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Overview


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.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Recent Publications


Investigating if high-quality kindergarten teachers sustain the pre-K boost to children's emergent literacy skill development in North Carolina.

Journal Article Child development · July 2024 This study tested the hypothesis that high-quality kindergarten teachers sustain and amplify the skill development of children who participated in North Carolina's NC Pre-K program during the previous year, compared to matched non-participants (N = 17,330; ... Full text Cite

Head Start in Low-Wealth, Rural Communities: Evidence from the Family Life Project

Journal Article Early Education and Development · January 1, 2023 This study utilized data from the Family Life Project (FLP) to examine Head Start children’s school readiness skills at the end of preschool in comparison to two other care groups: home-based care and other center-based care. The FLP study enrolled a birth ... Full text Cite

Early maternal language input and classroom instructional quality in relation to children's literacy trajectories from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.

Journal Article Developmental psychology · June 2022 Both early childhood maternal language input and the quality of classroom instruction in elementary school have been shown to be important environmental supports in predicting children's literacy skill development. However, no studies have simultaneously e ... Full text Cite
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External Links


@RobC123