This state-of-the-art paper is centered on bilingual education teachers' linguistic qualifications with special reference to Spanish competencies needed to meet the needs of emergent bilingual education learners in the U.S. The paper spans over a forty-year period drawing on the experiences and related publications of the principal author beginning in the mid 1980s and up to the present. In doing so, key themes, questions and challenges related to the special issue are highlighted based on the series of publications from 1993 to 2020. Insights into the ways language ideologies and politics of bilingual education teacher preparation entities undermine this need are addressed. Drawing on language education policy planning, the author then offers three paths forward given that not much progress has been made since the inception of bilingual education in the U.S. with regard to the preparation of linguistically qualified bilingual education teachers with specific reference to their Spanish competency.