Competency-based teacher education is a positive force for change which offers educators, university scholars, and students the opportunity to collaborate and to become meaningfully involved in determining the education process. To the culturally and linguistically different, it offers the hope that the monolingual, monocultural nature of American schools will change in ways that will allow them more equal opportunity. Competency-based education has two attractive features for the linguistically and culturally different: (a) it assures fairness because it is a collaborative effort involving the school and the community and (b) its evaluation method is diagnostic and prescriptive rather than judgmental. The Community, Home, Cultural Awareness, and Language Training (CHCALT) model is an example of a competency-based program designed to meet the needs of the linguistically and culturally different. The model was developed for Teacher Corps and is to be implemented in the School of Education at San Diego State University as a program for a Specialist Credential. The CHCALT teacher training model is divided into four basic components: (a) Philosophy of Education for the Culturally and Linguistically Different; (b) Sociocultural Awareness--Home and Community Based; (c) Oral Language and Assessment Techniques; and (d) Diagnostic and Prescriptive Strategies. (HMD)