{"id":258966,"date":"2022-06-25T16:51:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T23:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconeer.com\/current\/?p=258966"},"modified":"2022-06-25T16:54:03","modified_gmt":"2022-06-25T23:54:03","slug":"california-asian-language-teacher-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconeer.com\/current\/california-asian-language-teacher-students\/","title":{"rendered":"California Runs Short of Accredited Asian-language Teachers – Asian American Students Pay the Price"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Image by Shutterstock)<\/em><\/p>\n

Vietnamese and Mandarin were the second and third most spoken languages in California K-12 schools in the 2019-2020 school year. Yet only four teachers were accredited to teach Vietnamese and 58 to teach Mandarin. The acute shortage of accredited Asian language teachers in California significantly limits Asian language speaking students’ education options. Advocates called for one-time funding package of $5 million to address the shortage.<\/p>\n

At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, June 6, speakers \u2013 CA Senator Dr. Richard Pan (Senate District 6), Chair of the Senate Select Committee and on Asian American Pacific Islander Affairs and the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus; CA Senator Tom Umberg (Senate District 34), supporter of the budget request; Professor Fernando Rodr\u00edguez-Valls from CSU Fullerton, Program Coordinator, College of Education Bilingual Authorization; and Victoria “Nikki” Dominguez, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – LA Policy Director \u2013 talked about the very concerning shortage of accredited dual immersion language teachers in California.<\/p>\n

\"Asian-Language
(Above, l-r): CA Senator Dr. Richard Pan (Senate District 6), Chair of the Senate Select Committee and on Asian American Pacific Islander Affairs and the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus; CA Senator Tom Umberg (Senate District 34), supporter of the budget request; Professor Fernando Rodr\u00edguez-Valls, CSU Fullerton, College of Education Bilingual Authorization Program Coordinator; and Victoria “Nikki” Dominguez, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – LA Policy Director. (EMS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cA problem that is very important for our education systems, especially for the Asian American community, that continues to face language access and identifies language access as the number one barrier to access to the services that our community needs, including equitable and fair education for all students.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the California Department of Education, more than a thousand bilingual accreditations were issued in 2019-2020 academic year but out of all the thousands, only 89 were accredited for Asian languages collectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unacceptable when Vietnamese and Mandarin, and a collection of many other Asian languages continue to be spoken in our communities, with Mandarin with Vietnamese being the first, and Mandarin being the third most spoken language in our public K-12 systems, yet only four teachers were accredited and in Vietnamese language and only 58 were accredited to teach Mandarin in our schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must invest in the California State University Asian language bilingual teacher education program consortium. The consortium is an alliance among 10 CSUs. California State Universities that have come together to work to increase the numbers of accredited bilingual teachers in six current languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Hmong, Korean and Vietnamese.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consortium yet does not have any of the resources they need to successfully recruit train and graduate these students and these teachers into our system and that is why Advancing Justice California is calling to come together to learn more about this issue and work together for us to address this. Calling for a one-time budget request from the state for five million dollars to be allocated over the course of four years to fund towards this infrastructure, to train Asian language teachers that are looking to earn the credentials to be able to enter our workforce, our schools, and lead our students in their academics,\u201d said Dominguez.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur caucus supports the critical effort of Asian American Advancing Justice California,\u201d said Dr Pan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are acting to invest in accrediting more K-12 Asian language bilingual teachers to teach in dual immersion classrooms in our public schools. We’re working tirelessly to ensure that the API community is visible and that our needs are prioritized.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are very few teachers who are Asian language bilingual teachers, who are teaching dual immersion classrooms. There’s tremendous demand for that as well, so we need to meet that need now,\u201d said Dr Pan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are one of the fastest growing, actually the fastest growing racial ethnic group in the state but in order to actually be able to measure that, we have to make sure the state appropriated sufficient resources to reach hard to count communities because many of the individuals are Asian American immigrants with limited English proficiency,\u201d said Dr Pan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe proposed and helped pass a historic 166. To address rising anti-AAPI hate and combat xenophobia against our community we need to approach in all angles. One of the priorities in our equity budget last year was to address the environment in schools and bullying. We also made note in our proposal last year was around language access.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we don’t have enough accredited Asian language teachers, that’s why we must invest in the California State University our university system that trains our teachers in the Asian Bilingual Teacher Education Program consortium.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can help address the challenges in recruiting and training future bilingual teachers with a modest, but critical five-million-dollar investment consortium,\u201d said Dr Pan.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s an important initiative. It’s important that we have fully trained skilled bilingual bicultural teachers for those young people. We want to make sure that our young people are as productive citizens as is possible. The way to make them most productive is to make sure that they are fully functional in at least two languages,\u201d said Senator Umberg, sponsor of the legislation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the barriers that we have is funding. Most of these classes are being offered over the summer, when the students cannot afford financial aid, and they must take two classes. The average of the cost of each class is around twelve hundred dollars, which adds to the whole program, twenty-five hundred dollars,\u201d said Prof. Rodr\u00edguez-Valls, further stressing the need for funding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Image by Shutterstock) Vietnamese and Mandarin were the second and third most spoken languages in California K-12 schools in the 2019-2020 school year. Yet only four teachers were accredited to teach Vietnamese and 58 to teach Mandarin. The acute shortage of accredited Asian language teachers in California significantly limits Asian language speaking students’ education options….<\/p>\n

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