The Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER) is pleased to announce new members of the management team. Child Care Aware of America is a new organizational member, while Dr. Heidi Rosenberg of Education Development Center (EDC) is a new organizational representative.
PEER co-founder Dr. Clare Waterman built PEER’s connection with Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA) after becoming CCAoA’s Senior Director of Research in June. CCAoA is a national non-profit that works to ensure that all families have access to quality, affordable child care. Specifically, CCAoA works with a national network of child care resource and referral agencies to increase the quality and availability of child care through training and technical assistance, research, and policy advocacy. CCAoA’s membership in PEER provides new opportunities for both entities to collaborate on topics related to early care and education. Waterman will continue to serve on the PEER management team as one PEER’s co-directors.
When PEER co-founder George Coleman retired from Cooperative Educational Services (C.E.S.) in 2020, the management team invited Suzanne Clement to replace Coleman on the PEER management team as the C.E.S. representative. At C.E.S., Clement leads early childhood professional learning initiatives for the Professional Development Services department. Clement brings a practitioner perspective developed through 20 years of work with public schools, community-based early care and education programs, family child care programs, and the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood (OEC). As part of Connecticut’s Regional Education Service Center (RESC) Alliance, Clement co-leads the Standards, Curriculum, and Assessment work that is part of the Quality Improvement Supports grant that OEC awarded to the RESC Alliance in 2020, in which PEER is a partner.
Similarly, when Waterman transitioned from EDC to CCAoA, the management team invited Heidi Rosenberg to represent EDC on the PEER management team. Rosenberg is an experienced researcher and evaluator with experience in early care and education, family engagement, out-of-school-time learning, state-level collaborations, and continuous improvement. As well as serving as the director of research for the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment, Rosenberg is now the principle investigator for the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) evaluation planning grant that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research (OPRE) awarded to EDC and OEC in 2021. The other two members of the PEER management team, Dr. Michael Strambler and Joanna Meyer from Yale School of Medicine, are collaborators on the CCDF evaluation planning grant.
Strambler, Meyer, Waterman, and Clement are excited to continue working together and thrilled to welcome Rosenberg to the management team. The complementary areas of expertise offered by the five members of the management team will allow PEER to continue to conduct rigorous, collaborative, actionable 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.