[2] After becoming high school valedictorian in Forest City, North Carolina, Franklin majored in political science and mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, graduating summa cum laude in 1978 and earning a master's degree in mathematics and statistics in 1980.
She was promoted to senior lecturer and Lothar Tresp Honoratus Honors Professor in 2008, and after a year in New Zealand as a Fulbright Scholar in 2015, she retired as senior lecturer emeritus in 2016.
[3] Franklin was central to the development of AP Statistics, from 1997 until 2009 when she retired as the chief reader of the exam, and continuing in a consulting role afterwards.
[3] She was the 2013 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS), now the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education.
[7] She was the 2017 recipient of the Gladys M. Thomason Distinguished Service Award of the Georgia Council of Teachers of Mathematics.