About MDRC
Mirjana (Mira) Pralica is a data analyst working on the Making Pre-K Count and High 5s evaluations, which examine the effects of a preschool math curriculum and a linked intervention in kindergarten. Before coming to MDRC, she was a project manager for a market research agency, where some of her responsibilities were data cleaning, data analysis, and data visualization. She holds an honors degree in psychology and a master’s in applied statistics for the social sciences from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia; her graduate school interests included multicollinearity, multivariate analysis, and missing-data analysis and imputation. Her background in early childhood education targeting low-income families consists of work as a certified elementary school psychologist, volunteer work with children without parental care, and experience as a youth trainer with the Red Cross in Serbia.
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MDRC Publications
BriefLeveraging Naturally Occurring Lotteries to Examine a District-Wide Rollout of Instructional Alignment Across Pre-K and Kindergarten
April, 2022This study investigates whether naturally occurring lotteries, which approximate random assignment, can be used to evaluate the long-term effects of instructional alignment—standards, curricula, and assessments that build on one another from pre-K to elementary school—on children in Boston Public Schools. It concludes that they can.
Issue FocusJuly, 2020Individual growth modeling allows researchers to examine individual research subjects’ trajectories over time. This post describes how the approach was used to test whether the growth in students’ academic skills slowed down during the summer between preschool and kindergarten, and how that pattern varied among students of different demographic groups.
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Other Publications
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Projects
JoAnn Hsueh, Sharon Huang, Meghan McCormick, Michelle Maier, Rebecca Unterman, Desiree Principe Alderson, Barbara Condliffe, Amena Sengal, Sonia Drohojowska, Ilana Blum, Marissa Strassberger, Marie-Andrée Somers, Noemi Altman, Alexandra Bernardi, Mirjana Pralica, Mervett Hefyan, Jálynn Castleman-Smith, Mallory Undestad, Samantha Xia, Emily Davies, Sharon Rowser, Amy TaubWith broad support across the political spectrum, states and localities throughout the country are expanding preschool programs for low-income children. While the public will is strong and the experience to date is encouraging, there is a need for firmer evidence on the most cost-effective ways to produce lasting impacts for children, especially when programs operate...
Shira Kolnik Mattera, Sharon Huang, Seth Muzzy, Samantha Wulfsohn, Marissa Strassberger, Amena Sengal, Mirjana PralicaThe High 5s project is part of the Robin Hood Early Childhood Research Initiative, a partnership between MDRC and the Robin Hood Foundation focused on improving the life trajectories of low-income children in New York City. The Initiative’s first project, Making Pre-K Count ( MPC ), was designed to improve pre-k math instruction using the Building Blocks ...
Barbara S. Goldman, Sharon Huang, Shira Kolnik Mattera, Michelle Maier, Seth Muzzy, Electra Small, Samantha Wulfsohn, Marissa Strassberger, Amena Sengal, Mirjana Pralica, Samantha Xia, Cullen MacDowellMaking Pre-K Count is the result of a partnership between MDRC and the Robin Hood Foundation whose goal is to build evidence about ways to improve the life trajectories of children living in poverty in New York City. The partnership’s first project focuses on improving preschool children’s math skills.
Why math? Recent research suggests that early...