Paola Guerrero-Rosada
Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine
Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine
I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy.
I examine two assumptions that underlie early childhood education (ECE) quality improvement policy: that widely used classroom observation tools identify what actually drives children's learning, and that voluntary quality improvement programs reach the providers who need them most. In my measurement studies, I find that CLASS scores show null relations with children's learning gains, that within-classroom variation in learning experiences does not consistently predict developmental outcomes, and that the instructional profiles and quality ratings derived from observation shift depending on which time-use instrument is used — suggesting that the active ingredients of effective early childhood instruction remain unidentified. In my equity-focused work, I use administrative, geospatial, and experimental methods to study who participates in quality improvement, drawing on data from Boston's Universal Pre-K program and Puerto Rico's public elementary schools.
I received my Ph.D. in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2023.
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