Dr. W. Steven Barnett
W. Steven Barnett is Board of Governors Professor of Education and Founding Co-Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University, United States. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. His work focuses on public policies to support early learning and child development, including studies of the economics of early education. Dr. Barnett earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Barnett has authored and co-authored more than 200 publications. His best-known work includes the landmark benefit-cost analysis of the Perry Preschool Project in 1985 and other benefit-cost analyses, research reviews on long-term effects, randomized trials comparing alternative approaches to educating young children, including “length of day,” monolingual versus dual-language immersion, and the Tools of the Mind curriculum. His work focuses on practical policies to translate knowledge from research into effective public investments that support young children and their families.
Dr.Barnett has led multiple large-scale evaluations of preschool initiatives and developed the State of Preschool survey that has continuously provided detailed data on every state’s preschool policies since 2002. He has advanced the study of preschool education policy and practice for more than 30 years and has been recognized as one of the most influential education policy scholars in the United States.