Stacy (Ehrlich) Loewe is Director of Research at the Learning Policy Institute. In this role, she ensures that high-quality research is being designed and implemented in ways that make it directly relevant to practice and policy. Her work focuses on early childhood education (ECE) and organizational conditions within educational settings. Loewe has substantive expertise in the areas of attendance, the measurement of early education programs and school climate, program implementation, kindergarten transitions, and braiding of ECE funding streams.

Loewe has authored many studies, including a study documenting the prevalence of prekindergarten absenteeism and its relationship with ongoing attendance and learning outcomes, Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools: Relationships with Learning Outcomes and Reasons for Absences, which was cited in national efforts to improve student attendance. For example, this work was cited as motivation for changes in the 2016 Head Start Program Performance Standards around how to track, define, and require supports to improve student attendance and as a motivation behind the Every Student, Every Day Initiative, spearheaded by multiple federal agencies. With colleagues at the Ounce of Prevention Fund, Stacy was also co-developer of the Early Education Essentials (now called The Essentials 0-5 Survey), a set of teacher and parent surveys adapted from the 5Essentials K–12 surveys designed to measure organizational conditions in early education settings.

Prior to joining LPI, Loewe was a Principal Research Scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago, where she led several federal-, state-, and local-level research initiatives aimed at improving ECE, including several funded through the Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation at the Administration for Children & Families. Loewe was also previously a Managing Director and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, where she developed and led the early childhood education research agenda, supported other research organizations in implementing research–practitioner partnership models, and served as the Research–Practice Coordinator for the Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Program fellows at the University of Chicago. Loewe began her career as a researcher at Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands, where she conducted research to respond to the needs of state departments of education.

Loewe has a PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Chicago and a BS in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.