Rachel Schumacher
Senior Fellow, Child Care and Early Education Policy Expertise infant/toddler child care policies, Early Head StartMs. Schumacher is a Senior Fellow for the Child Care and Early Education team at CLASP. Her expertise is the financing and implementation of state policies to expand high quality infant/toddler child care. In particular, she has studied state initiatives to broaden access to Early Head Start in partnership with child care programs. She currently leads the Charting Progress for Babies in Child Care project. Ms. Schumacher has written extensively on a range of topics, including: delivering state pre-kindergarten in community-based child care settings; coordinating child care, Head Start, and pre-kindergarten policies in the states, and meeting high quality program standards in child care settings. She also has analyzed trends in federal Early Head Start and Head Start policy as well as federal and state child care subsidy policy. She provides advice and technical assistance to federal and state policymakers and advocates around the country. Prior to joining CLASP in 1999, Ms. Schumacher worked on child and family policy issues in Cincinnati, Ohio, and as a legislative aide in Massachusetts. She holds a Master's in Public Policy with a concentration in Child and Family Policy from the University of Chicago, Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy, and a bachelor's degree from Brown University.