Effects of North Carolina's pre-kindergarten program at the end of kindergarten: Contributions of school-wide quality

Robert C. Carr is a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy. His research broadly considers how child care and early childhood education programming influences children’s development of academic and social-behavioral skills, with recent efforts focused on the effects of state-funded pre-kindergarten and Head Start preschool programming. A novel aspect of this research examines the conditions under which early childhood program effects are more or less likely to persist into subsequent grades; focusing on dimensions of K-12 education quality that may differentiate these long-term effects.

Carr completed a Ph.D. in education with an emphasis in applied developmental science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he worked as a graduate research assistant at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. As a doctoral student, Carr participated in pre-doctoral training programs with the Center for Developmental Science (Carolina Consortium on Human Development) and the Society for Research in Child Development (State Policy Scholars Program in Early Learning). His dissertation research was supported by a Head Start Graduate Student Research Grant from the U.S. Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation.