Issues in Multicultural Education As we enter the second decade of the 21st century there are new, recurring, and emerging threats to multicultural education as a social justice movement in NC schools and communities. Multicultural education issues in NC have been the subject of discussion throughout multiples universities and political groups all around the entire state. The state of public education is necessary to the extended discourse around international and intercultural education. Students’ experiences during the elementary and secondary years have important implications for their citizenship in a globally interactive world. Some schools of education have acknowledged the urgency for developing culturally competent teachers, while others grapple with ways to fit appropriate programs into their curriculum.
University of North Carolina in Greensboro has a study with teachers over the past decade. The goal of this research is to help teachers—especially new or preserves teachers and those who implement multicultural science education because of district mandates or changing classroom demographics—understand the importance of multicultural science education and to provide teachers with a list of resources they can refer to for additional information and activity ideas.
East Carolina University’s teacher preparation program at the beginning of 2007 consisted of using eight key questions to guide their inquiry of how ECU’s teacher preparation program relates to multicultural education priorities. The major multicultural teacher education themes found in ECU’s program related them to the current issues of public education in North Carolina. The state is experiencing one of the highest population growth rates in the country, and is facing a severe shortage of teachers over the next decade. The University reflects the high population growth seen in the state. This growth shows the potential for change in the College of Education’s overall priorities and ideology. Some data shows there are increasing emphasis on diversity issues and on field-based learning. Other data shows there is increasing pressure to put more curricula online and to certify more teachers faster. Most pre-service teachers lack the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and experiences needed to teach ethnically and linguistically diverse students. Our schools need teachers who know who they are teaching, what to teach, and methodologies to teach them.
In addition, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Cone University Center create conference to revise discourse and rethinking directions on social justice in NC Schools and community to address the following questions: What is the nature of the current activities that are undermining efforts to incorporate multicultural education into NC schools? What activities have potential to dismantle multicultural advances in NC schools and communities? It is critical for advocates of multicultural education to examine the nature of the issues that represent real and emerging trials and tests for educators and community members who are committed to social justice in NC schools. These may include how the changing demographics, local/state/ and federal government interventions, teacher quality, testing, tuition increases, social programs, and minority teacher recruiting/retention might impact social justice dialogue in NC schools and communities.
As a Hispanic person the biggest issue that I have seen would have to be the lack of Spanish-speaking teachers in the school system in NC. From the school years 2000–2001 and 2004–2005, Latino students accounted for 57.3 percent of the total growth in the North Carolina public schools. Language barriers make communication and education difficult, and Latino students and their parents have different expectations of schools than others in U.S. schools. By understanding the cultural background and expectations of their Latino students, teachers can better connect with them and help them learn. The United States has the largest number of Spanish speakers in the world except for Mexico. Approximately 40 million people talk, think, do business, dream and play in Spanish. This demographic shift is especially transforming the American South. For example, the recent arrival of approximately half a million new immigrants in North Carolina alone (mostly Latin American-born) is also bringing a new culture and language to a region whose population has remained relatively stable over the last half century when compared with major centers of immigration in the United States. With the sizeable number of new immigrants arriving since the 1990s through traditional gateways of immigration, as well as new gateways within the United States, the lack of resources to teach large numbers of students whose home language is Spanish has reached a critical stage.
A major part of the resistance comes from teacher educators’ discomfort, if not fear of, addressing issues such as race and racism in their courses, or even on their campuses (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Resistance will persist and children from ethnically and linguistically diverse backgrounds will go unserved until schools and faculty acknowledge the need for culturally competent teachers in the classroom and the responsibility of TEPs to properly prepare these teachers.

References
The University of North Carolina Greensboro http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/listing.aspx?id=2597 Becoming Culturally Responsive Educators: Rethinking Teacher Education Pedagogy http://www.nccrest.org/Briefs/Teacher_Ed_Brief.pdf Learn NC edition
http://www.learnnc.org/