Susanna's research focuses broadly on education policy and its role in improving educational opportunities for students. Her work has addressed issues of educator career choices and professional development, of school finance and governance, and of early childhood systems. Before moving to Brown, Susanna was the Barnett Family Professor of Education at Stanford University. She was the founding director of the Center for Education Policy at Stanford and co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education. Susanna led the research for both Getting Down to Facts projects for California schools. She has been a member of the National Board for Education Sciences, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Overview

Parents face a number of barriers to providing a beneficial home learning environment and investing in their children’s development. While parenting programs and schools' efforts to engage parents often aim at reducing those barriers, most do not, and many, inadvertently, make those barriers higher. By incorporating new understanding about adult behavior change into curricula for parents, our recent research has found that light-touch, easily operational information can change parenting practices and improve children's early learning, particularly for those with lower initial skills and fewer resources at home. The findings demonstrate the potential benefits of supporting parents and the promise of scalable text-messaging programs that are accessible to a wide range of users in generating educational gains at a low cost.