In light of growing numbers of Mexican immigrants and other Spanish speakers in the United States, public schools must deal with shortages of certified bilingual teachers. This chapter describes efforts to address such shortages by the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs (OBEMLA) and other agencies of the U.S. Department of Education. In 1990, the U.S. Department of Education and the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education entered into a Memorandum of Understanding on Education, which aimed to enhance educational cooperation between the two countries and which called for a joint Border Conference on Education, held in October 1991. Following a renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding in 1993, national agreements of cooperation were concluded in the areas of teacher exchange, teacher training programs, and curriculum exchange. To advance these agreements, OBEMLA sponsored joint invitational symposia in 1994 and 1995, and OBEMLA and the University of Texas at El Paso established the Binational Initiative for Educational Development, which sponsors binational meetings to promote collaborative projects, seminars and workshops on teacher exchanges and bilingual teacher recruitment and training, and a summer institute for Mexican and U.S. educators and researchers. OBEMLA has also promoted efforts to recruit and certify foreign teachers and to develop comparable teacher education programs at U.S. and Mexican universities that will allow international transfers of credit. Other related efforts include the Border Colloquy, a series of meetings to envision the educational future of the U.S.-Mexican border region. Contains 16 references. (SV)