Bilingual Teachers: A Need, Unacknowledged
Bilingual education teacher Nancy Nieves Figueroa in her kindergarten class at Charles D. Wyche Elementary School in Miami Gardens, Florida. Photo by Marco Bello for palabra
As the number of English Language learners increases across U.S. public schools, so does the need for multilingual educators, but what does it take to fill these critical classroom jobs?
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Words by Patricia Guadalupe @PatriciagDC. Photos by Marco Antonio Bello, @mabellog. Edited by Virginia Lora, @VirginiaLoraC.
An ongoing shortage of bilingual education teachers in public schools could be impacting the educational future of millions of students. Some bilingual education teachers say they love the profession but are frustrated by the lack of resources and assistance they receive.
“The only thing they give you is books because they have to give you the book, the textbooks. I love my job and I do it for the kids,” says Nancy Nieves Figueroa, who has been teaching since 1990, much of it in bilingual education settings.
Nancy Nieves Figueroa in her kindergarten class. Photo by Marco Bello for palabra
More than half of the states across the country have bilingual teacher shortages and many of the schools impacted are in districts where the need is greatest, according to a 2021 report from the Comprehensive Center Network, which provides technical assistance to state education agencies, school districts and policymakers. The report finds that not only is “inadequate compensation or incentives” a factor, so are “obstacles in recruiting, training, certification, and teacher retention,” and “poor working conditions.”
In the U.S., bilingual education is a method of teaching academic content in two languages — the student’s native tongue and English. The amount of content (or subject matter, such as math, science, social studies, etc.) that is taught in either language depends on the model being used and the states’ requirements for English language learner’s instructions, which vary widely across the country. According to the National Center on Education Statistics, there are just over five million English-language learners in U.S. schools, and the National Education Association expects that number to continue to rise. Spanish is the most common language spoken among these students, and even though researchers have long suggested that the best way toward academic proficiency is through bilingual education, positions for teachers of English-language learners are among the top three vacancies in schools across the country — along with special education and computer science — according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Nancy Nieves Figueroa interacts with with her kindergarten class. Photo by Marco Bello for palabra
Nieves Figueroa currently teaches at Charles D. Wyche Elementary School, a public school in Miami Gardens, Florida, where almost 88% of students are Hispanic/Latino, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and 90% of all students are classified as “economically disadvantaged,” according to the U.S. News and World Report. Nieves Figueroa, who spends her own money on buying the rest of her classroom supplies, says her husband sometimes questions the expenditures, but she adds, “I want to help them. I love my job and I love the kids. I never think of the money.”
Jumping Over Pay Gaps and Certification Hoops
The National Education Association estimates that 90% of teachers spend their own money on supplies for the classroom, between $500 and $750 annually.
Public school teachers in general earn lower salaries compared to their college-educated peers in other professions, and that plays a part in why there is a scarcity of bilingual education teachers. In Florida, for example, the average annual pay for a bilingual education teacher is $39,287, according to Zip Recruiter; and in New York City, the country’s largest public school system, the average pay is $58,290. Nationwide, the majority of bilingual education teacher salaries range from $45,000 to $62,000 annually, according to ZipRecruiter.
A report by the nonprofit, The Century Foundation, finds young bilingual adults in the U.S. are more likely to come from low-income households and that there is a greater financial disincentive to going into teaching as a profession. For anyone taking into consideration the cost of higher education even before a job materializes, and taking longer to obtain the degree because of financial considerations, a career in teaching may seem even less appealing.
Nancy Nieves Figueroa has been teaching since 1990 and says her dedication to the kids keeps her going. Photo by Marco Bello for palabra
Matt Sugrue is an assistant principal at Elgin High School in a Chicago suburb. According to Sugrue, 80% of students at the school are Hispanic (the term the school uses to track demographics) and among those, 40% are English language learners. He sees other challenges, beyond financial compensation, that curtail the number of bilingual teachers he would like to have in his school.
“We do have a number of teachers who are long-term staff, who have the (Spanish) language skills, some of them even have the content skills, but they don't have the official Illinois certification, which can be a complicated process,” he says.
To teach English at the high school level to new language learners, the Illinois State Board of Education requires educators to obtain a special certification. It includes a three-hour exam called “English as a New Language,” which is in English. Sugrue expressed frustration at this part of the process. He says there are teachers at his school interested in teaching these students, but whose English proficiency is not at the level to pass the test. So instead, they become long-term substitutes at the school. Sugrue says these teachers know the content of the school subjects in Spanish, but he points out that even if the class were to be taught all in Spanish, these educators wouldn’t be allowed to teach it as staff in a school in Illinois, because the certification test requires a native-level understanding of written and spoken English, which those teachers don’t have.
“The biggest barrier, honestly, that I see among my teachers is that normally they're coming from countries where they didn't have a lot of exposure to English, and in order to get a certification, you need to pass (the test) in English. You need to be bilingual. So, we have long-term subs who are definitely fluent in Spanish, and even had careers in teaching, or one was even a lawyer in Venezuela, but their English skills aren't developed enough right now to be able to take that test and pass in English,” says Sugrue.
Nancy Nieves Figueroa with handouts for her students. Photo by Marco Bello for palabra
According to the National Education Association, part of the reason for the shortage is the certification process, which often varies widely from state to state, and they have recommended changes to improve teacher recruitment and retention outcomes. Some states are looking at several methods, such as establishing teacher license reciprocity for educators moving to a different part of the country, and streamlining the process, especially for professionals in other fields interested in a career change, or soon-to-be college graduates.
Additionally, The Century Foundation finds a lot of teaching training programs tend to be “expensive to pursue, monolingual in their focus, and inflexible” making them less appealing to bilingual professionals considering entering the education field.
Searching for Solutions
As a grad student at the University of Connecticut, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona focused on bilingual and bicultural education. He says it enabled him to be a better teacher throughout his career as an educator, before joining President Biden’s Cabinet in 2021. “It helped identify an area of need in the profession, and (after grad school) I chose to stay in the regular education classroom so that non-Latino students saw a Latino that was in a classroom like that. But the more time I spent in the profession, the more I realized I wanted to help Latino students, also. And so I served as a principal of a school that had a bilingual education program, and I really was able to use my master’s degree in the program and policy development there,” he says in an interview with palabra.
Secretary Cardona adds that one of his priorities has been changing that “mindset” that undervalues the teaching profession and non-English speakers by backing efforts to help close the gap in order to recruit, train, and retain bilingual education teachers. “We must value our educators more and identify that second-language teachers, bilingual teachers, are a shortage area and something that we have to be intentional about addressing,” he says.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona visits a school in Puerto Rico, July 2021. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education
Secretary Cardona states that the White House has put significant funding and funding requests into programs that help bring more people into the bilingual education pipeline, which includes $940 million invested in the English Language Acquisition programs to help multilingual learners, along with $72 million for schools to hire more bilingual teachers. This also includes money for states to fund training and certification programs and help professionals in other fields who are interested in becoming bilingual education teachers navigate through an accelerated certification process. “We have a long ways to go because it’s been neglected for a long time but I think with the right mindset and additional funding, and continued efforts at the federal level we can go in the right direction.”
According to Cardona, the administration is also pushing back against those who don’t support these efforts, and is ready to provide “technical assistance where needed and admonishment when needed,” making a reference to Arizona’s Tom Horne and pointing out that “we have a state secretary of education who is not up with the times and doesn’t recognize how important it is to promote bilingualism.” Last year, Horne, Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction sued to stop districts from using a 50-50 model of dual-immersion learning (half a day in English and half a day in Spanish), saying it violated the state’s Proposition 203 mandating English-only instruction. A judge recently threw out the lawsuit.
‘For far too long in education we’ve treated students and families that come in with another language or culture as if they have a deficit. We’re turning that on its head and saying it’s a superpower, it’s a gift.’
“It’s a tale of two visions for our country,” says Cardona, and notes that the Biden administration’s Education Department, under his leadership, is providing more support for bilingual education programs including in states where policymakers are not in agreement.
In 2022, Cardona’s Education Department awarded nearly $120 million in funding to institutions of higher education to support educators of English-language learners across the country, over five years. In a statement at that time, Cardona highlighted the program would also “help us grow a pipeline of diverse and talented educators who can help more English learners realize their own bilingual and multilingual superpowers.”
Affirming Current and Future Bilingual Leaders
Carol Banega is a new bilingual education teacher who says she benefited from programs that offer assistance, especially to educators like her who are just starting out. Banega graduated from Florida International University in 2023 — a school that received more than $2 million from Cardona’s program’s funding. She is about to enter her second year as a bilingual education teacher at Wyche Elementary in Miami Gardens and describes her first professional teaching experience there as “amazing.” While she acknowledges she faced some challenges, she says she felt supported by the administration. “It was hard at times just learning the curriculum, but there were bilingual curriculum personnel from the district who would come in and help me since I was a first-year teacher and 17 of my 18 students were ESL, level one,” she says.
Carol Banegas in her fifth-grade class at Charles D. Wyche Elementary School in Miami Gardens, Florida. Photo by Marco Bello for palabra
Banega also mentions she was surprised by how much her students had been able to improve their English language skills, and says that over half of her class had caught up to grade level by the end of the school year. The teacher pointed out that in her classroom students also had opportunities to learn from one another. “Since some students were able to catch up quicker than others, they would go ahead and help the other students who really weren't there yet,” she says. “It was very teacher-led, but by the end, it was a mixture of both, (where) students were teaching other students, and such.” She added that she learned from them too. “I’m fluent (in Spanish), but not as fluent as them. I was raised with only Spanish at my house, but my parents were working a lot. So, I ended up learning a couple new words from my students, since their vocabulary was way more diverse than mine,” she says. “It was very interesting!”
Banega says she is “definitely” staying in the profession and is even thinking of doing a summer of teaching in her parents’ native Honduras to improve her Spanish so she can be even more helpful to her students stateside.
“If I become a little more fluent in Spanish, and I learn how they’re teaching Spanish-language students (in Honduras), I feel like I can come back and apply that to my class. I had a lot of students — and the parents, too— that felt relieved when they learned that I spoke Spanish, so it’s definitely a positive thing. A lot of these kids didn’t really see themselves represented (in people who are in positions of leadership such as teachers) and they get scared that they won’t catch up.”
In her second year teaching bilingual education at Wyche Elementary in Miami Gardens, Carol Banegas describes her first year on the job as an incredible experience. Photo by Marco Bello for palabra
Banega mentions that her school has a shortage of bilingual teachers, which makes parents worry about their children’s academic progress. “I had a lot of parents (say to me), ‘Next year, I'm not sure if my student is going to have a teacher who also speaks Spanish.’ So I had parents asking me if I would go to the second grade with their students. And I'm like, ‘No….’”
A U.S. Department of Education policy brief finds that less than 14% of PK-12 teachers speak a language other than English at home, while more than 20% of students do. In some states with a high Latino population, the contrast between the ethnicity of the educator and the students is notable. In California, for example, in a state where Latinos represent the largest ethnic group at 40% of the population, just 21% of K-12 public school teachers are Latino, and this is compared to 55% of the student population. In Texas, Hispanics now outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the population as a whole, even if it is ever-so-slightly, 40.2% to 39.8%, and, according to Education Trust, the gap in the Lone Star State between non-Latino educators and Latino students is similar to California’s: 52.5% of the state’s K-12 students are Latino compared to 27.6% of the teachers.
Nearly 27% of the population in Florida is Hispanic, and almost 70% in Miami-Dade County, where 30% of public school employees identify as Hispanic or Latino, compared to almost 74% of students.
According to veteran teacher and Puerto Rico native Bernadette McDonald, for students, having someone look and speak like them is a big deal.
“The kids see someone who understands them and that they can look up to, and their parents tell them, ‘Hey, if you keep studying you can have a career of your own like your teacher. It makes a big difference,” says McDonald, who has been a bilingual education teacher for more than 20 years in Miami-Dade public schools.
Carol Banegas with her fifth-grade class at Charles D. Wyche Elementary School. Photo Marco Bello for palabra
Education Secretary Cardona says that’s exactly why bilingual education is so important.
“I would put it down to one word: validation. Validation of our lived experience, of our cultural richness. For far too long in education we’ve treated students and families that come in with another language or culture as if they have a deficit. We’re turning that on its head and saying it’s a superpower, it’s a gift,” he says.
The nonprofit group Workforce Essentials says speaking more than one language is an economic advantage, with bilingual speakers earning 5% to 25% more than those who speak only one language.
“So, validation of what the students bring to the table already and recognition that you are bilingual, multilingual, bicultural, your cognitive ability is greater, your economic potential is greater, your ability to navigate international business is greater. I think for far too long we’ve downplayed how important it is and we’re just bringing it back to light,” adds Cardona.
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Patricia Guadalupe, raised in Puerto Rico, is a bilingual multimedia journalist based in Washington, D.C. She has been covering the capital for both English and Spanish-language media outlets since the mid-1990s. She previously worked as a reporter in New York City. She’s been an editor at Hispanic Link News Service, a reporter at WTOP Radio (CBS Washington affiliate), a contributing reporter for CBS Radio network, and has written for NBC News.com and Latino Magazine, among others. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and has a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. She specializes in business news and politics, and cultural issues. She is the former president of the D.C. chapter of NAHJ and is an adjunct professor at American University in the nation’s capital and the Washington semester program of Florida International University. @PatriciagDC
Marco Antonio Bello, born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, is an award-winning independent photojournalist and videographer based in South Florida, working with Reuters, Associated Press (AP), Agence France-Presse (AFP), Getty Images, Bloomberg, and others. He has wide-ranging experience capturing accurate and compelling images of breaking news, politics, demonstrations, conflict, hurricanes, disaster zones, sports, and other events as they happen. He also creates compelling photo essays, carefully selecting and editing images to create a powerful narrative. @mabellog
Virginia Lora is an independent audio producer, reporter and editor who works in English and Spanish, and dabbles in French. Born in Peru, she moved to the U.S. at age 13 and grew up in Miami, Florida. Much of her interest in stories that center the margins comes from her early-career experiences interviewing people in communities all over the country for an oral history project, and her own immigration experience. She earned a B.A. in history, French and a certificate in Latin American and Latino studies from Amherst College and trained in narrative audio at the Transom Story Workshop. @VirginiaLoraC