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Educating Latinos: An NPR Special Report
The Shortage of Bilingual Education Teachers
 Listen to Part 3 of the series, reported by Jessica Jones of member station WUNC.
Dec. 9, 2002 -- A major factor in the poor education of many Latino students in this country is the shortage of qualified teachers. In the third part of NPR's series on Educating Latinos, Jessica Jones of member station WUNC looks at the struggle in one North Carolina school to teach a growing population of children who don't speak English.
Rose Hill-Magnolia Elementary is so desperate to find teachers for its Latino children that it went all the way to South America. James Roa of Bogotá, Colombia, came here with an exchange program three years ago to teach ESL -- English as a Second Language. However, some of Roa's older students aren't catching up to grade level in English. He says, "We have so many children to help to teach that we can't give them enough time. We would like them to be here every day. But you know it's not possible." Roa has less than two hours a week with each of his students, who've come into the school speaking little or no English. He's one of only four ESL teachers for nearly 300 students.
In North Carolina, there are only about 900 ESL teachers for some 53,000 children with limited English skills -- one teacher for every 58 students. State legislators recently increased funding to hire and train more teachers, and the federal government has also provided money. But for this school and countless others, that's not enough. Across the country, schools both large and small are desperate for ESL teachers.
Often Latino kids are sitting in classrooms, being taught by people who aren't qualified. That is a big problem, according to Barnett Berry, executive director of the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality. Research shows Latino students consistently lag behind other groups, and that schools need to do a better job of teaching them.
The new federal education law, the No Child Left Behind Act, says the government can penalize schools that do not measure up. Berry says many Latino children "will not pass the tests, they will in some cases not be promoted to the next grade... the schools they'll be attending will be labeled failing schools, and there will be money taken away from those schools."
Like most of the educators at Rose Hill-Magnolia, principal Janice Winn doesn't speak Spanish. She says without a full-time translator it'd be tough to enroll all the Latino kids here. Most of their parents come to work in nearby poultry plants and in the fields. The school has two bilingual classes, but they are only for kindergartners and first graders. Winn says the number one thing she needs is more ESL teachers. She does have the money to hire one more instructor -- she's already started looking months ahead of time. But in a rural district like this it's still a long shot. Education experts agree the best way to solve the shortage is to find future ESL teachers in their home districts.
Beth Trujillo is an area native who learned Spanish after college. She finds her students, some of whom had never seen a book before this year, are all now learning to read. She says, "I'm so excited about it. It's taken a while. I thought at the beginning, 'Oh gosh these kids aren't ready to read,' but they are -- they're getting it now and it's really exciting."
And that's the point made by everyone from principal Winn to teacher assistants at the school: Given good teachers, these kids can succeed. But Trujillo herself isn't sure how long she can keep this up. Trujillo says she's dangerously close to burning out, and she's thinking about looking for another job. Which isn't unusual: Research shows it's just as hard to keep teachers in the classroom as it is to hire them.
In Depth
 Browse for other NPR stories about Hispanics in the United States.
Browse for other NPR stories about bilingual education in the United States.
 Listen in on James Roa's ESL classroom at Rose Hill-Magnolia Elementary School. This is a lesson to a group of 16 kindergarteners he tutors twice a week for about 45 minutes at a time.
Resources for Part 3 and the entire series.
Learn about all the stories in this series.
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