American Institutes for Research

Karen Manship is a principal researcher with AIR focusing on early childhood and K-12 education policy and finance. She currently serves as Project Manager of the First 5 California Dual Language Learner Pilot Study and of a national study of the Montessori preschool model funded by the Institute for Education Sciences.  She also served as the director of the Study of California’s Transitional Kindergarten Program and led the case studies task for a U.S. Department of Education study of programs successful at sustaining the effects of preschool.

Manship has conducted research and cost analyses for a number of additional projects during her time at AIR, including the current U.S. Department of Education study to the implementation of weighted student funding (WSF) systems, a randomized control trial of the HighScope preschool curriculum, and multi-year Packard Foundation-funded Preschool for All technical assistance projects.  She has assisted local governments and other organizations in California to compile and analyze demographic and enrollment data to plan for expanding early care and education services, and helped oversee the development of AIR’s Early Learning Needs Assessment Tool. Manship is skilled in quantitative and qualitative analyses, evaluation design, cost analysis, project management, and writing for diverse audiences.

Before joining AIR, she was an analyst for the School Finance Redesign Project at the University of Washington and a statistician and Presidential Management Fellow at the National Center for Education Statistics.