Xavier Becerra: “I agree with everything she has said. All the information we have, the data and any studies you look at show that we are…”

“I agree with everything she has said. All the information we have, the data and any studies you look at show that we are absolutely in need of teachers who can help transition a lot of our young students who are not yet proficient in English so that they can become fully proficient. What we have found is that the best way to do that is to not let them fall behind in math, in geography and science while they are trying to learn English but let them learn all those subjects so that within 3, 4, or 5 years they are actually in fully mainstream course work. I would agree with the gentlewoman completely we do need to see more funding, we do need to see some money allocated to the professional development component of bilingual education so we can have the teachers that we need to teach. We are drastically by tens of thousands of teachers understaffed in our schools for bilingual education and hopefully we will see something remedied as we go through the process of trying to pass a bill.”