{"id":394981,"date":"2026-07-11T19:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T19:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/394981\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T19:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T19:52:09","slug":"short-thousands-of-bilingual-teachers-california-schools-turn-to-high-school-students-the-mendocino-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/394981\/","title":{"rendered":"Short thousands of bilingual teachers, California schools turn to high school students \u2022 The Mendocino Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was written by staff at the nonprofit newsroom EdSource. It was republished by The Mendocino Voice in partnership with EdSource to bring relevant education news to Mendocino County readers. Learn more about EdSource here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SACRAMENTO, CA., 7\/11\/26 \u2014 California\u2019s audacious goal of having half of all K-12 students enrolled in bilingual education programs by 2030 has encountered one big stumbling block \u2014 there aren\u2019t enough qualified bilingual teachers.<\/p>\n

To help remedy that, a $10 million grant tucked in the state budget aims to help school districts recruit high school students as future bilingual teachers.<\/p>\n

The funding in the\u00a0education budget bill<\/a>\u00a0that passed Thursday allows schools to partner with community colleges and universities to help students obtain a teaching credential and the bilingual authorization required to teach English learners.<\/p>\n

Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista, said the idea for the legislation came in part from school districts that communicated about their struggles to find qualified bilingual teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept hearing from districts and educators that bilingual students want to become teachers but run into a fragmented system with no clear path through high school, community college, university and credentialing,\u201d said Alvarez.<\/p>\n

Researchers and coordinators of bilingual teacher preparation programs applaud the new grant program, but say it\u2019s not nearly enough to meet the state\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrant funding is important, but to me it just doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s going to be enough, given our size and also the size of our dreams and our ambitions as a state,\u201d said Lucrecia Santiba\u00f1ez, a UCLA professor and author of two recent reports on bilingual teacher preparation.<\/p>\n

The demand for bilingual teachers<\/p>\n

California set a\u00a0bold vision<\/a>\u00a0eight years ago to enroll half of all K-12 students in programs that help them become proficient in two or more languages by 2030.<\/p>\n

But to reach that goal in the next four years, California will need an estimated 6,000 more bilingual teachers.<\/p>\n

Several recent reports paint a picture of California\u2019s bilingual teacher preparation as an unfinished quilt filled with gaps, rips and uneven stitching. Not enough bilingual teacher preparation programs exist, the reports found, and those that do exist are too far from the districts with the highest demand for bilingual teachers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition, bilingual students interested in becoming teachers are often stymied by the extra cost to finish both a teaching credential and a bilingual authorization \u2014 which requires several classes and 20 hours of student teaching, and can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 on top of a college degree.<\/p>\n

California has more than doubled the number of bilingual authorizations issued to teachers annually, from 617 in 2014-15 to a record 1,370 in 2023-24, according to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Yet Santiba\u00f1ez and other UCLA researchers found that districts issue hundreds of emergency bilingual teacher permits each year for teachers who are not fully qualified to teach bilingual instruction.<\/p>\n

The demand for bilingual teachers is not the same everywhere. While some districts have developed thriving dual language immersion programs and found ways to increase their numbers of bilingual teachers, many others lack the teachers and the funding to build these types of programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve worked with districts that have had to close programs they started, and they just couldn\u2019t staff it, and the parents were very disappointed, but the district didn\u2019t want to have long-term subs running their dual language program, which is fair,\u201d said Anya Hurwitz, executive director of SEAL, a nonprofit organization that provides bilingual curriculum training for school districts. \u201cThere are other districts that have built more robust relationships with teacher prep programs, but those are the early adopters or the outliers, not the norm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bilingual teaching deserts<\/p>\n

The areas in California with the greatest need of bilingual teachers are also the areas where preparation programs are scarce or underfunded, UCLA\u2019s Santiba\u00f1ez said. Imperial County on the Mexico border, as well as Kings and Tulare counties in the Central Valley all have large English learner populations but have no preparation programs nearby.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know from the research that teachers and students in college who decide to become teachers like to stay close to where they live,\u201d said Santiba\u00f1ez. \u201cSo when the teacher preparation places aren\u2019t really building capacity in a region that has tremendous growth of multilingual learners, it\u2019s going to create that sort of access or needs gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fewer established bilingual teachers in an area also means there are fewer teachers who can serve as mentors for student teachers, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t necessarily see somebody from San Diego or even from L.A. making the two-hour trip to Indio or Coachella or Calexico or wherever to do those mentoring sessions. So it is important to grow the capacity where the capacity is needed,\u201d Santiba\u00f1ez said.<\/p>\n

Starting in high school<\/p>\n

The new legislation responds to some of the researchers\u2019 recommendations. For example, school districts will be given priority for grants if they have a high percentage of students who are English learners and not enough teacher preparation programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sparking interest in bilingual teaching among high schoolers, as the new grants would do, is crucial, said Adam Sawyer, director of the bilingual authorization program at California State University, Bakersfield. He said his university helps as many as 30 credentialed teachers get their bilingual authorization every year, and also has a bilingual teaching residency established with local elementary school districts that enlists about 10 to 15 student teachers per year.<\/p>\n

Sawyer said CSU Bakersfield is working to establish an undergraduate pathway for prospective teachers and a dual-enrollment course for high schoolers, which will start next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always thought this would be a wonderful way to start tapping into high school juniors and seniors that may not have thought about bilingual teaching, but may start seeing that as, \u2018Hey, that might be something I want to do!\u2019 \u201d Sawyer said.<\/p>\n

\u2018A drop of water in the sea\u2019<\/p>\n

Still, the new funding, which will be distributed in grants of up to $600,000, is not a lot to address the need for bilingual teachers, educators say.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a whole lot of money to do great things,\u201d said Eduardo Mu\u00f1oz-Mu\u00f1oz, San Jos\u00e9 State University professor and co-author of a report by the California Association of Bilingual Teacher Education and Californians Together. \u201cIt\u2019s a drop of water in the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers have called for California to collect and publish data on the number of dual language immersion programs in the state, how many students they serve and the number of teachers with bilingual authorizations working in them.<\/p>\n

More data would help the state pinpoint where to fund more bilingual teacher preparation programs, Mu\u00f1oz-Mu\u00f1oz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Santiba\u00f1ez and Mu\u00f1oz-Mu\u00f1oz also recommend the state offer more financial aid for students working on bilingual authorizations on top of their teaching credentials, a stipend for students to complete student teaching in a bilingual classroom, or bonuses for teachers who have bilingual authorizations, which not all districts provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just got to be an incentive,\u201d Santiba\u00f1ez said. \u201cYou\u2019re a college student, right? You\u2019re getting your teaching credential, and you speak Spanish because you\u2019re a heritage language speaker. So getting a bilingual authorization seems like something like a slam dunk, right? But you have to pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article first appeared in EdSource here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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