On May 28^th, Professor Sean REARDON from Stanford University visited SKKU to give a lecture on the role and opportunities of public education in US. 

This lecture was hosted by BK21+ team from the Dept. of Sociology. Experts in education from Stanford University, Michigan University, Dartmouth University, Nanyang Technological University, etc., and 150 students joined this event.

Prof. REARDON analyzed over 330,000,000 test grade big data from 13,000 school districts in US (grade 3 ~ 8). He set the average grade in each school as “education opportunity” and discovered difference between wealthy and poor districts. He pointed that it is necessary to carefully examine whether it is the parent’s economic status or the quality of school education that leads to this difference.

Observing the increase rate of test grades, Prof. REARDON found that there were many schools and districts that has shown high rate of increase despite poor economic conditions. From this he argued that the effect of parents’ economic status toward education is not in uniform and that the quality of public education needs to be examined. Improving the capability of teachers, education program and class environment can lead to improvement of education opportunities.

Prof. REARDON said that improving the overall quality of public education is important but allowing students with various economic background is critical to improve equality.

When he was asked about the debate in abolishing specialized schools in Korea he answered, “This is not a matter for scholars to decide. This is a normative problem that needs to be answered by the political sphere and communities.”