The Association of Public Policy and Analysis Management has selected Sean Reardon, endowed Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford University, as the recipient of the 2015 Spencer Foundation Award. The Spencer Foundation Award recognizes noteworthy contributions through research and analysis in the field of education policy and management.

As part of the award, Reardon has been invited to deliver a lecture at the association's research conference in November. The lecture will take place at 7 a.m., Nov. 13,  during the Spencer Foundation's award lecture and breakfast at the Hyatt Regency in Miami.

“Sean Reardon's research is rigorous, creative, and policy-relevant, advancing our understanding of some of the most important topics related to inequality of education today,” said Jane Waldfogel, the association's president. “His work exemplifies the mission of the Association, fostering excellence in research, analysis, and education.”

Reardon's research focuses on the causes, patterns, trends, and consequences of social and educational inequality, the effects of educational policy on educational and social inequality, and in applied statistical methods for educational research. In addition, he develops methods of measuring social and educational inequality (including the measurement of segregation and achievement gaps) and methods of causal inference in educational and social science research. He teaches graduate courses in applied statistical methods, with a particular emphasis on the application of experimental and quasi-experimental methods to the investigation of issues of educational policy and practice.

Reardon has published a number of influential studies describing the patterns, trends, and causes of school and residential segregation and achievement gaps including his recent article, “Practical issues in estimating achievement gaps from coarsened data,” co-authored with Andrew Ho of Harvard University

Michael S. McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation and a member of the award selection committee noted: "Sean is a remarkably able and creative scholar. He has made significant analytic contributions to measurement theory and to causal methods, but he is even better known for his imaginative and careful empirical work, which has had a large impact on both scholarly and public discussion of educational inequality."

[Read Reardon's New York Times op-ed on economic inequality and the achievement gap.]

Reardon received his doctorate in education in 1997 from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. At Stanford, he helped develop and is director of the Stanford Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Program in Quantitative Education Policy Research and is co-founder of Stanford’s Workshop on Poverty and Inequality in Education, a series of lectures and events designed to engage the Stanford and local communities in conversations about how to reduce educational inequalities.

Reardon is a member of the National Academy of Education, serves as vice president of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, and has received a number of honors and awards, including a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar Award, a Carnegie Scholar Award, a National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, and AERA’s Palmer O. Johnson Award.

The story above was issued as a news release on Sept. 28 by the Association of Public Policy and Analysis Management.