Meredith Powers Franco

Meredith P. Franco is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist and Research Scientist with Youth-Nex. She works directly with the Preventive Interventions Team: Collaborative Research on Engagement and Wellbeing (PIT-CREW) and manages the PIT-CREW’s programs related to Culturally Responsive Practices, Equity & Disproportionality.

Franco is an interdisciplinarian whose work draws on her lived experiences as a special education teacher, clinical and school psychologist, and QuantCrit researcher. Her scholarship explores the utility of observation and survey methodologies to measure positive classroom climates and equity-supportive practices in elementary and secondary settings. Franco’s work includes evaluating the psychometric properties of new and existing classroom observation systems to determine their reliability across various contexts.

Prior to joining UVA, Franco was named a Teacher of Promise by the Maryland State Department of Education. As a doctoral student in UVA EHD’s Clinical and School Psychology program, Franco was granted five different university fellowships to support her dissertation, “Culturally Responsive Practice in PK-12 Classrooms: Identification and Validation of Discrete Indicators,” which earned the American Psychological Association (APA) Division of School Psychology’s Outstanding Dissertation Award. She was also named a 2020 Start with Equity fellow by the Children’s Equity Project, the 2021 Graduate Student of the Year by the Virginia Academy of School Psychologists, and the 2022 Student Leader Champion by the National Association of School Psychologists. Franco’s research has been published in prominent education journals, such as the Review of Educational Research.

Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2023
M.Ed., University of Virginia, 2019
M.Ed., University of Maryland, College Park, 2015
B.S., University of Maryland, College Park, 2014