CEPEO is a research centre at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education & Society, creating cutting-edge research to equalise opportunities across the life course. Our work seeks ways to improve education policy and wider practices to achieve this goal.

Join us for our third CEPEO annual lecture. We will be joined by Professor Sean Reardon who is a professor of poverty and inequality in education, and professor (by courtesy) of sociology at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

Professor Reardon is the director of the Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) and the developer of the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), a database of roughly 450 million 3-8th grade standardized test scores that provides measures of educational opportunity for nearly every public school, district, county, and state in the United States.

Abstract: Large economic and racial/ethnic disparities in test scores, graduation rates, and college-going and -completion rates remain a stubborn fact in most countries and communities. These disparities reflect inequality in the educational opportunities available from birth through secondary school to children of different racial and economic backgrounds, including inequalities in their family resources, neighborhoods, pre-schools, and their elementary and secondary schools. In this talk, he will use population data from the US, including the results of 500 million standardized tests administered from 2009-2023, to describe the patterns of educational opportunity in each of 13,000 US school districts. He will also use data from international assessments to compare the patterns of inequality in the US to those in other developed countries. He will describe the main contributors to educational inequality—preschool opportunities, residential and school segregation, and income inequality—and suggest potential strategies to create more equal educational opportunity.

Agenda

5.45pm-6.25pm: Arrival (light refreshments)
6.25pm-6.30pm: Introductions (Lindsey Macmillan)
6.30pm-7.15pm: Main lecture (Sean Reardon)
7.15pm-7.30pm: Q&A session
7.30pm-8.00pm: Drinks reception for all attendees

The event is on Thursday 4th July 2024 and it will be held at Central Hall Westminster, from 17:45 to 20:00.

Please confirm your attendance by registering! Nibbles and drinks will be served.

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CEPEO Annual Lecture 2024