District Administration - April 2007 - (Page 43)

BRUSH PAINTING Sixth-graders practice painting techniques in art class at CAIS. of Secondary-Elementary Schools, brought 400 education leaders on a weeklong tour of China designed to gain enthusiasm and knowledge that they’ll need in order to create Chinese programs of their own. The College Board hopes to take another 800 educators on a similar trip this summer, according to Selena Cantor, director of the College Board’s Chinese language initiatives. In January, 34 native Chinese teachers, screened by the College Board, arrived to teach for up to three years in elementary, middle and high schools in 19 states. Another 100 Chinese teachers are scheduled to arrive this summer. With the ﬁrst Chinese language and culture AP exam to be administered next month, Cantor says the College Board is keeping expectations low Some 1,500 high school students will take the exam. “Many students in the beginning will be students who are either in a school program who have had Chinese for a number of years,” Cantor adds, “or Chinese students who have been taking weekend classes.” Catching Up and Catching On The U.S. is playing a lopsided game of catch-up. Today while some 200 to 250 million Chinese students are learning to speak English, it’s estimated that no more than 50,000 precollege students study Chinese in the U.S. Yet even those meager numbers reaching 6,000 students and starting in kindergarten. Minnesota’s ﬁrst Chinese immersion school, in which almost all lessons are taught in Chinese, opened last fall in St. Paul. Syosset Public Schools in New York introduced Chinese for ﬁrstgraders seven years ago, soon after Superintendent of Schools Carol Hankin read a poster at an airport that stated that Chinese would soon become the most-used language on the Web. Syosset students learn a different language each year from kindergarten (Russian) through ﬁfth grade (Latin). “We ﬁnd when they get to high school they are very comfortable in different languages,” Hankin says. “That fear factor seems to have gone away.” In the 9,500-student Fairﬁeld Public Schools in Connecticut, Chinese classes will start this fall in two high schools. Gary Rosato, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, says the district expects to hire one teacher to start and has allotted slightly more than $70,000 to cover salary, textbooks and professional development. Lin says starting a new Syosset students learn a different language each year from K-5. “We ﬁnd when they get to high school they are very comfortable in different languages. That fear factor seems to have gone away.” —Carol Hankin, superintendent of schools, Syosset Public Schools, N.Y. represent a sharp rise. According to a 1992 report by the National Foreign Language Center at Johns Hopkins University, fewer than 1,400 American junior high and high school students were taking Chinese language courses in 1970. By 1990, that ﬁgure had grown to nearly 7,400. Since then, schools have made inroads. The Chicago public school system, for example, has launched the nation’s most ambitious effort, program with a single teacher typically costs closer to $100,000, which would cover salary, health insurance and professional development as well as textbooks. On the opposite extreme, Fairfax County Public Schools in northern Virginia added Chinese, Arabic and Korean about 10 years ago to its foreign language program, which today consists of 11 languages. The diverse student body speaks 100 native lanApril 2007 43 www.DistrictAdministration.com http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - April 2007

Editor's Letter
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
“See You in Court!"
Lost in Translation
Bonding Agents
Certifying AP Courses
Hunting for Talent - Part 2
Buying Power
The Musty Bookshelf
New Products
Leadership
Speaking Out
The Online Edge
Problem/Solution
Calendar of Events
Overheard On The Pulse

District Administration - April 2007