Prof. Lucrecia Santibañez

I am a faculty member at UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies. I hold the Antonia Hernandez Chair in Civil Rights and Education.  I study how to improve teaching and learning for low-income children, students of color, and multilingual learners. I focus mainly on the United States and Latin America (mostly Mexico).

I serve as Faculty Director of UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools. I also co-direct the Language, Literacy, and Learning Collaborative with Prof. Inmaculada Garcia-Sanchez.  I am an affiliate of PACE in California and a faculty affiliate at the Latino Policy and Politics Institute at UCLA. I am an Associate Editor at Education Finance and Policy. I am on the Editorial Board at AERJ, RER, and IJED. In 2025, I was named an AERA Fellow. 

My CV.

My Google Scholar Page.

Prospective Students: Students with a background in quantitative methods, economics, or public policy fit well with my research interests and expertise. If you are interested in working with me, click HERE.

Background

I grew up in Mexico (Torreon), did my BA in Economics at Tecnológico de Monterrey, and got my MA (Economics, Latin American Studies) and PhD in Education at Stanford University. I have three children and live in Los Angeles. Mi primer idioma es Español.

Current projects:

• Dual-language immersion programs: issues of access and equity (with Erica Frankenberg, Francesca Lopez, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, Sarah Asson, and Clemence Darriet).

  • Dual Language Immersion Delivers for California's English Learners (PACE Commentary, 2026)

  • Unlocking Opportunities: How Dual Language Immersion Can Promote Equity and Integration (UCLA CTS Policy Brief, 2025)

  • Policy Brief summarizing some of our research thus far. (2025).

  • "Racial, Linguistic, and Economic Diversity Across Schools with Two-Way Dual Language Immersion Programs: Evidence from the Los Angeles Unified School District."  AERA Open. (2025).

  • "Examining Two-Way Dual Language Program Dispersion in the Context of Neighborhood Change, Charter School Expansion, and Enrollment Decline." (American Education Journal, 2024).

  • "Dual Language Immersion Programs and their Neighborhoods: Issues of Program Access and Representation within LAUSD Elementary Schools." Social Science Research (2025).

• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on multilingual learners (ELs)

  • “Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on District Spending for English Learners.” Teachers College Record. (2025).

  • "Absenteeism and Student Engagement for English-Learner Classified Students" Educational Researcher. (2024). 

• Causes and Consequences of Student Mobility for Historically Underserved Groups in California (with Cassie Guarino, Robert Ream, Yiwang Le, and Hana Kang).

  • What Drives Nonstructural School Mobility? An Analysis of School Push and Pull Factors in California (American Education Journal, 2026)

  • Risks and rewards for mobility for vulnerable students (under review, project description here).