Pia Caronongan

Pia Caronongan’s work focuses on federal and state efforts to support and improve early care and education (ECE) access and quality. She collaborates with clients and stakeholders to design and conduct rigorous evaluations of early childhood initiatives and in-depth examinations of the systems that support ECE programs, including community-based centers, state pre-K, and Head Start.

She is project director of the Infant and Toddler Teacher and Caregiver Competencies Project for the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation. This project focuses on how states, institutes of higher education, and professional organizations use competency frameworks to promote development of the ECE workforce and improve the quality of care of infants and toddlers. She is also the deputy project director of the Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High Quality Early Care and Education project, working to develop measures of ECE implementation and cost to better understand how child care centers can use resources to deliver and improve ECE services. In addition, Caronongan directs Mathematica’s subcontract for the Child Care Research and Evaluation Capacity Building Center, with the Urban Institute. This Center is developing resources and activities to support state, territory, and tribal child care agencies in conducting, understanding, consuming, and using research and evaluation for decision making.

Caronongan is a member of the Society for Research in Child Development and the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management. She received her Ed.D. in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education from Harvard University.