Haidee Bernstein, PhD, has more than 25 years of experience working as a researcher and technical assistance consultant and has taught special education students and at the university level.  Dr. Bernstein has deep knowledge and expertise about both early childhood special education and school-age special education issues. She has provided guidance in the areas of public policy analysis; policy evaluation; technical assistance to states and localities; design, management, and coordination of state grants for special education assistance; Head Start, Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), the Early Hearing Detection Intervention (EHDI) Program and other areas of early childhood.

During the past 10 years, much of Dr. Bernstein’s work has concentrated on providing technical assistance to states through several national technical assistance centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), including the Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy Center), IDEA Data Center, and Data Accountability Center (DAC), and through individual grants or contracts with states. This work has largely focused on assisting states with meeting their federal reporting requirements for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) programs for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children with disabilities.  As data collection capabilities have improved, Dr. Bernstein has provided support and guidance to states related to their IDEA data reporting Indicators, including assisting states at the local, state, and national levels with indicators including their State Systemic Improvement Plans (SSIP), general supervision requirements, data quality issues, data visualization, and other areas of need related to data reporting, quality, and use.

Dr. Bernstein has expertise in providing this technical assistance in multiple ways to reach multiple audiences: through in-person and virtual meetings and with state agency staff, state and national conference presentations, technical briefs, toolkits, computer applications, and national webinars.

Dr. Bernstein has focused her research on the intersection between the CAPTA and IDEA to support timely and efficient referrals for children with substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect to early intervention and preschool special education programs and services and EHDI and IDEA regulations to promote early detection and services for children who are deaf or hard of hearing.  She has presented at national conferences and has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to increase interactions and knowledge between EHDI and IDEA program managers.  She also has extensive research and experience with Head Start programs. Dr. Bernstein was deputy director of the Head Start Impact Study and oversaw the development of the field training manuals for the study.  The directors met regularly with state and federal partners throughout the study to ensure proper implementation of the protocols.

Key projects

1. Bernstein, H., Gooden, C., Romero, L. R., & Walters, S. (2018). Part C Exiting Toolkit (for Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education). Westat.
2. Harmon, G., Bernstein, H., & Walsh, S. (2018, August). Lessons learned in sharing EHDI and Part C data: Background, current TA, and a state story. Improving Data, Improving Outcomes Conference, Washington, DC.
3. Bernstein, H., Mauzy, D., Rickson, D., Sharp, B., & Backer, L. (2018, August). Data culture: What does it look like in your program? Improving Data, Improving Outcomes Conference, Washington, DC.
4. Bernstein, H. (2018, August). Using data visualization to communicate data effectively. Improving Data, Improving Outcomes Conference, Washington, DC.