Education Week - October 15, 2014 - 14

Successes Spur Statewide Push for Dual-Language Classes
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kindergarten teacher at Collinswood,
in explaining why the school's students
consistently outperform most
of their peers in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
"It raises their achievement in
everything."
Raising achievement across the
board-while producing a new
generation of bilingual, biliterate
students-is at the heart of North
Carolina's statewide initiative to
replicate the success of Collinswood
and dozens of other dual-language
immersion programs that have
taken root during the last several
years. Drawing in part on the language
and cultural assets of a large
and still-growing Spanish-speaking
immigrant population, North Carolina
is on the leading edge of a trend
of steady growth in dual-language
immersion programs in public
schools across the nation that has
been driven both by strong parental
demand and growing recognition
among educators of its promise for
increasing achievement for Englishlearners.
Roughly 2,500 dual-language
programs are operating this
school year, according to estimates
from national experts.
'Global Education' Push
The state is so serious about it, in
fact, that the North Carolina board
of education has committed, as part
of a larger strategic plan for promoting
"global education," to a number
of initiatives that will expand and
deepen dual-language programs
during the next five years. Among
those commitments: bringing at
least one full dual-language immersion
program that spans kindergarten
through 12th grade to each of
the state's 115 districts, and partnering
with colleges and universities
to develop the special cadre of
bilingual, biliterate educators-including
teachers and administrators-that
such programs demand.
"The bottom line for us is that all
of our subgroups in dual-language
immersion are doing well," said
Helga Fasciano, special assistant
for global education in the North
Carolina Department of Public
Instruction. "They all outperform
their monolingual peers across the
board."
On top of the achievement gains,
North Carolina's quest to produce
larger numbers of college- and
career-ready graduates requires a
bigger investment in "global education,"
Ms. Fasciano said.
"With more graduates who are
bilingual, biliterate, and who have
deeply studied and gained understanding
of other cultures and regions
of the world, our communities
gain so much from that," she said.
"And our students are prepared to
go out and find success in such an
interconnected world."
Parsing Academic Gains
The achievement gains of duallanguage
learners alone, argues researcher
Wayne P. Thomas, should
be "getting every policymaker to
jump out of his or her seat" to do
more to support and expand duallanguage
immersion.
Mr. Thomas, a professor emeritus
of evaluation and research methods
at George Mason University, in
Fairfax, Va., and Virginia P. Collier,
a professor emeritus of education at
George Mason, have been conducting
a multiyear analysis of reading
and math achievement to evaluate
how North Carolina's dual-language
students are stacking up against
their nondual-language peers. They
have so far pored over three years
of scores (2007-08 through 2009-10)
on the end-of-grade reading and
math exams given to students in
grades 3-8. They have zeroed in on
students in seven districts who are
enrolled in two-way, dual-language
programs-those where there is a
close-to-even split of native Englishspeakers
and native speakers of the
other language of instruction, usually
Spanish.
Overall, they have found that in
the North Carolina districts with
two-way, dual-language instruction,
students score statistically significantly
higher in reading in 4th
grade than their nondual-language
peers, a pattern that continues
through 8th grade. By 5th grade,
dual-language students score about
the same as their monolingual peers
a grade ahead of them, an advantage
that lasts through 8th grade.
The same pattern plays out in math,
with 5th grade dual-language students
scoring as high as nonprogram
peers who are in 6th grade.
The two groups of students who
are benefitting the most from duallanguage
instruction, the researchers
say, are English-language learners
and African-American students.
For English-learners in duallanguage
programs, reading scores
in all the tested grades are much
higher than for ELLs who are not in
a dual-language program, according
to the study. In math, the picture is
the same. English-learners in duallanguage
programs score as high as
their nondual-language ELL peers
who are a grade ahead of them.
In their analyses, Mr. Thomas and
Ms. Collier have found that AfricanAmerican
students in dual-language
programs significantly outscore
their nondual-language peers in
reading in all tested grades. By the
4th grade, they are scoring ahead of
their nondual-language peers who
are a grade ahead of them. The pattern
is the same in math.
"The number one impact of this
type of instruction is on their cognitive
development, which is cumulative
every year," Mr. Thomas said.
"The other key factor is the level
of student engagement. Those two
things are adding up to a lot of positive
effect for our most historically
disadvantaged groups."
The researchers have also conducted
on-site interviews with
teachers, students, administrators,
and parents in the two-way, duallanguage
schools to get a better understanding
of why achievement is
strong, attendance rates are high,
and students are engaged.
In delving into why black students
are performing at much
higher levels in dual language than
their peers who are not, Ms. Collier
said teachers offer some revealing
answers.
Benefits Accrue
For some African-American students
who may speak a nonstandard
form of English at home, learning
in Spanish is making them more
"metalinguistically aware," which
teachers say develops their literacy
skills in English, Ms. Collier said.
"Teachers also tell me that their
African-American students are so
highly engaged," Ms. Collier said.
"It's like being in a gifted program
where they are able to make leaps
in learning and get to the more interesting
stuff. They are not bored."
What teachers like Ms. Saavedra
at Collinswood see in their duallanguage-learning
students-
high levels of engagement, ease
of switching between two languages-has
been borne out in cognitive
research. Being bilingual-
aside from the obvious advantage
of enabling communication in more
than one language-enhances
memory and makes it easier to pay
attention.
But with all the promise of dual
language in North Carolina comes
major challenges to expanding it on
a broader scale.
Already, every dual-language program
in the state-there are now
about 90-struggles to find teachers
who have both the language and
pedagogy skills that are required,
said Ms. Fasciano. And once they do
find qualified teachers, holding onto
them can be even tougher.
For the two-way dual-language
programs and schools, the hunt for
teachers requires hiring from outside
the United States. Districts
like Charlotte-Mecklenburg work
directly with private agencies that
help identify qualified foreign teachers
and arrange with the U.S. State
Department to secure visas, which
are good for up to five years.
"We do have to rely on a pretty
healthy number of international faculty,"
Ms. Fasciano said. "The principals
have really been the heroes in
this effort. It's them recognizing how
powerful this type of instruction is
for kids, and going to great lengths
to make it happen."
Nicolette Grant, the principal at
Collinswood-which is recognized
by the government of Spain as an
exemplar school for Spanish-language
instruction-said even in the
state's largest city, finding teachers
for dual language is difficult.
This school year, 11 members of the
DISSECTING ACADEMIC GAINS FOR DUAL-LANGUAGE STUDENTS
NO, not in dual-language class
In the 2008-09 school year, students enrolled in "two-way" dual-language programs in six
North Carolina districts, on average, outscored their peers who were not enrolled in dual language
on the state's reading and math tests.
362
359
354
351
346
337
334
331
GRADE 3 GRADE 6 GRADE 8
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS
GRADE 3 GRADE 6 GRADE 8
AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENTS
GRADE 3 GRADE 6 GRADE 8
WHITE STUDENTS
2008-09 READING
14 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 15, 2014 | www.edweek.org
GRADE 3 GRADE 6 GRADE 8
LOW-INCOME STUDENTS
334
334
352
349
346
348
337
349
355 355
352
359
357
355
YES, in dual-language class
364 365
Photos by John W. Adkisson for Education Week

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Education Week - October 15, 2014

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