Dr. Margarita Calderón, a native of Juárez, Mexico, is a Senior Research Scientist, and Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.

She serves on the National Research Council's Committee on Teacher Preparation, the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth, the Carnegie Adolescent ELL Literacy Panel, the IRA ELL Literacy Panel, the California Pre-School Literacy Panel, and the Professional Advisory Board of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

She is principal investigator in a five-year study in middle and high schools called Expediting Reading Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL), which focuses on professional development of science, social studies, and language arts teachers of ELLs in New York City schools funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

She developed and tested in a five-year experimental study a program called Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (BCIRC), a K-5 dual language program, and the What Works Clearinghouse has recently included as one of the best scientifically tested models of dual language instruction and for transition into English literacy.

She is Co-PI with Robert Slavin on the five-year randomized evaluation of English immersion, transitional, and two-way bilingual programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences.

She collaborates with the Center for Applied Linguistics on transition from Spanish into English reading studies. Her latest publication is Teaching Reading to English Language Learners, Grades 6-12: A Framework for Improving Achievement in the Content Areas. She has published over 100 articles, chapters, books, and teacher training manuals.