Jill Claxton

Jill Claxton is the Director of Evaluation at HighScope Educational Research Foundation. She has collected program and child data and trained others to do so both nationally and internationally in her 30+ years with HighScope. She has coordinated and supervised several projects, which entail monitoring multisite research efforts, serving as a liaison with partner sites, establishing guidelines for representative sample selections, and disseminating data findings. She served as the project coordinator for the design, development, and validation of the Family Child Care Program Quality Assessment, Infant-Toddler Program Quality Assessment, and Classroom Coach. The children in care across the various projects have ranged in age from infancy through early elementary school attending early childhood center settings, home-based care settings, children cared for in their own homes and elementary schools. Ms. Claxton contributed to an examination of the costs and benefits associated with the expansion of Michigan’s state-funded preschool program, the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) and the validation of Great Start to Quality (GSQ), Michigan’s state-level program quality rating and improvement system (QRIS). Ms. Claxton is currently leading the data collection efforts for the Educare Flint, Michigan evaluation project in partnership with American Institutes for Research. She is certified in classroom observations, including Pre-K-3 CLASS, Classroom Coach, and ITERS-3. Jill completed an MA in Educational Psychology with a concentration in research and evaluation and a BS in Special Education for Hearing Impairments from Eastern Michigan University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Oakland University, in Early Childhood Education, with an expected graduation date in 2022.