A developmental psychologist specializing in early childhood education, Dr. Ellen Frede is currently a part-time consultant having recently retired from serving as the Senior Co-Director at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), and as a Research Professor for the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. Her research focused on investigating the relationship of program quality to child outcomes, the longitudinal effects of preschool, supports for bilingual acquisition, inclusion of children with disabilities, and education policy.
Prior to NIEER, Ellen served as Deputy Director for Early Learning at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where she led the team in developing the first national strategy to improve provision of pre-k in the US. She also oversaw all education and research initiatives for Acelero Learning, a large-scale Head Start grantee serving children in 4 states.
Ellen was on the faculty at The College of New Jersey when she took a leave of absence to head the Office of Early Childhood Education in the New Jersey Department of Education. She guided the design and implementation of the Abbott Preschool Program where she applied her experience as a teacher, teacher educator, and researcher to develop a comprehensive continuous improvement system for accountability and program improvement. Under her leadership, a broad coalition of educators, advocates and researchers developed program standards which were the basis of data-based decision-making at the child, classroom, program, and state level. This effort led to a preschool program that has shown benefits for participants into the tenth grade and is regularly referred to as a model for the nation.
Early in her career, Ellen taught in the preschool and elementary classrooms at HighScope and co-developed the HighScope Training of Teacher Trainers program. Her later dissertation research looked at the efficacy of HighScope classrooms in the state preschool program in South Carolina.