Sara Rutherford-Quach

Principal Education Researcher, SRI Education

Sara Rutherford-Quach, PhD, is a principal education researcher and leads SRI’s Language and Literacy and Multilingual Learners program areas. In these roles, she oversees large-scale evaluations and research partnerships focused on literacy, multilingual learners, and teacher development. With more than 20 years of experience spanning classroom teaching, university leadership, and foundation and federally funded research, she specializes in designing and leading rigorous mixed-methods studies that inform instructional improvement, systems change, and policy.  

At SRI, Rutherford-Quach serves as the principal investigator for multiple U.S. Department of Education-funded studies, including a quasi-experimental study examining the impact of Reading Apprenticeship in rural districts and a randomized controlled trial evaluating the impact of Reading Apprenticeship for Academic Literacy Learning. She also leads evaluations of multilingual professional development programs and educator pathways funded by the Office of English Language Acquisition and serves as a senior advisor and subject matter expert on foundation-funded research, including the Schusterman Family Philanthropies’ School Systems Partnership study and the Sounds-Write evaluation.  

Rutherford-Quach’s work examines how instructional practices, professional learning models, and educator preparation pathways influence teacher practice and student outcomes. She brings deep expertise in classroom observation, instrument development, and the study of language and literacy across disciplines and grade levels. She has led complex cross-institutional research teams and partnerships with state agencies, urban and rural districts, and national networks, providing both rigorous evidence and actionable guidance to practitioners and policymakers.  

Her scholarship bridges research and practice and has been published in journals such as Literacy Today, Linguistics and Education, TESOL Journal, Language Policy, and Online Learning, as well as in practitioner-focused publications and national technical assistance resources.  

Prior to joining SRI, Rutherford-Quach was the Director of Research and Academic Initiatives for Understanding Language at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she expanded a professional learning portfolio that reached more than 70,000 educators nationwide and managed cross-sector collaborations among researchers, educators, and policymakers. She began her career as a bilingual elementary teacher, literacy center director, and curriculum writer.  

Key Projects

• Reading Apprenticeship for Academic Literacy Learning Evaluation 
• Reading Apprenticeship North Carolina Evaluation 
• School System Approaches to Strengthening Literacy Instruction 
• Alder GSE’s Bilingual and Multilingual Educator Pathways Evaluation 
• Bilingual/Biliterate Instruction for Bilingual Youth (BBILY) Evaluation 

Other publications

• Decoding is not enough: Connecting word reading to meaning in early literacy
• From tasks to meaning: How to make sure reading instruction goes deeper
• Rural literacy in action: A multi-year program supporting ninth and tenth grade content area teachers in North Carolina
• The impact of Reading Apprenticeship in North Carolina on student course grades
• Translanguaging-informed beliefs and practices of Spanish-English middle school bilingual teachers upon completion of an online professional development
• Translanguaging formative assessment tools for bilingual teachers of multilingual students