Anne Partika

Senior Education Researcher, SRI Education

Anne Partika, PhD, is a senior education researcher in SRI’s Center for Learning and Development. She is an expert in public early education systems, including Head Start and public prekindergarten, and in early education supports for multilingual learners from prekindergarten to elementary school. She also has expertise in mixed-methods research design and analysis, including experience managing and analyzing longitudinal and multilevel data and conducting rapid cycle evaluations.

At SRI, Partika leads studies on early childhood education, with a primary focus on instructional coaching and multilingual learners. She is a co-lead of Reimagining Instructional Coaching in Early Education (RICiEE), an ongoing initiative that aims to expand access to high-quality early childhood education by improving the usefulness, usability, and scalability of classroom quality measurements. Through RICiEE, she is principal investigator (PI) on a pilot study of a new coaching and informal observation tool and lead analyst for the Early Childhood Classroom Observations (ECCO) Study. She is also PI on The Role of Neighborhood Context and Classroom Experiences in Supporting Early Learning Skills for Dual Language Learners in Head Start, a secondary analysis project funded by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) that aims to characterize the diverse contexts in which dual language learners attend Head Start and identify classroom practices that best support those learners across contexts. Finally, she is PI on the Pilot Evaluation of Playful, Learning-Rich Story Trails, an implementation study of playful, literacy-focused Story Trails installed in public parks in Philadelphia.

Before joining SRI, Partika served as lead quantitative analyst of a portfolio of work on multilingual learners for the Tulsa School Experiences and Early Development (SEED) study, a longitudinal study of children who attended Head Start or public prekindergarten in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Across several studies, this work found evidence that teachers’ connections with the linguistic backgrounds of Spanish-speaking students—through supports for the home language, use of Spanish in the classroom, and shared experiences of Spanish-English bilingualism—were associated with greater skill development across domains, including English literacy, Spanish, math, and self-regulation. Partika has also worked as a research assistant at Child Trends, primarily on state and federal projects focused on early care and education access and quality, and as a teacher of English to speakers of other languages.

Partika earned her PhD in developmental psychology and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree from Georgetown University, where she was an ACF Early Care and Education Research Scholar. She received her BA in psychology from the College of Wooster.

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Key projects

• The Role of Neighborhood Context and Classroom Experiences in Supporting Early Learning Skills for Dual Language Learners in Head Start
• Early Childhood Coaching and Informal Observation Tool Pilot
• Early Childhood Classroom Observations (ECCO) Study

Highlighted publications

• *The intersection of teacher-child language & ethnic match for Hispanic/Latine dual language learners in early elementary school.
• *Exploring the predictors of enrollment and kindergarten entry skills of Spanish-speaking dual language learners in a mixed-delivery system of public preschool.
• *Dual language supports for dual language learners? Exploring preschool classroom instructional supports for DLLs’ early learning outcomes.

Additional publications

• Using the Reimagining Instructional Coaching Framework in the development of pre-k classroom observation tools
• Observing classrooms through a digital lens: Examining the reliability and feasibility of video observations in pre-kindergarten classrooms
• Much hypothesized, rarely tested: Public preschool attendance predicts executive functioning skills in 3rd grade
• Predictors of young students’ school participation during the early days of COVID-19 remote learning. Children and Youth Services Review, 163, 107745
• Public preschool predicts stronger third-grade academic skills. AERA Open, 10
• Strengthening the teacher workforce to support multilingual learners: A tool for state educational agencies
• Immigrant children as dual language learners: A research review on preschool supports for developing bilinguals. In O. N. Saracho (Ed.), Contemporary perspectives on research on immigration in early childhood education
• *The role of bilingual supports in dual language learners’ language & literacy development: Findings from the Tulsa SEED Study.
• *Hispanic English language learner families and food insecurity during COVID-19: Risk factors and systems of food support.
• *A deeper dive, a wider pool: Preschool benefits sustain to first grade on a broader set of outcomes.
• *Both sides of the screen: Predictors of parents’ and teachers’ depression and food insecurity during COVID-related distance learning.
• *Chaos during the COVID-19 pandemic: Predictors of household chaos among low-income families during a global pandemic.
• *Everyday heroes: The personal and economic stressors of early care and education teachers serving low-income children.
• *Head Start classroom features and language and literacy growth among children with diverse language backgrounds.
• *Identifying teachers’ supports of metacognition through classroom talk and its relation to growth in conceptual learning.

*Publications prior to joining SRI International

For a more extensive list of publications, see Google Scholars