Deanna T. Schexnayder is Associate Director and a Research Scientist at the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources at The University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, and has been conducting research on human resource development issues since 1983. She is currently managing several large-scale research projects, including a three-year study of the devolution of Texas subsidized child care policy to the local level. She and her research team recently completed a five-year impact evaluation of Texas’ welfare reform legislation.
Ms. Schexnayder has directed or co-directed research projects related to Texas welfare, employment and training, child care, and child support programs since 1986. Over that same time period, she has supervised the assembly of complex statistical research data sets from a variety of individual-level administrative data files. She is considered a leader in the use of these data for research purposes and lectures regularly on this topic for national research audiences. She currently serves as a technical advisor to the federally-funded National Child Care Research Collaborative and Archive project.
For well over a decade, Ms. Schexnayder has participated in many local initiatives devoted to improving the quality of child care and public education. She has served on numerous education and child care policy advisory committees for the Austin Independent School District and other organizations. She holds a BS degree in psychology and an MBA degree, both from Louisiana State University.