Preparing Bilingual Teachers

[...]researchers and school districts across the nation and the state indicate the importance of the linguistic, cultural, and pedagogic capital that bilingually certified teachers bring to the schools and communities that they serve, regardless of the type of instructional program type (Cantu, 2002; Gándara, Maxwell-Jolly, & Driscoll, 2005). According to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (2015), over 800 bilingual authorizations were issued in 15 different languages; 732 (88%) were for the Spanish bilingual authorization. While early analyses of Proposition 227's impact on English Learners' academic achievement showed "no clear evidence to support an argument of the superiority of one EL instructional approach over another" (Parrish, et al, 2006, p. ix), research in fields such as cognitive psychology and neuroscience show that the benefits of bilingualism expand beyond schooling to influence areas such as the delay of onset of age-related dementia, improving young children's abilities to stay on task, and a variety of cognitive skills inside and outside of school (Bialystok, et al, 2004). Ideologically, the expansion of dual language programs seems to have attenuated some of the "us versus them" and other racially-inspired sentiments that helped defeat Colorado's version of Proposition 227 through the use of anti-immigrant propaganda linked to English-only beliefs (August, Goldenberg, & Rueda, 2011).1 A recent report by the United States Department of Education (Boyle, et al, 2015) illustrates the subsequent increases in the popularity of two-way immersion programs (for native English and native Spanish-speaking students, as well as other language combinations) across the nation and...