Tyler Wayne Watts

I am an Assistant Professor of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Human Development at Teachers College, Columbia University. I study educational policies designed to promote the cognitive and socio-emotional development of children from underserved communities. I worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at New York University, and I received my Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Irvine in 2017.

I am currently working on several large-scale, longitudinal, studies of early childhood development, including evaluations of the Chicago School Readiness Project, the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K program, and the Building Blocks preschool mathematics curriculum. Across my projects, I seek understand whether interventions designed to boost children’s early cognitive and behavioral skills will make long-lasting changes on developmental outcomes.