Louisa B. Tarullo
Associate Director and Senior Researcher

Louisa Tarullo is a senior researcher and associate director of research with more than 20 years of experience in early childhood research, focusing on children at risk.

An expert in programs and policies to support optimal development and learning in children from birth through the early school years, Tarullo serves as Mathematica’s area leader for early care and education policy. She directs a design project exploring the relationships between child outcomes and quality in early care settings, and also leads an initiative to develop and test a new measure of caregiver-child interaction in infant-toddler care. As principal investigator for the multi-cohort Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), Tarullo brings in-depth knowledge of what factors in home, school, and neighborhood environments contribute to children’s healthy cognitive and social-emotional development. FACES follows a nationally representative sample of Head Start children from program entry through kindergarten, assessing their progress in language, literacy, mathematics, and social skills.

Tarullo previously directed a quality assurance review of Head Start’s child assessment system, which produced a toolkit of materials to support programs in the use of developmentally appropriate assessment practices. She has also had key roles on an impact analysis of preschool curricula, studies of Early Head Start programs, and a synthesis of evidence-based practices in Head Start.

 

Tarullo joined the company in 2004 after 15 years as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health and the Administration for Children and Families. An active member of the Society for Research in Child Development, she was selected as a member of its Policy and Communications Committee, with oversight for its policy fellowship program. She has published in Developmental Psychology, Early Education and Development, the Handbook of Clinical Child Psychology, and the Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development. She holds an Ed.D. in human development and psychology from Harvard University.

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