Cynthia Osborne

Cynthia Osborne is the associate dean for academic strategies and director of the Center for Health and Social Policy (CHASP) at the LBJ School. She is also the founder and director of the Child and Family Research Partnership (CFRP), a group that conducts rigorous research on policy issues related to young children, adolescents and their parents. She most recently launched the new national Prenatal-to-Three Policy Impact Center at CFRP, specializing in evidence-informed state policies that strengthen outcomes for infants and toddlers. Osborne holds a Ph.D. in demography and public affairs from Princeton University, a Master in Public Policy degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a Master of Arts in education from Claremont Graduate University. Her teaching and research interests include social policy issues, poverty and inequality, family and child well-being, early childhood, fatherhood and family demography. Osborne is an appointed member of the National Academies of Sciences Committee to Reduce Child Poverty by Half in Ten Years. She has extensive experience leading long-term evaluations of state and national programs, with the aim of helping organizations understand what works, and how to ensure sustainable implementation of effective policies. Her work includes evaluations of one of the largest home visiting programs in the country (Texas) and many critical state-level child welfare and child support programs. Osborne previously was director of the Project on Education Effectiveness and Quality, an initiative that measured state educator preparation programs’ influence on student achievement.