State Education Department Partners With Stanford Education Research Team to Study and Improve Educational Equity in New York State

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) and the Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) at Stanford University are partnering to study progress toward educational equity in New York State, Commissioner Betty A. Rosa announced today. The five-year project is driven by the Board of Regents' priority to remove inequities that stand in the way of success for students with the goal to improve educational opportunities and attainment for all children.

Board of Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young, Jr. said, “All young people should be provided the opportunity to reach their full potential in inclusive and supportive learning environments. Through this project, EOP and NYSED will advance work designed to meet the promise of each student and ensure equitable access to the highest quality educational opportunities.”

Commissioner Rosa said, “We are excited to team with the EOP to map the landscape of educational equity across the state to identify and closely examine inequity and its causes. This will enable us to help our schools to close opportunity gaps and better prepare all students for college, career, and citizenship.”

The Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) at Stanford University and NYSED will look to provide actionable information about how past and current education policies and practices impact equity in school systems in New York.

Stanford University Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education Sean Reardon said, “School systems have tremendous power to address disparities in educational opportunity through decisions they make on a regular basis. 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.”

The research team will use NYSED’s existing databases to develop a set of equity indicators that New York can use to gauge students’ access to educational opportunities. The team will then analyze these indicators to understand which are most impactful in contributing to disparities in outcomes, including test scores and graduation rates. This partnership can serve as a model for other state education agencies and researchers looking to improve educational equity on a national scale.

Data Security

Following Education Law 2-d and the EOP NYSED data security agreement, all direct identifiers will be removed to protect personally identifiable information (PII). Data transfers will be secured using encryption, and data will be stored and managed by Stanford on a secure cloud server.

Progress and Feedback

EOP is committed to producing research insights and recommendations that are informed by the needs and priorities of students, families, educators, administrators, and NYSED leadership. Over the coming years, progress updates from this effort will be shared with, and feedback sought from, policymakers and education leaders throughout the New York State education system. The end goals of this work 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. More information may be found in today’s presentation to the Board.

The EOP NYSED partnership and research activities are supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (R305A220336), the Spencer Foundation, and Stanford Impact Labs. The findings of the project and opinions expressed are those of the researchers and do not represent the views of IES, the Spencer Foundation, or Stanford Impact Labs.