Background
The Early Childhood Educational Opportunity Project (EC EOP) seeks to provide comprehensive, transparent data on children’s skills and development at kindergarten entry across the U.S. to improve educational opportunities for our youngest students.
Understanding what children know and can do at the start of kindergarten provides critical information about their early learning experiences and the opportunities available to them before kindergarten. Kindergarten entry assessments (KEAs) are tools states use to measure those skills.
More states are recognizing the value of kindergarten entry assessments, but there is little consistency in KEA policy and practice across the country. States differ substantially in whether an entry assessment is required, what tests or set of tests are used, what they measure (e.g., literacy, math, social/emotional, physical skills), and whether results are publicly reported.
To date, there has been no systematic effort to collect, harmonize, and publish state kindergarten entry assessment data nationwide.
EC EOP aims to:
- Help researchers, policymakers, education leaders, and the public better understand how states assess early learning at kindergarten entry
- Build SEDA-K (Stanford Education Data Archive–Kindergarten), a national dataset of harmonized state KEA data
- Analyze patterns and trends in early learning across the U.S. to better understand inequities in early childhood experiences and opportunities.
SEDA-K is currently in development and will be released in the future phase of the project.
Who We Are
Team
Sean Reardon
Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education, Stanford University; Faculty Director, Educational Opportunity Project
Sean Reardon is the endowed Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and is Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology at Stanford University. His 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. Reardon is the developer of the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA). Professor Reardon received his doctorate in education in 1997 from Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Erin M. Fahle
Executive Director
Erin Fahle is the Executive Director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. Her research explores how social and school context affects gender, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities in student’s access to educational opportunities and subsequent achievement. Dr. Fahle’s goal is to help states, districts, and schools identify areas for policy and practice interventions that can improve the educational circumstances of children across the U.S. She believes deeply that this work must be done in partnership with school leaders and is committed to designing research that reflects their perspectives. Her work has been published in Educational Researcher and the American Educational Research Journal and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. Dr. Fahle holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy from Stanford University, as well as a B.S. in Mathematics (2008) and a M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics (2009) from Georgetown University. She was formerly an Assistant Professor at St. John’s University and a Research Scientist at NWEA.
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Alejandro Contreras
Research Data Analyst 2
Alex serves EOP as a Research Data Analyst 2. He works with the EOP team to clean, harmonize, and analyze large-scale education datasets, including a novel database of kindergarten entry assessments. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Alex was a graduate student researcher at the Realizing Rights Lab at Brown University, which focuses on voting rights and disability rights in schools. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University, and he also holds a Master’s degree in Data Science and a Master’s degree in Public Administration.
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Negar Fatahi
Research Scholar
Negar Fatahi is a Research Scholar with the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, where she serves as a state liaison and dissemination lead. Her work focuses on building partnerships with state education agencies, compiling and documenting kindergarten entry data and policies across states, and translating research into useful resources for policymakers and early childhood leaders. Before joining EOP, Dr. Fatahi was a Research Scientist at AnLar, an education research and consulting firm. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from George Mason University, an M.A. in Psychology from New York University, and a B.A. in Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California, Irvine.
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Sadie Richardson
PhD Student
Sadie Richardson is a doctoral student in Educational Policy at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she studies how early childhood systems and policies shape educational opportunity. Since 2023, she has helped build SEDA-K, and her dissertation leverages these data to examine patterns of inequality in early childhood and the community and system features that support equitable early development. Before starting her PhD, she worked on analyses of early childhood systems and programs in partnership with local government leaders at Texas Policy Lab. Sadie holds a B.A. in Cognitive Sciences and Statistics from Rice University.
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Dara Drake
PhD Student
Dara Drake is a current doctoral student in Educational Policy at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Dara received a B.A. in Policy Studies from Syracuse University and an M.A. in Policy, Organization, and Leadership Studies from Stanford University. Dara is passionate about addressing inequities that lie at the intersection of people, process, and power in education. She co-founded SkillWin!, which brings “skills coaches” to schools and nonprofits across New York state. Her research on student voice and empowerment has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented to global audiences. Dara most recently served as a consultant and a national operations lead in education at KPMG, making her the youngest education lead in the firm’s history. At Syracuse, Dara was named a University Scholar, a Maxwell | Arts & Sciences Scholar, and a Remembrance Scholar. At Stanford, Dara was named a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.
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Maya Provençal
PhD Student
Maya Provençal is a doctoral student in Developmental and Psychological Sciences at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She received a B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience from Duke University. Prior to her Ph.D., she worked as the research coordinator of the Stanford Project on Adaptation and Resilience in kids. Her research interests include early childhood development and the structural and ecological conditions that shape access to healthy early experiences.
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Advisory Board
Daphna Bassok
Daphna Bassok is the Batten Bicentennial Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Virginia’s Schools of Education and Public Policy. She directs the Study of Early Education through Partnerships (SEE-Partnerships), which works closely with state policymakers to evaluate and strengthen early childhood systems. Her research focuses on early childhood education policy, with particular attention to efforts to improve access and quality and a focus on early childhood workforce policies.
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Deborah Stipek
Deborah J. Stipek is the Judy Koch Emeritus Professor of Education and the former Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Her doctorate is from Yale University in developmental psychology and her scholarship focuses on early childhood education. She served for five years on the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the National Academy of Education. She currently chairs the Heising-Simons Development and Research on Early Math Education Network and serves as a senior consultant to California Education Partners, working with districts to improve P-3 math instruction and alignment. Previous to coming to Stanford Dr. Stipek served 10 of 23 years at UCLA as Director of the Corinne Seeds University Elementary School.
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Katherine Paschall
Katie Paschall, PhD is a senior research scientist at Child Trends in the Early Childhood Systems Building area. For nearly 15 years, she has studied the inputs to early childhood well-being and school readiness, including early care and education access, the early care and education workforce, as well as parenting and two-generation supports. She supported the development and validation of a new national measure of 3-5-year-olds’ school readiness and development in the National Survey of Children’s Health, and has worked with federal, state, regional, and community partners to translate data and evidence into policy and practice.
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Ximena Portilla
Ximena A. Portilla is a Senior Research Associate in MDRC’s Family Well-Being and Children’s Development Policy Area. She is a developmental psychologist whose research over the last 20 years has focused on a range of topics in early childhood, including home visiting services, school readiness, early learning assessment development, classroom supports for early educators, and how research can support community power-building strategies. She is also the co-lead of MDRC’s Equity Collaborative, which promotes equity-centered and culturally responsive research practices to maximize the benefits of MDRC’s research projects and technical assistance. Ximena earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from New York University and a PhD in developmental and psychological sciences from Stanford University, where she was an IES pre-doctoral fellow in education sciences.
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Funders
This website and Early Childhood Educational Opportunity Project’s research are generously supported by the following funders:
