Kathy Escamilla

Kathy Escamilla, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Education in the Division of Equity, Bilingualism and Biliteracy (also referred to as Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on educational issues affecting Spanish-speaking emerging bilingual students in U.S. schools, with particular emphasis on the development of bilingualism and biliteracy in the early elementary grades. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles and has held the Bob & Judy Charles Endowed Chair of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Over a career spanning more than three decades, she has become recognized as one of the nation’s leading scholars in bilingual education, advocating asset-based approaches that build on children’s cultural and linguistic resources and evaluate progress in both Spanish and English.

Escamilla is a co-founder and principal investigator of Literacy Squared, a long-running research and professional development initiative that examines paired literacy instruction in Spanish and English and its impact on children’s reading and writing outcomes as well as teacher knowledge and attitudes. She is a lead author of Biliteracy from the Start: Literacy Squared in Action and Biliterate Writing From the Start: The Literacy Squared Approach to Asset-Based Writing Instruction, which present the Literacy Squared framework and classroom practices for implementing paired biliteracy programs from