Senior Policy Researcher; Professor of Policy Analysis, RAND School of Public Policy
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Jill Cannon is a senior policy researcher at RAND and professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Her work focuses on examining the relationship between early childhood programs and policies and child outcomes. She was previously a policy fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, and prior to that she served as the associate director of child policy at RAND, as well as associate director of the Promising Practices Network on Children, Families, and Communities.
Cannon has led multiple studies, and her research includes studies of early care and education quality rating and improvement systems, preschool social-emotional learning, home visiting programs, pre-kindergarten experiences of children of immigrants, early grade retention, school entry age policy, and the effectiveness of full-day kindergarten. She also has coauthored publications on cost and outcome analysis of early childhood interventions.
Her current and recent projects include evaluations of the Harris County Early Childhood Impact Fund, the PEDALS social-emotional learning program, Quality Start Los Angeles, and the Big Lift pre-K–3 initiative in San Mateo County; studies of early childhood educator compensation in Hawai'i and the cost of quality pre-K in the United States; a synthesis of early childhood intervention research and estimates of economic returns; and a randomized field trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a home visiting program for new parents in New Mexico.
Cannon received her Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Southern California.
Ph.D. in public administration, University of Southern California; M.P.P. in public policy, University of California, Los Angeles; B.A. in political science, University of California, Los Angeles
