Escamilla, Kathy (1949-)

Kathy Escamilla was born on April 16, 1949, in Greeley, Colorado. She earned a PhD in 1987 from UCLA in curriculum and study of schooling, with an emphasis in bilingual education, after having completed an MS in education, with an emphasis in bilingual-bicultural education at the University of Kansas (1975) and a BAin Spanish and education at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1971). Escamilla began her career as a bilingual elementary and early childhood teacher in Colorado and California. She subsequently lectured in the division of teacher education at California State University, Fullerton (1978–1982), and served as director of Bilingual Programs for the Tucson Unified School District (1983–1988). She also served as an assistant professor and research associate at the University of Arizona (1988–1990), the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education (1990–1992), and the University of Colorado, Denver (1992–1998). She is currently a professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she has been a faculty member since 1998.

Escamilla engages in research that supports effective models of intervention for English language learners. For more than 35 years, she has explored questions related to the development of bilingualism and biliteracy for Spanish-English bilingual children in the United States. Her work challenges the assumption that language, literacy, and evaluation theories developed in monolingual contexts are appropriately applied to multilingual children. Further, her research reinforces her belief that all languages are cognitive, linguistic, and societal resources.

Escamilla's primary research interests include the following foci: language and literacy acquisition theory for bilingual children, methods of bilingual/multicultural education, sociolinguistic and sociocultural practices in classrooms and schools, and the impact of assessment on multilingual communities. She has published and lectured extensively on each of these topics. Much of her research questions the teaching of Spanish using English methodologies. Her book chapters in The Power of Two Languages and The Handbook for Literacy Assessment for Bilingual Learners, as well as articles in Equity and Excellence in Education and the Bilingual Research Journal, examine literacy instruction and assessment in bilingual programs.

Working with colleagues, Escamilla reconceptual-ized the English reading program Reading Recovery into Spanish. Her research in this field culminated with the publication in 1996 of Instrumento de Observación de los Logros de la Lecto-Escritura Inicial (Observation Instrument for Initial Reading/ Writing Achievement). This program is a research-based Spanish language reading intervention designed to accelerate literacy for Spanish-speaking first-grade students. Aspects of this research were reported in peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters. The articles appeared in Education and Urban Society (1992); NABE Conference Proceedings (1992); and Literacy, Teaching, and Learning (1994, 1998). The book chapters appeared in Research on Reading Recovery (1997) and Early Intervention and Early Literacy (1998).

As coinvestigator on a 3-year project to examine assessment practices and the impact of high-stakes testing on English language learners, Escamilla examined the results of English language learners' achievement in reading, writing, and math, as measured by the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP). Results indicated that students were doing well on the Spanish CSAP and that Spanish CSAP results correlated well with students' CSAP testing in English. The results of this study are reported in four monographs, from 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003, and one article that appeared in the Bilingual Research Journal in 2003.

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