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Shari Golan

Director, Center for Education and Human Services

Shari Golan, Ph.D., Director of SRI’s Center for Education and Human Services, has more than 20 years of experience helping improve education, social, and health programs and policies for young children and their families. Her expertise includes working with policymakers, funders, and program leaders to identify desired outcomes, strategies to achieve them, and ways to collect and use high-quality data to monitor progress. Her research has addressed school readiness, early childhood education program quality and improvement, parent support and education programs, and the building of comprehensive and integrated systems for children and families.

Dr. Golan has worked on programs to build early learning systems in Illinois, Florida, Washington, and California. In Illinois, Dr. Golan recently worked with the Erikson Institute to design an evaluation of its New Schools Project, which helps Chicago schools implement a preschool to grade 3 model that is both developmental and rigorous. In Florida, she is completing a 3-year evaluation of Ready Schools Miami, an early learning systems change initiative, and is launching a 4-year random control trial study of the Florida Master Teacher Initiative through an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant. Dr. Golan also recently completed a Parent Needs Assessment for the Washington State Department of Early Learning (DEL) that involved a random-digit dial statewide survey in English and Spanish and several focus groups. To help DEL develop statewide kindergarten assessment practices, she conducted a literature review on best practices in the assessment of young children and a statewide survey with many stakeholders about their priorities for a statewide kindergarten assessment process. In 2007, Dr. Golan completed a 5-year evaluation of First 5 California, a statewide early childhood and school readiness program to improve the health, development, family functioning, and systems of care for children from birth to age 5. This evaluation included collection of outcome data on children and families, development of a web-based data system, development of a kindergarten entry profile assessment (KEP), implementation of the KEP with 10,000 children for each of three years, analysis of key educational, health, and social population-based indicators, and the creation of fact sheets, policy and practitioner briefs, and annual reports for the California Legislature and public.

Dr. Golan also conducts studies on family engagement and welfare, and family-school partnerships. She currently is co-directing a 3-year evaluation of Great Schools’ College Bound, an online parent involvement program that offers a web-based curriculum and coaching to help parents raise their children to be college-ready. She is in the fourth year of evaluating the Santa Clara County Family Wellness Court which offers coordinated services to families affected by methamphetamine and other substance abuse. She also co-directs a study using ECLS-B data to determine the impact of transition activities on children’s transition to kindergarten and school readiness outcomes. Past projects focused on family-school partnerships include a 3-year study of the Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) program, a program designed to help new immigrant parents to better support their children’s academic, social, and emotional growth at home and through school involvement and a 3-year evaluation of the California's Healthy Start School-Linked Services initiative.

Dr. Golan received her Ph.D. in education from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Golan can be contacted at cehs@sri.com.