Center for Child & Family Policy | Duke University

Robert C. Carr

Research Scientist

Robert C. Carr is a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy working on the NICHD-funded project Factors in Persistence Versus Fadeout of Early Childhood Intervention Impacts. His research broadly considers how early childhood programs and public policies influence children’s development of academic and social-behavioral skills, focusing on the effects of state-funded pre-kindergarten and Head Start preschool programming.

Carr completed a Ph.D. in education with an emphasis in applied developmental science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he worked as a graduate research assistant at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. As a doctoral student, Carr participated in pre-doctoral training programs with the Center for Developmental Science (Carolina Consortium on Human Development) and the Society for Research in Child Development (State Policy Scholars Program in Early Learning). His dissertation research was supported by a Head Start Graduate Student Research Grant from the U.S. Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation.

Education:

• Ph.D., Education, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -
• M.A., Teaching and Learning, University of California, San Diego -
• B.A., Communication, University of California, San Diego -

Recent Publications

1. Garrett-Peters, PT and Mokrova, IL and Carr, RC and Vernon-Feagans, L and Family Life Project Key Investigators (2019). Early student (dis)engagement: Contributions of household chaos, parenting, and self-regulatory skills.. Developmental psychology, 55(7), 1480--1492. (Print-Electronic). [doi]  [abs]


2. Vernon-Feagans, L and Mokrova, IL and Carr, RC and Garrett-Peters, PT and Burchinal, MR (2019). Cumulative years of classroom quality from kindergarten to third grade: Prediction to children’s third grade literacy skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 47, 531--540. [doi]


3. Carr, RC and Mokrova, IL and Vernon-Feagans, L and Burchinal, MR (2019). Cumulative classroom quality during pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and children’s language, literacy, and mathematics skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 47, 218--228. [doi]


4. Burchinal, M and Carr, RC and Vernon-Feagans, L and Blair, C and Cox, M (2018). Depth, persistence, and timing of poverty and the development of school readiness skills in rural low-income regions: Results from the family life project. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 45, 115--130. [doi]