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 director of the Study of California’s Transitional Kindergarten Program. She recently directed an evaluation of the Stretch to Kindergarten program in Mountain View, CA and served as the deputy project director of the First 5 LA Family Literacy Initiative evaluation. She also recently 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 examine best practices in tracking expenditure data to the school level, the multi-year Packard Foundation Preschool for All Technical Assistance project; preschool technical assistance projects with Sonoma, Riverside, and San Diego Counties; the Independent Comprehensive Study of New Mexico Public School Funding; and an evaluation of the San Mateo County Early Childhood Mental Health Project, where she served as project director. Manship is skilled in quantitative and qualitative analyses, evaluation, cost analysis, project management, and writing.

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.