Meredith Phillips

Meredith Phillips

Associate Professor

Office: 6323 PPB

Email: meredith.phillips@ucla.edu

Phone: 310-794-5475

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Biography

Phillips studies the causes and consequences of educational inequality.

Her research focuses in particular on the causes of ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in educational success and how to reduce those disparities. Her current research projects include a random-assignment evaluation of the efficacy of two low-cost college access interventions and an ethnographic longitudinal study of adolescent culture, families, schools, and academic achievement. Phillips and her colleagues also recently developed school and classroom environment surveys for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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. EdBoost develops and refines interventions and curriculum at its learning center, scales interventions to authentic educational settings, and then tests promising interventions using rigorous evaluations to assess their cost-effectiveness.  Phillips also co-founded, and serves as research advisor to, the Los Angeles Education Research Institute (LAERI).  LAERI develops research partnerships with school districts in Los Angeles County, to help infuse high-quality research and evidence-based decision making into education policy and practice.

Phillips currently serves on the National Academies 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 as well as a dissertation award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). Phillips received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and her A.B. from Brown University.

Degrees

Ph. D., Northwestern University

Publications

 Edited Book:

Jencks, Christopher and Meredith Phillips (eds.). 1998. The Black-White Test Score Gap. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Articles and Book Chapters:

Chin, Tiffani and Meredith Phillips. 2004. “Social Reproduction and Childrearing Practices: Social Class, Children’s Agency, and the Summer Activity Gap.” Sociology of Education 77: 185-210.

Phillips, Meredith and Tiffani Chin. 2004. “School Inequality: What Do We Know?” In Kathryn Neckerman (Ed.). Social Inequality (pp. 467-519). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Awards & Grants

Awards

National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2000-2002

Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Award for the Best Dissertation in Public Policy and Management, 1998-1999

Grants

“Becoming Oppositional? Children’s Academic Achievement, Friendship Networks, and Ethnic Identity as They Transition into Middle School.” U.S. Department of Education.

Longitudinal Study of Academic Success at an Ethnically Diverse, Highly-Selective Public University.” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.