Sherri Castle has more than 10 years of experience conducting research and program evaluation in early childhood development and education. She aims to help teachers and communities provide positive, effective experiences for all children, especially those who are historically marginalized and underserved. 

Dr. Castle has conducted research-practice partnerships, state program evaluation, intervention implementation and evaluation, and investigator-initiated studies on a range of topics. She served as principal investigator (PI) on a multi-year research-practice partnership with CAP Tulsa to identify program impacts and recommendations for continuous improvement to support young children and their families. Dr. Castle was a co-PI on the Administration for Children and Families-funded Happy Teacher Wellness Intervention, which was designed to support Head Start teachers’ physical, psychological, and professional well-being. She has also served on the Tulsa Educare local evaluation partnership and the Tulsa SEED Study (School Experiences and Early Development), a longitudinal study to document the trajectories of low-income students who attended public preschool. 

Sherri works closely with program partners to co-design evaluations of progress toward program goals using rigorous research methods and primarily quantitative analytic techniques. She has deep expertise in numerous observational measures of classroom experiences, including novel approaches to data analysis and reporting. Sherri has also utilized secondary data analysis for independent research and to provide benchmarks and comparisons for program partners. 

Dr. Castle’s work has been published in journals, including the Early Childhood Education Journal, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Early Education and Development, Academic Pediatrics, and AERA Open. She has presented at meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, American Education Research Association, Child Care and Early Education Policy Research Consortium, and the National Research Conference on Early Care and Education; and was an invited speaker for the National Head Start Association to support programs’ use of child assessment data. 

Sherri received her bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in human development from Oklahoma State University and her PhD in early childhood education from the University of Oklahoma.