About the Authors
Kathryn Lindholm-Leary, Ph.D.
Kathryn Lindholm-Leary received her Ph.D. at UCLA, where she worked at the Spanish Speaking Mental Health Research Center and the Center for Language Education and Research. She is currently a professor of Child and Adolescent Development at San Jose State University, where she has taught for 19 years. At San Jose State, Kathryn received a Teacher-Scholar award, was a finalist for the President's Scholar award, and was a San Jose State nominee for the prestigious Wang Family Excellence award. Her research interests focus on understanding the cognitive, language, psychosocial, and societal factors that influence student achievement, with a particular emphasis on culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Dr. Lindholm-Leary has worked with two-way immersion programs for the past 20 years and during that time has evaluated over 30 programs and helped to establish programs in over 50 school districts in 10 states. Dr. Lindholm-Leary has the most comprehensive longitudinal data on bilingual students, particularly students in two-way programs, in the country. She regularly consults with various state departments of education, including the California State Department of Education and also the US Department of Education. She has authored or co-authored four books and many chapters and journal articles on the topics of dual language education and child bilingualism and has presented her findings at over 100 local, state, national and international conferences. Her research was also used by previous U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley to establish Title VII funding and program priorities for two-way immersion programs, and has been cited in the Congressional Record.
Gary Hargett, Ph.D.
Gary Hargett has been involved with ESL and bilingual education for nearly all his professional life. He has taught adult ESL in Stockton, California, Seattle, Washington and Saigon, Vietnam. He directed an adult ESL and literacy project in Idaho and served as evaluation specialist for a refugee education program in Thailand. In graduate school he specialized in language proficiency assessment. He worked for three different migrant and bilingual education technical assistance centers, and has taught in bilingual teacher training programs at Western Oregon University, Portland State University, and Lewis and Clark College.
Dr. Hargett currently works as a private consultant in ESL and bilingual program planning and evaluation. He has conducted ELL program evaluations for 14 school districts in Oregon as well as districts in Washington, Idaho and Nevada. He has worked extensively with ESL and bilingual programs in Salem-Keizer School District for 18 years. He has expertise in NCLB implementation, and has advised the state of Washington on NCLB compliance in English proficiency testing pursuant to NCLB. He also served for two years on the team that developed Oregon's statewide English proficiency assessment in compliance with NCLB Title III.
Evaluation Toolkit Facilitator: Julie Sugarman