About Us

The Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER) is a research alliance among early childhood stakeholders in Connecticut that aims to conduct rigorous, collaborative, actionable research focused on children from birth through age 8. By pursuing questions developed collaboratively with its members, PEER aims to produce research that can inform early childhood education policy and practice at the local and state levels, increase access to high-quality early childhood education, and reduce disparities in educational outcomes. To ensure that its research is relevant and useful to local communities, PEER engages diverse stakeholders, including early childhood care and education teachers and providers, district and program administrators, state and local policymakers and advocates, and social science researchers.

PEER was founded in 2014 as an alliance of early childhood education stakeholders in Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, and the Connecticut State Department of Education. PEER was initially funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which supported research to address PEER's initial research questions and the development of a long-term research agenda through a collaborative process in which member organizations identified PEER's priority research areas. PEER later received funding from the Spencer Foundation’s Research-Practice Partnership Program to support a project focused on one area of the long-term research agenda: supporting dual language learners (DLLs). PEER has also undertaken a variety of research and evaluation projects in partnership with PEER member organizations. For more information on our past and present work, please visit our publications page and our blog.

If you would like to join PEER's mailing list as an individual, please sign up here.

If your organization would like to join PEER as an Affiliate member, please register your organization here.

Please contact PEER@yale.edu with any questions.