To Bring Back Bilingual Ed, California Needs Teachers

Posted by freemexy on September 5th, 2019

After decisively rejecting bilingual education in 1998, state voters enthusiastically endorsed its return in 2016. Educators are eager to offer more bilingual classes—and not only to recently arrived immigrants. Increasingly, English-speaking parents are also sold on the cognitive benefits of dual-immersion bilingual teacher qualification for their own kids. One big factor, though, is holding back growth: a severe shortage of bilingual teachers.

“Every day, my phone rings off the hook,” says Cristina Alfaro, who chairs San Diego State University’s Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education. “Principals say, ‘I need a bilingual teacher. I need six teachers. I need someone right now.’”

No matter how much principals beg, Alfaro will not let her teachers-in-training start working before they’re fully qualified. “It’s not fair to students to have a teacher who’s learning on the job. I tell principals to ‘plan better. If you want a dual-immersion program, do it right. Maybe wait a few years until you can find the teachers. If you don’t have quality teachers, your program will fail.’”

The dual-immersion, or dual-language, model that predominates in California schools today centers on teaching students reading and subject content in two languages, and it aims for biliteracy. Spanish-English programs are the most common, but other languages, including Mandarin and Korean, are sometimes paired with English. Districts looking to offer dual immersion in these less-common languages have even more difficulty finding qualified teachers.

Traditional models of bilingual education teach English learners math, reading, and other subjects in their first language in kindergarten and 1st grade: often, only 10 percent of instruction is in English in the first two years. The goal is to transition students to all-English instruction as soon as possible. While this transitional approach is still common, virtually all new bilingual programs use the dual-immersion model, and some of the old ones are switching to it.

With dual-immersion programs burgeoning in California, school districts are competing fiercely for scarce teacher talent, bidding up compensation for bilingual educators in the manner of consulting firms recruiting new business-school graduates. Districts are stealing each other’s teachers, says Lucrecia Santibañez, an associate professor of teaching, learning, and culture in the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. The Pasadena Unified School District, which expanded its dual-immersion programs from three schools to seven, “has been losing teachers to neighboring districts that offer higher salaries and, sometimes, signing bonuses for bilingual skills,” she says. “Teachers can go five miles down the road and make more.”

Los Angeles Unified, which is also ramping up dual-language instruction, offers an annual stipend of up to ,406 to teachers with bilingual certification. Statewide, stipends vary from ,000 (in San Francisco Unified) on up. A few districts pay as much as ,000 as a hiring bonus.

In Sacramento, Natomas Unified pays an extra ,000 for hard-to-find skills plus a ,000 “diversity bonus” for experience working with racially, culturally, or academically diverse young people. The district, which hopes to start a dual-immersion school, is “struggling to find Spanish teachers,” says Amreek Singh, human resources director. “We’re all competing for the same group of people.”