other is when it comes to state level legislation, I would urge all of your listeners, the one thing I took away from all of this is really how dramatically state level politics influence how we live our everyday lives. So all of the media, national media often focuses on federal Congress and the president and all this stuff. Those those parts of government are important and they do affect us. But when it comes to things like schooling, it really is the state level that is going to affect what schooling looks like for your child and how you live your day-to-day life, which things are banned. There's all these movements right now to ban certain types of material that goes through state legislatures. So one thing I advocate for all, anyone who's interested in education is that you can usually sign up to receive at least the email from the education subcommittee in your state legislature. So it's usually one, if you have a House of Representatives in a state Senate, sign up for both. Different bills will go through each chamber, and that means that whenever they meet, you'll just get an email that'll usually just have the title of a bill and maybe a one line description. That's a good way to keep an eye on what's going on and what's coming through. A lot of this stuff is going to be unimportant to you and whatever, it's like logistical stuff or budgety stuff or something that you might not be super concerned about. But when you see something like this, whether it's a reading retention law, whether it's an anti-LGBT law, whether it's whichever policy priority is going through that is of concern to you, that'll tip you off that it's actually in the works. Depending on where you live in your state, you might want to attend those sessions if it's at all possible. If you can't go in person, they're often streamed. So you can watch it live or watch the recording later on and just be very, very aware of what's passing through. A lot of, there's not a lot of attention that's paid to state legislatures, particularly like the education subcommittee. No way it doesn't make the local news. So you have to watch. It has to be an intentional thing. And then if you see something that worries you, being there in person is the best way to make your voice heard. Writing emails and calling? Emails are usually read by some person in the office. Same thing with phone calls. So if you really actually want to have someone listen to you, either go to that committee hearing in person or keep an eye out for coffee hours in your district where you can actually physically go and sit down with that person and talk to them one to one. They might not hear you out or do what you said, but at least you can be sure they actually hear your voice. I did that quite a bit. Attending those coffee hours or going to the state capitol. And just if you're really, really concerned, you need to find other people who agree with you because the only way we ever as people who don't have billions of dollars are our own political action committees. We need to join with others. So whether that's through a teacher's union, an advocacy like a local grassroots like activist group or a group, an ad hoc group that you pulled together about a particular issue, speaking with one voice is really the only way that we can make our voices heard.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Thank you. A lot of these practical action steps are reminded of, are in the The Reading Teacher article that was published recently, and we could link to that in the show notes. And that one's open access, so anyone should be able to take a look at it. It's a quick read, and like I said, a lot of these same practical action steps are listed in there. Gabe, thank you again so much for all your advocacy work and for joining me today in conversation.
GABE DELLAVECCHIA:
Oh, absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Okay. I'm joined now by two of my colleagues, Darren Victory and Lia Mercanti. So what are your first thoughts after hearing that conversation?
LEA MERCANTINI-LEIBOWITZ:
Kids aren't given enough of a chance. It reminds me of what was spoken about yesterday in the idea that number one, he just brought up, they don't have enough of a voice. Teachers aren't given enough of a chance to help the kids in the way of not having access to research, and in this case here, not having access to enough professional learning experiences that will help them to implement what the research is saying, new ways, new strategies, so on and so forth. How do we go to bed at night knowing that children feel that retention is worse than losing their parent or their eyesight? And there's laws that keep these kids feeling this way. It's horrible.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
I just wonder what it would take for folks to have courage to invest in what research shows works to improve outcomes. That is what's so frustrating. His comments about, yeah, sure, it's expensive, but you're kind of kicking the can down the road. It's not expensive while this particular politician's in office, it's expensive eight years from now. What does it take? What kind of popular opinion, what kind of political guts? I don't know what to say. Would it take for people to say, look, we know we need to reduce class size. We need to improve professional development for teachers. We need to support intervention early and as ongoing as necessary for students. We are going to do all that we can to not punish when kids can't progress, but rather ensure that they do.
DARREN VICTORY:
For me, I think what part of the problem is a feeling that I felt bubbling up within me, and the first feeling was anger, which we're kind of expressing right now, frustration, but the feeling that really scared me is this incredible temptation to fall into a position of fatalism. So here we go again. No matter what we do, we just can't make meaningful progress. I'm going to throw up my hands and say, what's the point, right? Because as we discussed, as Gabe mentioned, since 1909, I mean, we have so much evidence that the reality of retention is a failed policy.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
What I didn't talk to Gabe about, but he wrote about in this chapter was the connections between these third grade reading laws, school accountability measures, like evaluating teachers based on student test scores, assigning grades to schools, the school choice movement. So it is all maybe part of a bigger movement, and it's not in service of children. That's the thing that I think we have to keep coming back to is that it's intended to be punitive, it has negative consequences, and I think, I don't know, the only bright side I see is that we're aware and we can speak up and try to be activists to say, we know the research, we see the children. We're here every day and do as Gabe suggests, and show up and talk back to it. I don't know, Lea, what are you thinking?
LEA MERCANTINI-LEIBOWITZ:
I think it's about coming together. Power is in numbers and trying to figure out ways to make our voices heard louder than the voices that want it to be punitive or for whatever other agenda they may have.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
And maybe it's positive that we're in a moment right now where there's a very big focus on science-based reading reforms. And if we're really going to say we're going to embrace the science, all of it, and make reforms that are in service of children and children's progress, how can we ignore the science of retention laws? How? It's been studied. In Gabe's chapter, he cites tons of studies dating back decades. So if there's science and there's an established impact that's across the board, negative on children, maybe now's the moment to say, let's look at this science and let's really make some changes here.
LEA MERCANTINI-LEIBOWITZ:
We have to rally behind this need for the change because to get the voice out there is not hard anymore. Where in 1909, it was difficult for anybody to really get the troops rallied around things. Today, it's so easy to do that. I want to leave this podcast and go, literally start a Facebook page about this. I can't believe this. Wow, something needs to change for these kids.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Any last thoughts for Darren?
DARREN VICTORY:
I just want to say on that note, I think this podcast, Jen, is so timely, so relevant to this moment. I think that teachers, students, parents, we need voices like Gabe's, like yours, addressing some of these issues in very public ways. I see it as a form of advocacy, a pushing back against some of these destructive narratives that are just taking hold across social media, across mainstream media. I don't know. I think we're all trying our best to navigate what seems like a big overwhelming mess. So these conversations are just vitally important. So thank you and thank you for having me as a guest as well.
JENNIFER SERRAVALLO:
Oh, well, thank you both for joining for this conversation and I am learning so much from this podcast project, and I'm really honored to have you both join me today and I hope others feel equally inspired to stand up, speak out on behalf of kids. Thanks so much to both of you.
DARREN VICTORY:
Thank you.
LEA MERCANTINI-LEIBOWITZ:
Thank you.