to provide the rich and stimulating experiences required to develop their capabilities, beginning school at age 5 may be soon enough.  But for those whose families for whatever reasons are unable to provide such experiences, the loss of opportunity for early development carries long lasting consequences.  Thus, Ruby focused her efforts on changing the status quo by transforming society’s/our understanding of when schooling should begin, extending it to 3 and 4-year-olds through a redesign of the primary education, a monumental undertaking..

 

Connecting research to public policy was the arena Ruby chose for conducting her campaign.  It was primarily through her work in educational philanthropy and her leadership in child development research organizations that she instructed, stimulated, urged, guided, prodded and helped to shape the discourse around early schooling and adolescence.  The route Ruby took to get from Kaua’i to Washington DC and New York City where she lived and worked for much of her life, began at Stanford where she learned about children’s development, from pioneers in the study of child development such as Eleanor Maccoby, and by her own observations of children at Stanford’s Bing Nursery School.   

 

Along the way, she spent time at the University of Chicago supported by a National Institute of Institute of Mental Health fellowship.  In Chicago, she studied with Bruno Bettleheim and Robert Dreeban in the sociology of education program, and she spent time observing children and teachers in classrooms, gaining a deep understanding of educational settings and how they affected children’s development. 

 

From her observations, she learned how greatly the social and political environment in which schools operate can influence student outcomes. She saw how kindergarten teachers’ expectations of what children can do when they first enter school were upended when they received some children who had spent a year in Head Start.  These teachers were unprepared for children who were curious, asked questions, and participated enthusiastically in classroom activities.  Such observations helped to shape Ruby’s understanding of the role played by schooling in creating the continuity and discontinuity that affect children’s development.   

 

After earning a B.A. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Child Development from Stanford, Ruby went on to a faculty position in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education, where she taught courses in child development and research and evaluation. A turning point in her career trajectory came in 1980, when she had to decide between staying on at UCLA with tenure or taking a Society for Research in Child Development – American Association for the Advancement of Science (SRCD-AAAS) Congressional Science Fellowship, where she could learn and work  for the Senate Appropriations Committee, where educational policies are made or quashed, and where change can happen or be blocked.  Ruby turned down tenure and what some would regard as a sinecure and took the harder path.  She chose the sausage factory where she could learn how good intentions and ideas get blended with political gristle, hashed and stuffed into narrow packages that satisfy the demand for change but often, do not come with the means to achieve it.

 

Assigned to work with Senator Daniel K. Inouye on the appropriations committee, Ruby focused on military family programs connected with the Department of Defense, and on matters related to Health, Education and Welfare.  Senator Inouye happened to be Ruby’s first cousin, but he was no doubt more impressed by her expertise in child development and her abiding concern with rethinking the connection between educational equity and public policy.  Furthermore, she was from Hawai’i, the state he represented. 

 

Among the programs she worked on was childcare for military families, issues related to domestic violence in military families and mental health.  She learned about the vagaries of public funding for research and program improvement as changes in political parties and leadership often meant the elimination of programs and agencies, no matter how important the work they were doing.  As a staff member for the Senate Appropriations Committee, she had little clout, but what she learned on the job gave her a deep understanding of the limits of depending on the government to lead the way for change in education.  She had to seek other venues where she might advance her goal by changing public awareness of the need for school reform and engendering a public demand for change. 

 

After her stint in Washington ended, Ruby went to Yale, where she worked with James Comer at the Yale Bush Child Study Center and Social Policy and taught for Ed Zigler during his sabbatical leave.  But within a short while, she was drawn back to Washington, where she began putting what she had learned into action and pushing her plan for educational change in a variety of venues.  In 1982, Ruby went to work for the American Psychological Association (APA) as Administrative Officer for Children for Children, Youth and Families.  In that role, she monitored research and programs at the federal level affecting children and families.  At the same time, she also became the founding director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences representing small scientific societies.  In these roles, she worked with congressional staffers and aides, setting up seminars to educate them on issues related to children’s health and education, thereby furthering her efforts to create conditions for change by increasing people’s awareness of the need for systemic reform of schooling.

 

In 1984 she was promoted to become Director of the Office of Scientific Affairs, an advancement that placed her squarely in the midst of some extraordinarily consequential debates over the kinds of research psychologists do:  the humane treatment of animals in research studies and ethical standards in research with human subjects.  Although the National Research Act of 1974 mandated the establishment of Institutional Review Boards to protect humans, standards for protecting animals was less regulated and left more to the tender mercies of those who used animals in research.  In light of such a sizeable puka (a Hawaiian  expression Ruby often invoked to describe gaps or holes) in research standards and practices, Ruby worked to establish a committee in the Scientific Affairs Office which was tasked with revising the code and standards for the conduct of research with animals. 

 

Following her eventful time as director of APA’s Scientific Office, Ruby became Executive Director of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, an operating program at the grantmaking foundation.  Her mandate in this position was to elevate the period of adolescence (ages 10-15) on the national agenda in discussions of education and programming.  This position called on Ruby to do some deep study into a developmental period that was outside of the early childhood years in which much of her prior work had been concentrated.  She began by commissioning a review of the research on adolescence and identifying research needs and opportunities to inform federal agencies looking to support research in this vital period of life.   From Ruby’s deep dive into the extant research on adolescence and a consideration of research needs, she came to view adolescence as a period of great opportunities and assets rather than a perilous time with many risks.  In her ten years with the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, Ruby successfully placed adolescence on the national agenda for research and programmatic development by forming partnerships with governmental agencies, grantmaking, and by convening a multi-institutional task force of governors, senators, and other distinguished individuals to examine the impact of community setting, institutional supports and peer relations on adolescent development.

 

The culmination of Ruby’s efforts was placing adolescence squarely on national agenda for attention and programmatic incentives and helping spark a national movement to increase   developmental opportunities for young people. Her efforts at the Council to focus on adolescents, their health and wellbeing, not just on their challenges and problems, but on their assets and on how to build on those assets, led to the creation of the Office of Adolescent Health within the Maternal and Child and Health Division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Carnegie also funded the creation of the Board on Children, Youth and Families at the National Academy of Sciences, thus ensuring the continuation of the Council’s work of informing public and social policy on children, youth and families.

 

The next big move in Ruby’s remarkable journey after a brief stint in Washington as Assistant Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education in the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy was to serve as President of the Foundation for Child Development (FCD).  For Ruby, FCD—a venerable independent grantmaking foundation—was a place where she could refocus her attention on extending education to the early years of childhood.  During her 15 years of leadership, the foundation turned its attention to the special needs of young children in the preschool years.  Among the challenges Ruby and her colleagues confronted in their work were the notable unevenness of preschool programs, structural and instructional variation in kindergarten programs, and lack of continuity between existing preschool programs and kindergarten programs. These discrepancies and the lack of coordination between preschool and school experiences added up, in Ruby’s words, to “chaos at the schoolhouse door”. The foundation set about addressing these challenges to secure better outcomes for children by engaging in an expansive study of programs, educational standards, curricular models, instructional approaches, and professional development. They also produced case studies to identify and analyze effective models. 

 

Based on what they learned, Ruby led FCD in developing a new vision, policies and practices for early education. It yielded a redesign of the first five years of schooling, beginning at age 3 rather than 5, and a realignment of standards, curriculum, and assessment practices from preschool through third grade  to create a more coherent approach in keeping with the cognitive, social and emotional development and needs of very young children  Her strategic combination of supporting research, policy development, and advocacy ignited the PreK-3rd movement across the country and the development of standards and a framework for practice.  

 

Among the roles Ruby played at FCD, at Carnegie before that, and afterwards at New America, the one that brought her the greatest satisfaction was serving as mentor to young researchers, scholars and advocates whose work she supervised.  She regarded her mentees as colleagues, offering them guidance and sharing with them her knowledge and vast experience at various levels of policy making and programmatic development.  In time, she helped to launch many of her mentees into successful careers of their own.  She remained in contact with many of them and took pride in their accomplishments.  When one of them published a paper or blog, or when someone made news, Ruby would spread the good news by emailing friends with links to publicize their achievement.

 

Ruby saw the support of young scholars and researchers as a solid investment in the future, and equally as a way to encourage the study of issues that had not received the attention they deserved.  The Young Scholars Program she helped to establish at FCD is aimed at giving researchers opportunities to focus on one such issue: the development of children of immigrants.  At FCD and through grants to the Urban Institute and the Migration Policy Institute, this program helped to build a cadre of young researchers and scholars who were interested in policies that affect immigrants and their children.  Many of these individuals have gone on to university positions and jobs in federal agencies, and in that way, Ruby’s investment in these scholars continues to pay dividends for society.

 

In addition to her work at FCD, Ruby played other roles to advance early education.  She served as chair of an advisory group to the McKnight Foundation and its work to improve outcomes for immigrant students in the Minneapolis-St. Paul public schools. Later, she became a Senior Fellow at New America, a policy organization devoted to health, the economy, and education.  At New America, Ruby lent her expertise to the Dual Language Working Group and the Early Education Policy Group.  In addition, she joined the board of Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL), a nonprofit organization that has developed a successful comprehensive dual language program for young English learners in California.   

 

In 2015, Ruby took on a major new role as chair of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) study of English learner education in the U.S.  This was a two-year consensus study, a review of the research literature on the effectiveness of instruction for English learners. NASEM convened a committee of 19 members, largely university-based researchers and scholars representing a broad set of disciplines and research concerns in education, policy, and practice related to children whose primary languages were other than English.  The committee was charged with looking at all aspects of schooling for children from birth to age 21, a study that entailed consideration of knotty issues related to historical context, immigration and educational policy differences intersecting with the practical problems of curriculum and instruction. 

 

This was a contentious topic and in interviews for her SRCD oral history,[1]  Ruby noted that the “examination did not occur in a, what shall I say, a peaceful and rational environment.” It took two years and enormous patience and diplomacy from Ruby and the co-director of the study, Suzanne Le Menestrel, “negotiating disagreements and tensions” to guide the committee to a consensus on what the research showed, and on recommendations for the field.  The end result was a highly respected 500-page book[2] which has been one of NASEM’s most requested publications.    

 

While Ruby was, in the words of some of the members of the NASEM committee, “herding cats” to reach consensus and write up the report, she also managed to complete and publish a book of her own:  First Things First: Creating the New American Primary School.[3]  In this transformative work, Ruby presents her vision for primary education that took shape over nearly 5 decades: to create primary schools that can educate children more successfully and equitably.  She lays out her arguments for reconfiguring the early years of schooling, and what that would look like.  Drawing on her deep understanding of child development and of the consequences of current inequalities in children’s access to quality learning experiences, she makes powerful civil rights arguments for why the society should care about what happens during the early years of life. 

 

Ruby details the foundations of the primary school she envisions for 3 to 8-year-old children, beginning with its structure.  It should be universally available for all children beginning as early as age 3, and no later than age 4.  She presents cultural and social considerations: the plan provides dual language instruction, affirming language differences and creating opportunities for all children and not only English learners to acquire another language.  She places the emphasis on active engagement in learning in which classrooms and activities are structured in ways that allow children to learn though projects and participation in engaging and meaningful work. To make it all work she describes the kind of family engagement, school leadership, and professional development for teachers that will be required.  At the end of the volume, Ruby reminds us all: 

 

“Talent and potential are universally distributed, and so must be opportunities to develop that potential… We have the responsibility to create powerful pathways to lifelong learning starting with the early childhood years.  What will be our powerful and convincing narrative?  If not now, when?”

 

Indeed.  A tough road studded with many pukas ahead, but we can hear Ruby prodding us forward:  Ganbatte!  Let’s do it!

​

 

By Lily Wong Fillmore

Contributions by Sylvia Yee

​

Footnotes:

[1] https://www.srcd.org/news/memoriam-ruby-takanishi-1946-2020

[2] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (2017). Promoting the educational success of children and youth learning English: Promising futures. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. 

[3] Takanishi, R. (2017).  First Things First!  Creating the New American Primary School.  New York, NY:  Teachers College Press. 

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​

Work History

Senior Fellow at New America Foundation. (2014-2020)

President, Foundation for Child Development, December 1996-2012.

Assistant Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, Office of Science and Technology 

     Policy, Executive Office of the President, 1996.

Executive Director, Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, Carnegie Corporation of New York,

     1986-1996.

Director, Office of Scientific Affairs, American Psychological Association, 1984-86.

Administrative Officer for Children, Youth, and Family Policy, Office of National Policy Studies, American

     Psychological Association, 1982-83.

Executive Director, Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences, Washington, DC, 1982.

Adjunct Associate Professor (Early Childhood Development), Teachers College, Columbia University,

     1981-1982.

Legislative Assistant, Office of Senator Daniel K. Inouye, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, 1980-1981.

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Yale University, 1980.

Graduate Faculty, Bank Street College, 1979-1980.

Assistant Professor, Department of Education (Early Childhood Development, Research Methods and

      Evaluation Specializations),

Graduate School of Education, University of California, Los Angeles, 1973-1980. Awarded tenure, 1980,

     promoted to Associate  Professor.

Acting Head of Early Childhood Development Specialization, Spring and Fall 1974.

Faculty Member, Bush Training Program in Child Development and Social Policy, Graduate School of   

     Education, University of California, Los Angeles, 1978- 1980.

 

Awards and Honors:

American Educational Research Association.  Distinguished Public Service Award.  April 2014.

Yale University Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. School of the 21st Century Program.        Award of Recognition, July  2007.

Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children. Society for Research on Child Development.

     March 2007.

Fred Rogers Leadership Award in Philanthropy for Children, Youth, and Families, Grantmakers for

     Children and Youth, October 2004.

American Psychological Association, Distinguished Contribution to Research in Public Policy, 1998.

American Psychological Association, Fellow, Elected 1994.

American Psychological Association, Division 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority

      Issues) Award for Distinguished  Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest, 1993.

American Psychological Association, Centennial Staff Award for Sustained Contribution to the Science

       Directorate, 1992.

Congressional Science Fellow, 1980-1981, Sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development and

      the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

National Academy of Education, Spencer Fellow, 1976-1981. Outstanding Young Women of America

       Award,  1978.

Phi Beta Kappa, Stanford University, 1968.