The Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) at Stanford University and the New York State Education Department (NYSED) have launched a five-year project to map the landscape of equity across the New York State education system.

The aim of the project, in which researchers will leverage 15 years’ worth of data from NYSED, is to provide actionable information about how past and current education policies and practices impact equity in the school system.

The research team – including Stanford Graduate School of Education professors Sean Reardon, Ben Domingue, and Francis A. Pearman – will analyze student, teacher, school, and district data to develop a set of equity indicators that New York can use to monitor students’ access to educational opportunities within the education system. The team will analyze these indicators to understand whether inequities in access to opportunities – such as early childhood care and particular features of a school or neighborhood – are connected to disparities in students’ academic outcomes, including test scores and graduation rates. 

“School systems have tremendous power to address disparities in educational opportunity through decisions they make on a regular basis,” said Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford and director of the EOP. “Our hope is that this project will show how system policies can be targeted to combat inequities, and that it will serve as a model for other partnerships between researchers and state education agencies.” 

In addition to measuring and mapping out patterns of disparities among student outcomes and opportunities to learn, the researchers will assess the reliability and feasibility of using measures of such opportunities in the New York State data system to monitor educational equity. They will also provide evidence about specific features of the education system – including state-level policies and local strategic planning – that lead to greater equality in student outcomes. 

Over the coming years, progress updates from this effort will be shared with, and feedback sought from, policymakers and education leaders throughout New York’s education system. The goals are to provide transparent information about educational equity in New York, and to inform state and local collaboration intended to address disparities in access to learning opportunities. 

The project was presented at the New York State Board of Regents meeting on November 14, 2022.

The Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) Research Team

Core Researchers

• Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality, Stanford Graduate School of Education
• Erin Fahle, Research Scientist, NWEA
• Andrew Ho, Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Ben Shear, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder

Collaborators

• Ben Domingue, Associate Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Education
• Francis A. Pearman, Assistant Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Education

Advisory Board

• Susanna Loeb, Professor of Education and Director of the Annenberg Institute, Brown 
• Christopher Edley, Jr., Interim Dean, UC Berkeley School of Education 
• Rucker Johnson, Professor of Public Policy, UC Berkeley 
• Carrie Conaway, Senior Lecturer on Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

NYSED Leadership Team

• Allison Armour-Garb​, Special Advisor to the Executive Deputy Commissioner 
• Rose LeRoy​, Director of Educational Data and Research
• Jason Harmon​, Deputy Commissioner, P-12 Operational Support
• Zach Warner​, Assistant Commissioner, Office of State Assessment
• Alexander Trikalinos, Executive Director, Office of Educator Quality and Professional Development

The EOP-NYSED partnership and research activities are supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences, the Spencer Foundation, and Stanford Impact Labs.