The Latino Teacher Shortage in the Area Was Created by the Sac State College of Education
by Duane Campbell. Prof. Emeritus. Bilingual/Multicultural Education. CSU-S.
In 2015 after the Great Recession a new state budgets sent large amounts of funds to k-12 schools and the funds of the Local Control and Accountability Plan were targeted to low income schools. This increased funding will lead to a dramatic need for new teachers. Sacramento City Unified plans to hire 100 new teachers, and many other local urban districts will do the same. This faculty growth will continue for from 3-5 years.
But credentialed teachers from the Latino community and several Asian communities will not be available to hire because the Sac State pipeline for minority teachers has been broken. A new generation of mostly Anglo teachers will be hired which will continue the past failure to integrate the teaching profession in this region. Ending the pipeline will shape the nature of the local teaching profession for decades. Latino students make up 37 % of Sac City Unified students, Asians 17.4 %, African Americans 17.7 %, and White students 18.8 %. Latino families now make up over 37 % of California residents and Latino descent children now make up over 50% of public school students.
The Bilingual Multicultural Education Department at Sac State was set up as a structure so that the university, CSU-Sacramento, could serve the community by preparing and advancing hundreds of Chicano and Asian teachers each year. Unfortunately, others shut down this vehicle. Between 1994 -2006, Latino descent students were about 35% of the total teacher preparation students each year ( 60 -90 students per semester). After the termination of the department in 2010, Latino descent students were less than 10% of the total students in teacher preparation at Sac State (about 7 students). This decline was a direct consequence of eliminating the department.
The Pipeline
The Bilingual Multicultural Education Department program at Sac State, like the earlier Mexican American Education Project, was a product of the Chicano movement, the influence of the United Farm Workers, and the social justice movement in public education. A goal was to penetrate the institutions ( universities) to create an alternative democratic social justice educational vehicle as a strategy for social change.
A significant organizing vehicle at Sac State was a small changing core group of faculty focused on a series of common goals. Specific organizational and change strategies changed over time.
A major strategy for change was to create a program with majority status for Chicano/Mexicano students and students of color. The experience of being in the majority ( majority status) changed the lives of many, focused the students and faculty on empowerment, and introduced, renewed and continued the positive aspects of the Chicano/social justice movements to students from later generations who were born, reared, and educated after the movement decline. The program kept the dream of educational justice alive for over two decades.
Over the decades of the 1980’s and 90’s, fewer and fewer faculty had themselves participated in the social movements. As a consequence the commitment to educational efforts based upon social movements, empowerment, and participatory democracy declined. By 2006 the political culture of the College of Education regressed to its mean- away from multicultural education goals and toward an increase in the normal, traditional, College of Education culture of faculty seeking individual advancement.
In each generation of students after the 1980’s we had fewer and fewer students who had participated in movements, particularly the Chicano Civil Rights movement. However until 2006 the BMED center was a place where the few students who had experienced movements and had been educated by movements were re-enforced, encouraged, and where they became opinion leaders.
Our programs presented multicultural and bilingual teacher preparation as a vocation ,as a change agent as much as a career. When the student population of conscious students Choosing Democracy: The Latino Teacher Shortage in the Area Was Created by the Sac State College of Education: