Sean Reardon

About

Sean Reardon is a professor associated with the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, which has developed the first national database of academic performance in the United States. His research focuses on measuring educational opportunity across every community in America, analyzing trends in academic achievement, and understanding disparities in educational outcomes. Reardon contributes to creating applications, research reports, and interactive articles that enable exploration and understanding of educational data. His work includes examining school and neighborhood segregation, racial and economic disparities in education, and the impact of various factors on academic progress and achievement gaps. Through his involvement in the Educational Opportunity Project and related initiatives, Reardon plays a key role in advancing knowledge about educational opportunity, segregation, and achievement trends in U.S. schools.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Demography
• Socioeconomics
• Geography
• Political Science
• Mathematics education
• Gender studies
• Economics
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• Is Separate Still Unequal? New Evidence on School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps

  American Sociological Review · 2024 · 88 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  U.S. public schools are racially and economically segregated. Prior research shows that the desegregation of Southern schools beginning in the 1960s led to significant benefits for Black students. Less clear, however, is whether segregation today has the same harmful effects as it did 50 years ago and through what mechanisms segregation continues to affect achievement. We estimate the effects of current-day school segregation on racial achievement gaps using 11 years of data from all U.S. public…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Racial Segregation and School Poverty in the United States, 1999–2016

  Race and Social Problems · 2020 · 53 citations

  PublisherDOI

• The Geography of Rural Educational Opportunity

  RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences · 2022 · 49 citations

  JeSSiCa dr eSCher , a n ne podolSk y , Se a n F. r e a r don , a nd Ga Br ielle tor r a nCe

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Validation Methods for Aggregate-Level Test Scale Linking: A Case Study Mapping School District Test Score Distributions to a Common Scale

  Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics · 2019-10-08 · 44 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Linking score scales across different tests is considered speculative and fraught, even at the aggregate level. We introduce and illustrate validation methods for aggregate linkages, using the challenge of linking U.S. school district average test scores across states as a motivating example. We show that aggregate linkages can be validated both directly and indirectly under certain conditions such as when the scores for at least some target units (districts) are available on a common test (e.g.…

  PublisherDOI

• School Racial Segregation and the Health of Black Children

  PEDIATRICS · 2022-04-18 · 36 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVES: Few researchers have evaluated whether school racial segregation, a key manifestation of structural racism, affects child health, despite its potential impacts on school quality, social networks, and stress from discrimination. We investigated whether school racial segregation affects Black children's health and health behaviors. METHODS: We estimated the association of school segregation with child health, leveraging a natural experiment in which school districts in recent years exp…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Measuring Spatial Segregation

  NSF · $135k · 2005–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Demetra Kalogrides

  Stanford University

  22 shared

• Stephen W. Raudenbush

  University of Chicago

  17 shared

• Richard J. Murnane

  15 shared

• Stephen L. Buka

  13 shared

• Erin M. Fahle

  Stanford University

  12 shared

• Joseph B. Townsend

  Stanford University

  12 shared

• Scott P. Novak

  11 shared

• Andrew Ho

  10 shared

Labs

• Center for Education Policy AnalysisPI

  We are a community of thought leaders and intellectuals

Education

• B.A., Program of Liberal Studies; Minor in Honors Mathematics

  University of Notre Dame

  1986

• M.A., International Peace Studies

  University of Notre Dame

  1991

• Other, Educational Administration, Planning and Social Policy

  Harvard Graduate School of Education

  1992

• Other, Educational Administration, Planning, and Social Policy

  Harvard Graduate School of Education

  1997

Awards & honors

• Elected Member, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected Member, National Academy of Education

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