This brief is the fourth of a four-part series that focuses on bilingual education, bilingual educators, and addressing the bilingual teacher shortage in contexts across the United States. This research was commissioned by the New Jersey State Department of Education, which is committed to providing quality bilingual education to its…

Bilingual education is on its way back in California. After decisively rejecting bilingual education in 1998, state voters enthusiastically endorsed its return in 2016. Educators are eager to offer more bilingual classes--and not only to recently arrived immigrants. Increasingly, English-speaking parents are also sold on the cognitive benefits of…

This edited volume extends our field of studies by highlighting novel 21st century curricular designs and pedagogical practices in the preparation of future bilingual teachers and their relevance for advancing curriculum, instruction, and educational achievement across bilingual school contexts. In particular, the volume provides a much-needed…

Texas Education Code requires school districts to provide bilingual education to English learners when enrollment reaches 20 or more students in the same grade level with the same first language (Texas Education Code, 2019a). Rural school districts in Texas are challenged to hire sufficient certified bilingual teachers to implement a consistent…

Drawing from oral history interviews and archival data from a nine-month ethnography, this article examines the activist practices of foundational bilingual teachers in Milwaukee's movement to launch Spanish/English bilingual-bicultural education (BBE). We use theories of critical consciousness to interpret the educators' daily activism as crucial…

This is a case study of supplementary support sessions for Spanish proficiency offered in a bilingual teacher preparation program in Texas throughout an academic year. The support sessions were created to assist pre-service bilingual teachers in further developing their command of Spanish through extra practice, feedback, and test preparation in…

K-8 school administrators are expected to provide professional development (PD) to bilingual teachers that will enhance instructional practices. PD is an important factor that may lead to student academic achievement. However, it was unclear in what ways K-8 administrators provided PD for bilingual teachers to enhance instructional practices for…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether English as a Second Language (ESL) Hispanic students, attendance at Title I or Non-Title I schools, and percentage of Bilingual/ESL teachers on campus impacted academic performance as measured by standardized tests. With a rapidly expanding Hispanic population in Texas, it was prudent…

Emergent bilinguals (EBs) with disabilities are in an intersectional gap; that means that on the one hand, they are learning a second language and on the other hand, they have learning challenges resulting from their disability. The implication is that the interaction between their disability and second language learning may impact how they learn…

This article intentionally proposes the use of anticolonial Xicana feminisms as a theoretical foundation for Spanish--English bilingual teacher preparation programs that serve a majority of Latinx aspiring teachers. An anticolonial Xicana feminist framework is imperative in order to prepare bilingual teachers to confront and counter the growing…

Using testimonios as counterstories, we--a Latina/Indigenous immigrant and white U.S. male--examine our professional trajectories while noting changes that shaped our identities as educators and researchers within a bilingual teacher preparation program. The dual purpose of this paper is: (1) to highlight our struggles as bilingual teacher…

Language policies in the U.S., including matters relating to bilingual education, are tangled up with political tensions and ideology. All too often, the dialogue among educators and policymakers about what constitutes best practices for people learning English -- for whom we will use the term emergent bilinguals (EBs) (Garcia, Kleifgen and Falchi…

This article centers the memories and identities of Black and Brown teachers as they (re)engage with their school experiences. King and Swartz define (re)membering as the process of reconnecting knowledge of the past. We feature two stories--The first is from Roberta and Rachel who demonstrate how Black women reclaim voice, agency, and their own…

This article describes the ways in which study abroad experiences in international settings may help language teachers develop linguistic and cultural consciousness that ideally influence pedagogical practices in their home teaching contexts. Drawing upon the framework of critical multilingual awareness (CMLA; García, 2017), we describe three…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Teaching Quality." Contents include: (1) State Policy Recommendations for…