Background
The SEDA Educational Recovery Explorer is a special release of the Stanford Education Data Archive intended to provide insight into how school district average achievement has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. Estimates of test score changes between 2019 and 2022 can shed light on the extent of pandemic-related losses, while estimates of test score changes after 2022 can provide insight into the extent of academic recovery that occurred once schools returned to normal operations in fall 2022.
We hope that researchers will use the data to generate evidence about what policies and contexts are most effective at increasing educational opportunity, and that such evidence will inform educational policy and practices.
Who We Are
SEDA Development 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.
/images/people/sreardon-full.jpg
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.
/images/people/efahle-full.jpg
Research Collaborators
Tom Kane
Professor of Education and Economics
Thomas Kane is an economist and Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research, a university-wide research center that works with school districts and state agencies. Between 2009 and 2012, he directed the Measures of Effective Teaching project for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His work has spanned both K-12 and higher education, covering topics such as the design of school accountability systems, teacher recruitment and retention, financial aid for college, race-conscious college admissions and the earnings impacts of community colleges. From 1995 to 1996, Kane served as the senior economist for labor, education, and welfare policy issues within President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. From 1991 through 2000, he was a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government. Kane has also been a professor of public policy at UCLA and has held visiting fellowships at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
/images/people/tkane-full.jpg
Doug Staiger
Professor in the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College
Douglas Staiger is the John Sloan Dickey Third Century Professor in the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College. His research focuses on the economics of education, economics of healthcare, and statistical methods. In the field of education, his research investigates teacher and school effectiveness in elementary and secondary education. In the field of healthcare, his research investigates the quality of care in hospitals and labor markets for nurses and physicians. Staiger received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1990 and was a faculty member at Stanford and Harvard before joining Dartmouth. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a cofounder of ArborMetrix, a healthcare analytics company.
/images/people/dstaiger-full.jpg
Dan Dewey
Research Analyst, Harvard GSE
Daniel Dewey is a Research Analyst at the Center for Education Policy Research. Among his areas of education policy research are the impacts of ESSER spending and the effect of interventions targeting student achievement. He previously worked for Welch Consulting conducting analyses for employment discrimination audits and cases. He holds an M.A. in Applied Economics and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University.
/images/people/ddewey-full.jpg
Data Dev Team
Andrew Ho
Professor of Education, Harvard University
Andrew Ho is the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a psychometrician whose research aims to improve the design, use, and interpretation of test scores in educational policy and practice. Ho is known for his research documenting the misuse of proficiency-based statistics in state and federal policy analysis. He has also clarified properties of student growth models for both technical and general audiences. His scholarship advocates for designing evaluative metrics to achieve multiple criteria: metrics must be accurate, but also transparent to target audiences and resistant to inflation under perverse incentives. Ho is a member of the National Assessment Governing Board that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He holds his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and his M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University. Before graduate school, he taught middle school creative writing in his hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii, and high school physics and AP physics in Ojai, California.
/images/people/aho-full.jpg
Benjamin R. Shear
Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder
Benjamin Shear is an assistant professor in the Research and Evaluation Methodology program at the University of Colorado Boulder, College of Education. His primary research interests address topics in psychometrics and applied statistics, including validity theory, differential item functioning, and the application of diagnostic classification models. His work aims to inform our perspectives about test score meaning and use for research and accountability purposes, and to help answer questions such as, “what do test scores measure, and how do we know?” As a former high school mathematics teacher, his work often focuses on applications in mathematics education. His research in applied statistics seeks to improve the use of quantitative methods by education researchers measuring student learning, evaluating education policies, or studying inequality. This work is often carried out collaboratively with researchers working in other areas and through his teaching.
/images/people/bshear-full.jpg
Jiyeon Shim
Research Data Analyst
Jiyeon Shim is a research data analyst at the Educational Opportunity Project. Jiyeon currently works on the NYSED project, in which the EOP and The New York State Education Department (NYSED) are partnering to study progress toward educational equity in New York State. Jiyeon’s key responsibility on the team is to perform statistical analyses of datasets to uncover patterns and trends related to educational equity under the guidance of senior staff. Jiyeon received a B.A. in Business Administration with a minor in Computer Science from Yong In University in South Korea, and a Master’s degree in Economics from San Diego State University.
/images/people/jshim-full.jpg
Jie Min
EOP Research Scholar
Jie Min is a research scholar for the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. Her research aims to understand the mechanisms causing educational inequality and to seek strategies to alleviate academic achievement gaps. Before joining Stanford, she worked as a research statistician at Far Harbor, LLC, where she applied a wide range of statistical techniques to education and public health research. Prior to that, she was a research assistant with the Houston Education Research Consortium for five years, investigating crucial questions grounded in the needs of education practitioners. Her methodological specialties include survey methodology (power analysis, missing data analysis, and modeling of survey errors), linkage across different data types (survey, administrative, and big data), multilevel and longitudinal analysis, quasi-experimental methods, and spatial analysis. Jie was a recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. Jie earned her PhD and MA in sociology, as well as an MS in statistics, from Rice University.
/images/people/jmin-full.jpg
Demetra Kalogrides
PhD, Research Associate
Demetra Kalogrides is a research associate at the Center for Education Policy Analysis where she collaborates on research with professor Sean Reardon. Currently, she works on the creation and analysis of the data in the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA - seda.stanford.edu). SEDA is a publicly available series of data files that include test performance and other demographic and economic information about every public school district in the US. She is also a part-time research associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University where she studies teachers and school leadership with Professor Susanna Loeb. Kalogrides received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Santa Clara University and a Masters and PhD in sociology from the University of California at Davis. She has worked at CEPA since 2008.
/images/people/dkalogrides-full.jpg
PhD Students
Sadie Richardson
PhD Student
Sadie Richardson is a doctoral student in Educational Policy at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Sadie received a B.A. in Cognitive Sciences and Statistics from Rice University. Prior to Stanford, she worked on the early childhood team at Texas Policy Lab in Houston, TX. Her research interests include policy-relevant child development and education research, and early childhood education programs and policies that promote equitable outcomes for children.
/images/people/srichardson-full.jpg
Sofia Wilson
PhD Student
Sofia Wilson is a doctoral student in Education Policy at Stanford University. Sofia’s research examines the causes and consequences of inequality, focusing on the role of place, parenting, and policy in shaping early childhood opportunities. Prior to Stanford, Sofia was an Education Pioneers Impact Fellow at Start Early, an education technology leader at Clever and Newsela, and a teacher in Oakland and Boston public schools. She received a BA in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an Ed.M. in Education from Boston University.
/images/people/swilson-full.jpg
Operations / Media
Rachel Reis
Operations Manager
Rachel Reis is the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford’s Operations Manager. She oversees day-to-day operations, provides administrative support, and helps manage the EOP’s research projects. Rachel has worked in both public and private sectors focusing on improving team efficiency and driving organizational growth. Rachel is a first-generation college graduate who is dedicated to educational equity, and volunteers as a College Coach with ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization supporting first-generation college students with individualized advising and career mentoring. Rachel received a Master of Public Affairs from the University of San Francisco, and a B.A. in Sociology, with a minor in Diversity studies, from the University of Washington.
/images/people/rreis-full.jpg
Former Project Team Members
Elizabeth Stuart
Professor of American Health in the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Elizabeth A. Stuart, Ph.D. is the Frank Hurley and Catharine Dorrier Chair and Bloomberg Professor of American Health in the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with joint appointments in the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Health Policy and Management. A statistician by training, her research interests are in design and analysis approaches for estimating causal effects in experimental and non-experimental studies, including questions around the external validity of randomized trials and the internal validity of non-experimental studies. Her recent interests include combining data sources to assess treatment effect heterogeneity and methods for evidence synthesis. She has extensive experience with the application of causal inference methods in education, the social sciences, and public health, particularly mental health, substance use, and state policy evaluation.
/images/people/estuart-full.jpg
Julia Paris
Research Contributor
Julia Paris is a Research Assistant at the Brookings Institution. She contributes to the EOP’s data projects, including the Education Recovery Scorecard Project. She holds an M.A. in Public Policy and a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.
/images/people/jparis-full.jpg
“The American Dream will remain out of reach until all of our children have equal educational opportunities. My hope is that this data will help in the hard work of bringing the dream closer to reality.”
Sean Reardon
Funders
This website and SEDA’s research are generously supported by the following funders:
The construction of SEDA has been supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (R305D110018), the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and by a visiting scholar fellowship from the Russell Sage Foundation. Some of the data used in constructing the SEDA files were provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
The findings and opinions expressed in the research reported here are those of the authors and do not represent views of NCES, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, or the U.S. Department of Education.