Villavicencio is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine. Her research is focused on K-12 educational policy and school practice that deepens or disrupts inequities for minoritized communities of students and families. For nearly a decade, she conducted research at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools at NYU—a Research-Practice Partnership with the NYC Department of Education (DOE). As Deputy Director of the Research Alliance, she helped shape the organization’s research agenda, obtained over $9 million in external grants, developed relationships with external partners, and led many of the organization’s large-scale mixed-method research projects focused on the NYC school system.
Dr. Villavicencio’s work includes mixed-method studies on turnaround middle schools, small high schools in NYC, schools serving newly arrived immigrant English Learners, and a racial justice program embedded in culturally diverse elementary schools. She also led a longitudinal study of the Expanded Success Initiative, a precursor to My Brother’s Keeper and one of the country’s largest initiatives targeting Black and Latino male students. Her forthcoming book, Am I My Brother’s Keeper: Educational Opportunities and Outcomes for Black and Brown Boys, published by Harvard Education Press, examines how districts and schools can embed racial equity work into the very fabric of how they serve students. The book also provides a set of concrete approaches and recommendations, so that other districts and schools can take up similar efforts with even more robust results.
Villavicencio has conducted research at MDRC, the RAND Corporation, and Westat. She is a recipient of the Founders Fellowship from New York University and a Graduate Student Fellowship from MDRC. Dr. Villavicencio served on the advisory board for the Young Women’s Initiative; as a member of New York State’s Board of Regents Research Workgroup on Integration, Diversity and Equity; and as President of the Board of Directors for the Latino Alumni Association of Columbia University. She is the author of numerous publications on race and equity in schools and regularly presents her research at national conferences and through a variety of both English and Spanish television and online media.
Prior to becoming a researcher, she taught high school English in Oakland, California and Brooklyn, New York. She also worked on the development of a new school in Bangalore, India. Dr. Villavicencio earned her Ph.D. in education leadership and policy from the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She also holds an M.A. in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a B.A. in English from Columbia University.