Daphna Bassok

Batten Bicentennial Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education; Associate Director, EdPolicyWorks

  • Ph.D., Stanford University, 2009
  • M.A., Stanford University , 2007
  • M.A., Stanford University, 2003
  • B.A., University of Michigan, 2000

Daphna Bassok is an Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and is the Associate Director of EdPolicyWorks a joint collaboration between the School of Education and Human Development and the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Her research addresses early childhood education policy, with a focus on efforts to improve early childhood systems at scale.   She is particularly interested in policies aimed at supporting the early childhood workforce.

Bassok directs the Study of Early Education through Partnerships (SEE-Partnerships).  She works closely with early childhood policy makers at both the Virginia and Louisiana Departments of Education on research aimed to inform efforts to build more cohesive, higher quality, early childhood education systems.

Currently she is leading the multi-year evaluation of Virginia’s Federal Preschool Development Grant Birth-5 initiative which aims to expand access to stable, affordable, and quality early education for the Virginia’s families and children, particularly those who are most vulnerable.  As part of that evaluation, her team is conducting the first randomized controlled trial measuring the impacts of financial supports for early educators on reducing turnover.

Through a long-standing Research Policy Partnership in Louisiana, Bassok and colleagues are studying the states’ efforts to foster systemwide change including their unique Quality Rating & Improvement System, their novel approach to credentialing child care teachers, and their child care COVID recovery efforts. Additional information about the Study of Early Education- Louisiana (SEE-LA) is available.

Bassok’s work has been generously funded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Spencer Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and the Foundation for Child Development.

She holds a Ph.D. in the Economics of Education, a M.A. in Economics and a M.A. in Policy Analysis and Evaluation, all from Stanford University.

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