Vicki Phillips

Vicki Phillips (born c. 1958) is an American education consultant and former executive vice president and chief education officer of National Geographic who previously served as the director of education for the College Ready program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and as the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

The first woman to hold the position of superintendent of the School District of Lancaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Phillips observed, when asked during a 2008 interview, what the United States still needed to do to improve student and teacher performance nationwide:

"If you look across the country, you see lots of pockets of excellence. What we don't do well yet is systematically address the policy and practice barriers that continually get in the way. It's a combination of obstacles, from how we think about standards and assessment and curriculum to the way we train and certify people to the way we support and compensate them and get them to stay in the profession. We have to decide as a country that we are going to tackle some of those long-standing barriers."