Elisa Garcia, PhD, is an education researcher in SRI’s Education Division. She is an expert in the development of early language and literacy, social-emotional, and executive functioning skills, with a focus on diverse populations such as dual language learners. She also has expertise in quantitative data analysis, including experimental and quasi-experimental design, and analyses of complex, multilevel data.

At SRI, Garcia is the PI of an evaluation of the impacts of mobile messaging programs on responsive caregiving practices of parents of young children. She co-leads two large-scale U.S. Department of Education-funded evaluations of social-emotional learning interventions. One is an Institute for Education Sciences (IES)-funded effectiveness study of the Tools for Getting Along social problem-solving curriculum for elementary students, and the other is an Education Innovation Research mid-phase evaluation of the Pyramid Model curriculum for preschoolers and kindergarteners. She is a researcher on the evaluation of the Ready to Learn Initiative, for which she contributes to the development of survey instruments and co-leads data analyses for summative and formative evaluations of digital media to support early learning. As part of the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands, she has contributed to providing technical assistance to the Connecticut State Department of Education through conducting case studies and interviews to understand special education referrals among English learners.

Before joining SRI, Garcia conducted analyses of nationally representative datasets to examine the early vocabulary development of low-income dual language learners attending Head Start. She has partnered with the San Francisco Unified School District to help the Early Education Department model and understand early literacy achievement.

Garcia received her BA in psychology from Kenyon College. She earned her PhD in developmental and psychological science from the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she was an IES predoctoral training fellow in quantitative policy analysis.

Key projects

1. Mobile Messaging for Responsive Caregiving
2. Effectiveness Study of Tools for Getting Along
3. Scaling up Implementation of the Pyramid Model
4. Evaluation of the Ready to Learn Initiative