The Global California 2030 initiative, which aims to have half of the state’s K-12 students participating in programs that promote proficiency in two or more languages by 2030, has led to the expansion of dual language immersion (DLI) offerings.
A recent brief from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools, “Building a Robust Bilingual Teacher Workforce for California: Teacher Preparation for Dual Language Immersion Programs,” considers whether current pipelines can provide enough educators who have appropriate training to meet the goal.
According to the center, high-quality DLI teacher preparation goes beyond language proficiency and requires expertise in bilingual pedagogy, culturally sustaining practices and supervised experience in classrooms.
The brief found that preparing educators to teach in multiple languages raises distinct challenges and that many programs struggle to train teachers to teach language and content at the same time. Some contributing factors include the limited duration of programs and a lack of sufficient clinical experience.
“The new requirement of 20 field experience hours is a step in the right direction, but more research is needed to understand its impact,” the brief states. “District administrators reported persistent concerns about candidates’ academic language proficiency (in the partner language), even among those holding bilingual authorizations.”
Preparation pathways led by universities and districts also contend with different pressures. Grow-your-own style programs at districts are commonly less expensive to participate in, pay candidates as they train and have more employment assurance. Programs based at universities on the other hand are often associated with higher price points and risk barriers “and depend heavily on grants and district commitments to remain accessible,” the brief states. It remains unclear whether either option creates equivalently prepared educators.
Additionally, there is a geographic element to bilingual teacher shortages. “Some areas of the state, such as the Central Valley, border regions, and rural northern California, are ‘preparation deserts’ where supply is genuinely constrained, and [bilingual authorization teachers] in non-Spanish languages (Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese) are especially scarce,” according to the brief. “The misalignment between supply and demand in some regions means that even if the total number of [bilingual authorization] teachers statewide were ‘enough,’ it would still be insufficient to support DLI program growth across the state.”
The brief also found challenges including an ongoing issue with sustainable funding; evaluation and enforcement not keeping pace with improved teacher preparation standards; staffing friction; and the inability to accurately assess progress toward its goals related to multilingual education as key data isn’t publicly available.
“California has issued approximately 9,500 bilingual authorizations over the past decade, but supply and demand vary widely by region, and the current pipeline is likely insufficient to sustain significant DLI expansion,” according to the center. “Meeting Global California 2030 goals will require thousands of new bilingual teachers, and the current supply may not be able to meet the demand.
“While preparation programs can produce enough bilingual teachers overall, the pipeline is constrained by geographic gaps in program access, cost barriers, and uncertain DLI placement opportunities,” a summary of findings continues. “Beyond supply and demand, staffing and seniority rules limit districts’ ability to reassign non-[bilingual authorization] teachers when converting schools to DLI, creating an additional barrier to expansion, especially at the secondary level.”
Recommendations
Stakeholders can work to address challenges associated with building out DLI programs by focusing on teacher supply, quality and allocation.
Some suggestions detailed in the brief include:
- Addressing geographic gaps in teacher prep
- Sustaining financial support for teacher candidates, particularly heritage speakers
- Transitioning from grant- to formula-based DLI funding
- Creating a quality-assurance infrastructure for bilingual authorization programs
- Closing the gap of publicly available data
- Giving districts tools to manage staffing transitions
- Funding research on preparation pathways for bilingual educators
“Taken together, these recommendations reframe the challenge from one of producing more [bilingual authorization teachers] to one of building the infrastructure — financial, evaluative, geographic, and structural — that allows California’s bilingual teacher workforce to grow where it is needed, to prepare teachers to teach at the level that students deserve, and in conditions that support teachers’ careers and retain them in DLI classrooms,” the brief concludes.
