Katie Paschall is a senior research scientist in early childhood at Child Trends. Her research focuses on young children’s environments and relationships with caregivers, as well as the needs of caregivers themselves. Katie has extensive experience designing and leading projects that analyze existing data on early care and education, including the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) data, The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, and the National Survey of Early Care and Education. As deputy research director of the National Early Care and Education Workforce Center, she oversees multiple research projects across four partner institutions and works closely with Technical Assistance specialists to ensure research produced by the Center is actionable for supporting career advancement and equitable compensation for the early care and education (ECE) workforce. She is also currently the principal investigator of a study on the retention and well-being of the Black home-based ECE workforce during COVID-19.

Her other work includes evaluations of community parent engagement programs and state programs to support the early care and education workforce, and analyses of relevant national child care policy questions in collaboration with the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation. In addition, she has previously led projects validating a new measure of school readiness for young children, Healthy and Ready to Learn, in partnership with the Maternal and Child Health Bureau at the Health Resources Services Administration. She has been published in several child development, social work, and family relationship journals, and co-authored a book chapter on the primacy of parent-child relationships during early toddlerhood. She has also authored numerous research briefs and blogs highlighting the latest updates to children’s well-being including poverty, use of child care, and readiness for school. Katie is a graduated fellow of the Doris Duke Fellowship for the Promotion of Child Well-Being and remains active in the fellowship network.