in liberal arts from the University of Notre Dame in 1986, after which he taught for four years at Red Cloud Indian School (South Dakota) and Moorestown Friends School (New Jersey) before returning to Notre Dame and obtaining a M.A.
Following his graduation, Reardon first briefly worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard's Children Initiative on the evaluation of programmes for children (1998–99) and then became an assistant professor of education and sociology at Pennsylvania State University, before moving to Stanford University in 2004.
[10] Methodologically, Reardon (with Glenn Firebaugh) has argued that information theory indices are better measures of multigroup segregation than indices of dissimilarity, Gini, squared coefficient of variation, relative diversity or normalized exposure, as they alone accord with the principle of transfers and can be decomposed into inter- and intra-group effects.
[11] Another major topic in Reardon's research concerns spatial segregation between ethnic and socioeconomic groups.
[16] Moreover, in research on the historical trajectory of educational inequality, Reardon finds that the gap between the educational achievements of children from families in the 10th richest percentile of the income distribution and those from the 10th poorest percentile increased by 30-40% between 1976 and 2001, is now twice as large as the black-white achievement gap, is already large when children enter kindergarten, is driven mainly by a closer correlation between family income and children's academic achievement in families with incomes over the median and not by growing income inequality or a stronger influence of parents' education.