Alice Klein is a Senior Research Associate on WestEd’s Mathematics content area team and a Co-Director of the Center for Early Learning at WestEd. Klein has studied early mathematical development for three decades. Her research focuses on educational interventions to enhance the mathematical knowledge of preschool and kindergarten children from low-income and minority backgrounds and efforts to prepare them for standards-based mathematics instruction in elementary school.
Klein coauthored (with Prentice Starkey) an early mathematics curriculum, Pre-K Mathematics, which has been tested in multiple randomized trials and received the highest rating of effectiveness from the What Works Clearinghouse. Her current research focuses on the rigorous evaluation of large-scale math interventions for underserved preschool and kindergarten children.
Klein also has assessment expertise. She developed the Child Math Assessment to measure children’s informal mathematical knowledge, and the Screener for Early Number Sense (with N. Jordan) to identify children at risk for mathematical difficulties in early elementary school. She served on the What Works Clearinghouse as Principal Investigator for Elementary School Mathematics, and on IES grant review panels, and she has published numerous articles on early mathematical development and education.
Prior to joining WestEd, Klein was a Research Psychologist in the Institute of Human Development at University of California (UC) Berkeley, and taught at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara.
Klein received a PhD in developmental psychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.