Tamara Halle Editor

Dr. Tamara Halle is Codirector of Early Childhood Research at Child Trends. She oversees projects in Child Trends’s Washington, D.C., office. She conducts research on children’s early cognitive and social development, children’s school readiness, family and community supports for school readiness, and school characteristics associated with ongoing achievement and positive development. Her recent work focuses on early literacy development among children who are English language learners and evaluations of early childhood curricula, programmes, and professional development aimed at supporting children’s school readiness.

Allison Metz, Ph.D., is a Developmental Psychologist and Scientist for the National Implementation Research Network at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specialises in effective implementation and scaling-up of evidence-based and evidence-informed programs and strategies in early childhood, early care and education and child welfare settings. Her recent work involves improving the well-being of children who exit the foster care system and the evaluation of a professional development system anchored in an online Associates degree for infant and toddler teachers for the Office of Head Start.

Dr. Ivelisse Martinez-Beck coordinates the work of the child care research team at the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), developing the child care policy research agenda, managing large research projects, and representing OPRE and the child care policy research perspective in diverse federal interagency research work groups. Prior to joining The Administration for Children and Families, Dr. Martinez-Beck held a Society for Research in Child Development Executive Branch Policy Fellowship with the Child Care Bureau where she was involved in designing a research agenda to answer policy-relevant questions for Child Care and Development Fund State Administrators and other key stakeholders. A recent focus of her work has been on issues related to the quality of early care and education settings and links to young children's developmental outcomes.