Gómez, Joel (1945-)

Joel Gómez was born on February 24, 1945, in a rural area of the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The oldest of five children, Gómez was guided as a child by his grandmother. He was a helpful son who assisted his father at an early age on the family farm. As a non-English-speaking student of Mexican descent, Gomez's primary education began in Catholic school, learning the idiosyncrasies of the English language, later graduating from Brownsville, Texas, public schools in 1963. His pastimes included playing football, participating in Boy Scouts of America, spelunking in Mexico, and other activities, all while keeping up with farm chores. Following high school graduation, he attended the local community college and later transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, earning a BA in Spanish and history and an MA in Latin American studies. This entry describes his career.

Gomez's educational career began in South Texas public schools, teaching sixth grade in a self-contained elementary classroom. He later worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Texas at Austin and served as a lecturer at the Department of Romance Languages at Pan American College in Edinburg, Texas (now University of Texas, Pan American). These experiences allowed Gómez to build on, use, and apply in new contexts the knowledge and skills gained over the years.

Before assuming the directorship of the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, Gómez was hired by Education Service Center, Region XIII (ESC, XIII) in Austin, Texas. He worked on various projects during his tenure at ESC, XIII, developing the leadership and managerial skills that served him in future positions. One of these projects included coordinating a regional Spanish-language materials pilot-test project in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico for the Spanish Curriculum Development Center (SCDC), administered from Miami, Florida. Reading materials tested by Gómez and other colleagues across the nation paved the way for the development of Spanish-language textbooks used in U.S. bilingual education programs. Other projects during his tenure included directing the Regional Technical Assistance Center, the National Dissemination and Assessment Center, and the Bilingual/Migrant Education Project. While in Austin, Gómez spearheaded the development of a test for use with migrant students for the Texas Education Agency and completed doctoral coursework in Applied Linguistics/Foreign Language Studies at the University of Texas. He also completed an EdD in Higher Education Administration from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

With varied experiences and numerous accomplishments to his credit within the bilingual education community, Gómez is recognized for being the first director of the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education (NCBE) from 1977 to 1984 and from 1990 to 2000, and for successfully operating the Clearinghouse with funding totaling more than $24 million, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

As NCBE director, Gómez was instrumental in introducing the bilingual education community to the technological changes the educational field now takes for granted. In this way, it was possible to meet the information needs of teachers and administrators serving the educational requirements of English language learners (ELLs) across the nation in the most expeditious manner. His enthusiastic style and high energy guided an initial staff of five in Roslyn, Virginia, during the first year of the Clearinghouse, with little more than unbridled enthusiasm and an 800 telephone number. Gómez is responsible for taking a start-up project with minimal funding, turning it into a highly recognized, comprehensive, and respected repository of information on the education of non-English-speaking students, and establishing an information delivery system on which millions of people in the United States and other countries rely on a daily basis.

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