Dr. Phelton C. Moss

Program Director/Professor of Education Policy & Leadership, American University

Dr. Phelton Cortez Moss is a national expert in education policy and is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy in the School of Education and Affiliate Faculty Member in the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. He also serves as an adjunct professor of Education Policy at Georgetown University. He serves as an elected School Board Member of the Prince George’s County School Board in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

He has also served as a Senior Policy Adviser to Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (FL-24) who served as Chair of the Congressional Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee & senior member of the House Education & Labor Committee. He also served as the congressional liaison to the US Commission on the Social Status of Black Men & Boys. Prior he served as Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Tougaloo College and Senior Leader at the Mississippi Department of Education.

He has served as an Education Policy Fellow for Education Leaders of Color and the National Association for the Advanced of Colored People (NAACP) where he provided strategic and policy advice across a range of national education issues for members, including early childhood, K-12, postsecondary, higher education, career, and technical education, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), statewide literacy policies, teacher diversity, and workforce development. Notably, he led the filing of the historic American Teacher Act to establish a federal grant program to incentivize states to raise teacher salaries. In addition, His research focus is focused on building school and district leaders capacity to diversify the educator workforce and improve efforts to increase teacher recruitment and retention. Lastly, he has worked extensively to ensure state’s have the infrastructure to support strong literacy outcomes for all children.

He has over twelve years of experience working in education and education policy from English teacher, policy maker, and principal. As the youngest serving principal in MS, his work in moving an underperforming middle school from an F to C in two years led him to become the Bureau Director of Educator Effectiveness and Talent Acquisition at the Mississippi Department of Education working on K-12 education policy issues including teacher diversity, teacher/leader evaluations, teacher recruitment and retention, educator licensure, and issues of inequity in the distribution of effective teachers. Under Dr. Moss’ leadership, his school doubled math and literacy proficiency for students in those two years.

Most notably, he led the design and launch of the nation’s first state-run teacher residency program with a $4.5M Kellogg Foundation Grant to address the state’s teacher shortage and increase the diversity of the educator workforce in Mississippi. While serving at the Mississippi Department of Education, he completed the year-long national School Systems Leaders Fellowship along with twenty senior education leaders from across the country and received training to become a school systems leader.

As an anti-racist scholar in education policy and leadership focused on building racially just schools, his scholarship has been published widely in venues to include Equity & Excellence Journal, The Education Planning Journal,

Diverse in Education, Inside Higher Education, and Education Week to include a few.

Phelton began his career in education as a high school English teacher in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he was Teacher of the Year for two consecutive years, and corps member of Teach for America. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Mississippi and a BA in Public Policy Leadership and English from the University of Mississippi. He holds a certificate in Education Finance from Georgetown University. Phelton is a member of The Reading League National Board of Directors and the He Is Me Institute National Board of Directors. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Phelton is also the Founder/CEO of ALL Means ALL Consulting, a consulting firm focused on improving teaching, learning, policy, and research for historically marginalized students.

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