Phillips studies the causes and consequences of educational inequality. She specializes in the causes of ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in educational success and how to reduce those disparities. Her current research projects focus on technologies and strategies for improving students’ math achievement; understanding students’ access to advanced course-taking opportunities; and survey methods involving children and adolescents. She teaches courses on statistics, research methods, and education policy.
Phillips co-founded EdBoost, a charitable, educational non-profit whose mission is to reduce educational inequality by making high-quality supplemental educational services accessible to children from all family backgrounds. Phillips also co-founded and is the faculty director of the Los Angeles Education Research Institute (LAERI), a Los Angeles-based research-practice partnership that collaborates with L.A Unified.
Phillips’s research has been supported by funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, the Spencer Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the College Futures Foundation, among others. She served on the National Academy Committee on Developing Indicators of Educational Equity and the National Academy Committee on the Evaluation Framework for Successful K-12 STEM Education. She is a past recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, as well as the dissertation award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and her A.B. from Brown University.
