Anna Shapiro

Alumni

Anna Shapiro

Research Associate, RAND Corporation

Anna Shapiro's research focuses on the effects of early childhood programs and policies on young children’s cognitive and socioemotional outcomes. She is particularly focused on the effects of early childhood programs on children with or at-risk for…

Publication

U-M education researchers present evidence-based findings and analysis to inform Michigan’s Pre-K-for-All goals

Dec 6, 2023

Achieving Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s aim of universal Pre-K, made in her State of the State address in January 2023, will require building upon its established programs and making some adjustments to the state’s education system. A...

U-M education researchers present evidence-based findings and analysis to inform Michigan’s Pre-K-for-All goals

Publication

Learning from lottery-based evaluations of early education programs

Apr 19, 2023

The value of Pre-K education has been widely acknowledged through decades of research. However, much of that research has come from studying older and often smaller programs than those currently being implemented across the country. To determine how...

Annie Taylor on the value of long-term research partnerships

News

Causal Inference program’s first PhD graduates reflect on their training

Aug 20, 2021

The Education Policy Initiative (EPI) Training Program in Causal Inference in Education Policy Research (CIEPR) graduated its first full cohort of PhDs in 2021. First funded in 2015, the focus of the program is to prepare doctoral students to...

Causal Inference program’s first PhD graduates reflect on their training

Causal Inference in Education Research Seminar (CIERS)

A talk by Gaurav Khanna, Economics, and Anna Shapiro, Education

Apr 6, 2016, 8:30-10:00 am EDT

Weill Hall, Room 3240

A presentation by Gaurav Khanna, PhD student in Economics, and Anna Shapiro, PhD student in Education

EPI Policy briefs

Michigan Transitional Kindergarten: A First Look at Program Reach and Features

January 1, 2023

Anna Shapiro, Jordy Berne, Katia Cordoba Garcia, Brian Jacob, Tareena Musaddiq, Samuel Owusu, Christina Weiland

Thousands of young Michigan children attend state-funded transitional kindergarten (TK) programs. These programs are intended to provide an additional year of early education before children begin traditional kindergarten. School districts in...

Teacher with children in kindergarten classroom

EPI Policy briefs

Preschool for All: A Strong Start for Washington State’s Children

October 1, 2021

Christina Weiland, Tim Burgess, Ajay Chaudry, Ruth Kagi, Anna Shapiro, Casey Moran

Washington State has an early childhood crisis roiling almost invisibly across the state, with many children not receiving the strong and fair start in life they need and deserve. This crisis has life-long implications for children because early...

EPI Working papers

When do the Literacy Skills of Preschool Attenders and Non-Attenders Converge? Evidence from Boston

October 1, 2019

Christina Weiland, Anna Shapiro, Rebecca Unterman

Attending preschool improves children’s kindergarten readiness, but the cognitive outcomes of preschool attenders and non-attenders tend to converge partially or fully in elementary school. In older programs, most of the non-attender “catch up”...

EPI Policy briefs

Findings on Boston Prekindergarten Through Early Elementary School

October 1, 2019

Christina Weiland, Anna Shapiro, Rebecca Unterman, Hirokazu Yoshikawa

This brief summarizes findings from the Sustaining the Boost project, an Institute of Education Sciences-funded study of the Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program. We extended what is known about the program in four different recent...

Early learning

Evaluation of Michigan's Transitional Kindergarten Program

January 2021

Christina Weiland, Brian Jacob, Anna Shapiro, Tareena Musaddiq, Jasmina Camo-Biogradlija, Jordy Berne

In partnership with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE), the research team is analyzing administrative education records to describe transitional kindergarten programming in Michigan (i.e. Young Fives) and to examine its impacts on children’s kindergarten readiness and K-3 outcomes. This study also has several connections to the COVID-19 crisis. Program data will be used to describe the progress of cohorts of children more versus less directly affected by COVID-19. Additionally, surveys of families, teachers, and districts on their COVID-19-related experiences and challenges will be...

Young child running down a school hallway

Boston Early Childhood Research Practice Partnership

Impacts of the Boston Pre-K Program Through Early Adulthood Study

July 2022

Christina Weiland, Rebecca Unterman, Anna Shapiro, Tiffany Wu, Anne Taylor, Thomas Staines, William Corin

The Boston Early Adulthood study is the second phase of an ongoing study, which follows 12,740 children who applied to the Boston Pre-K program between 2007 and 2011. The Boston Pre-K program is somewhat unique in the national landscape as it uses evidence- and play-based language, literacy, and math-focused curriculum, pays teachers on the same scale as their K-12 peers, provides coaching supports to teachers, and is open to children in Boston, regardless of family characteristics. The first students to experience the program are just reaching early adulthood, allowing our team to estimate...