Shortage of Trained Bilingual Teachers Is Focus of Both Concern and Attention

By Peter Schmidt

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--As thousands of bilingual teachers gathered for a conference here late last month, the halls of the city's convention center were lined with booths displaying Native American art or literature from teacher recruiters. The market for jewelry and pottery was brisk, but the more than 50 recruiters from school districts often seemed to attract little interest, even when they offered high salaries and stipends to attract bilingual teachers to their schools.

How to meet the growing demand for trained bilingual educators clearly has become a source of serious concern to those who gathered here for the National Association for Bilingual Education's annual convention. School administrators, deans of education schools, and state and federal officials all held meetings here to address the shortage.

Officials from the U.S. Education Department's office of bilingual education and minority-languages affairs announced that the agency is considering whether the federal Bilingual Education Act, due to be reauthorized in 1993, should contain more funding for teacher training, in particular for the in-service training...