NEPC Topic Experts on Elementary Education

Elizabeth Dutro is professor and chair of Literacy Studies in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder, specializing in the area of literacy studies. Her research investigates the intersections of literacy, identity, and children and youth’s opportunities for positive, sustained, relationships with schooling. A primary strand of her work analyzes the presence and consequences of out-of-school life experiences and discourses of race, class, gender in students’ encounters with literacy curriculum, instruction, and high-stakes accountability policy. Elizabeth was a recipient of the Promising Researcher Award and Alan C. Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Email Elizabeth Dutro at: Elizabeth.Dutro@colorado.edu

Kathy Escamilla is Professor of Education in the division of social, bilingual and multicultural foundations at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Escamilla's research centers on educational issues related to Spanish-speaking language minority students in U.S. schools. She is specifically interested in issues related to the development of bilingualism and biliteracy in early elementary grades for this Spanish speaking population. Dr. Escamilla has served two terms as the president of the National Association for Bilingual Education. She is a co-editor of the Bilingual Research Journal, and has served as the chair of the Bilingual SIG for the American Education Research Association.

Email Kathy Escamilla at: kathy.escamilla@colorado.edu

Dr. Mileidis Gort brings an interdisciplinary orientation to her research and teaching. Her primary research goals are to understand the nature of emergent bilingualism and biliteracy in early childhood, and to use that knowledge to influence pre K-12 teacher education and practice in order to create culturally- and linguistically-responsive learning contexts for emergent bilingual learners. Her scholarship converges at two interrelated lines of research: (a) the language and literacy processes of young, Spanish-English emergent bilingual children, and (b) instructional practices and educational policies that support the dual language, biliteracy, and academic development of emergent bilingual children. Visit Dr. Gort’s Early Childhood Bilingualism Research Lab website to learn more about her recent and current projects.

Email Mileidis Gort at: mileidis.gort@colorado.edu

Francesca López, PhD is the Waterbury Chair in Equity Pedagogy at Penn State University, College of Education, Curriculum and Instruction Department. Her research focuses on the ways educational settings promote achievement for marginalized youth.  It has been funded by the American Educational Research Association Grants Program, the Division 15 American Psychological Association Early Career Award, and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Email Francesca López at: falopez@psu.edu

Susan Ohanian, a long-time public school teacher, is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in Atlantic, Parents, Washington Monthly, The Nation, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week, Language Arts, and American School Board Journal. In 2003, Ohanian received The National Council of Teachers of English's "NCTE Orwell Award" for her outstanding contribution, via her website (http://www.susanohanian.org/index.php), to the critical analysis of public discourse. The website offers information and inspiration on high-stakes standards and testing resistance.

Email Susan Ohanian at: susano@gmavt.net

Katherine Schultz is Dean and Professor of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder School of Education. Prior to this appointment, she was Dean of the School of Education at Mills College. She served as professor and director of the teacher education program at the University of Pennsylvania from 1997-2010 where she founded and directed the Center for Collaborative Research and Practice in Teacher Education. From 2008-2010, she was a member of a three-person empowerment (school) board of the Chester Upland School District, a high poverty school district outside of Philadelphia. During this time, she was also the faculty director of the Philadelphia Writing Project. Her three-year term as Vice President of Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education of the American Education Research Association began in April 2016. She served as President of the Council on Anthropology and Education from 2010-2011. Her goal as scholar, researcher, and practitioner has been to understand how to prepare and support teachers to enter and remain in challenging urban contexts. In particular, her work has focused on the research, development, and dissemination of pedagogical practices that support new and veteran teachers working with marginalized populations in high poverty areas. Her two recent books address these issues. In Listening: A framework for teaching across differences, she elaborated a framework for conceptualizing teaching as fundamentally based on listening to students. Rethinking classroom participation: Listening to silent voices adds to this work through an exploration of the meanings and uses of silence in teaching and learning. Her current research projects analyze new teachers’ perspectives on learning to teach across multiple pathways. Related to this work is an interest in professional development that supports and sustains teachers in urban settings in the U.S. and across the world. She is currently working on a book on the role of distrust in educational reform drawing on her work in Oakland and as a school board member and leader of professional development in international settings. As Dean of Mills College School of Education, she was actively engaged in the Oakland community, establishing the Center for Urban Schools and Partnerships, co-chairing the Oakland Education Cabinet with the mayor and superintendent, and serving on several advisory committees including the leadership team for full service community schools. A co-founder of the Urban Teacher Educators Consortium and Deans for Justice and Equity, she is committed to the preparation and ongoing support of teacher educators through thoughtful research and practice.

Email Katherine Schultz at: Katherine.Schultz@colorado.edu

Janelle Scott is a Professor and the Robert C. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Distinguished Chair in Educational Disparities at the University of California at Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education, African American Studies Department, and Goldman School of Public Policy. She earned a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of California at Los Angeles’ Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Before earning her doctorate, she was a teacher in Oakland, California. 

Professor Scott’s research investigates how market-based educational reforms affect democratic accountability and equity in public education. She has explored this research program across several policy strands: 1) the racial politics of public education, 2) the politics of school choice, marketization, and privatization, 3) the politics of research evidence on market-oriented reforms, and, 4) the role of elite and community-based advocacy in shaping public education and research evidence utilization. Her work has appeared in several edited books and journals, including the Peabody Journal of Education, Educational Policy, Qualitative Inquiry, the American Educational Research Journal, and the Harvard Educational Review.

She was awarded a Spencer Dissertation Year Fellowship, and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2014, she was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Committee on Scholars of Color.  In 2020, she was elected as an AERA Fellow. She is Vice President for Division L (Policy and Politics) of AERA (2019-2022). She is the editor of School choice and diversity: What the evidence says (2005 Teachers College Press), and, with Sonya Horsford and Gary Anderson, author of The Politics of Education in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for democratic schooling (2018 Routledge). 

Email Janelle T. Scott at: jtscott@berkeley.edu

Jamy Stillman is an Associate Professor of Education in the division of Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores the factors that shape teachers’ capacities to deliver equity-oriented, responsive instruction in high-poverty schools serving minoritized youth, especially Spanish-English bilingual students. Using qualitative methods, Jamy focuses primarily on two factors—education policy (e.g. high-stakes accountability policies and standards-based reform) and features of university teacher education—to generate understandings about pre-service and practicing teachers’ learning and work across contexts, and the implications of this work and learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students’ opportunities to learn. Jamy is also becoming increasingly interested in questions surrounding the preparation of urban teacher educators.

Email Jamy Stillman at: Jamy.Stillman@colorado.edu