Education Week - December 5, 2012 - 17

EDUCATION WEEK

DECEMBER 5, 2012

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offer a foreign language, the proportion of elementary schools that do decreased from 31 percent in 1997 to 25 percent in 2008, according to the most recent national survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics, and from 75 percent to 58 percent at the middle school level. The center conducts the survey once every decade. The 2008 survey says there “continues to be reason for serious concern about the limited number of long‐sequence K-12 language programs designed to provide students with the linguistic and cultural skills needed to communicate effectively in the United States and abroad.” It also says that a large number of elementary and middle school students, especially in rural or low-socioeconomic-status schools, do not have the opportunity to study foreign language at all. “We’ve just fallen so far behind other countries in terms of preparing our students for the world in which they’re going to have to live and work,” said Martha G. Abbott, the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, or actfl, based in Alexandria, Va. Nationally, immersion programs—not to be confused with individual foreign-language classes—have grown from only a handful in the 1970s to nearly 450 in 2011, according to the Center for Applied Linguistics. As of August, there were 415 two-way bilingual-immersion programs in 31 states, plus the District of Columbia, according to an online directory created by the center, which says the directory is not necessarily exhaustive. The vast majority, 391, of those programs involve Spanish. Nearly half were in California and Texas.

languages and other subjects. Before he moved on this year to a university presidency in California, Eduardo Ochoa, then-assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, testified before a Senate panel that foreign-language instruction should not be seen as an “add on” in K-12 or higher education and should take place early in a child’s experience. Such programs, he said, help develop skills that will prepare students, and the nation itself, for “economic competitiveness and jobs, collaboration to address global challenges, national security and diplomacy, and effective engagement in a diverse U.S. society.” Gov. Markell had similar things in mind when he launched the

World Language Expansion Initiative in Delaware.

Advanced by High School
The initiative, which involves two Spanish programs in addition to Chinese, seeks to reach nearly 8,000 Delaware students at the K-8 level by 2020. “We developed the initiative because we recognize that as global employers choose where to locate jobs, they are better served hiring where their employees have the skills to communicate across markets. That means fluency in two or three languages, not one,” the governor, a Democrat, said during a visit to the McIlvaine Early Childhood Center. In addition to those benefits, he

said, “language study improves academic performance, builds sociocultural awareness, and enhances cognitive abilities.” By the 9th grade, Mr. Markell said he expected every student in the program to be able to pass Advanced Placement Chinese or Spanish. For now, the program is reaching some 340 pupils, including the 101 at McIlvaine. Superintendent Fitzgerald said one measure of the program will be the extent to which parents keep their children in it. Another, he said, will be how well immersion students perform on standardized tests. Mr. Fitzgerald would like to see foreign language become an even more prominent part of K-12 education and says he believes it will

if his district demonstrates success. “I can foresee in the future where all of our kindergartners are involved in some sort of immersion program,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “It would be wonderful if we had the funds and the ability to provide each student with another language and help guide them through their education career.”
Coverage of “deeper learning” that will prepare students with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world is supported in part by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, at www.hewlett.org. Jamaal Abdul-alim is a freelance writer living in the District of Columbia.

Resource Challenges
Superintendent Fitzgerald says it wasn’t because of lack of awareness about the benefits of studying foreign language early that his Delaware district didn’t introduce it until now. “Plain and simple, either we didn’t have the resources or we couldn’t find the teachers,” he said. Lack of resources for foreign-language instruction is also a challenge at the national level, even as government leaders trumpet the need for American students to gain foreign-language skills so they can fill crucial voids in realms that range from national security to international trade. Mr. Rivers of the Joint National Committee laments the recent decision at the federal level not to fund the State Department’s Foreign Language Assistance Program, known as flap, in fiscal 2012. Until then, flap was the only federally financed program that exclusively targeted foreign-language instruction in K-12. The previous fiscal year it had been funded at $26.9 million. The Obama administration has repeatedly, as part of the budget request, proposed the creation of a competitive program, Effective Teaching and Learning for a Well-Rounded Education, that would finance education in a variety of areas, including foreign

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Education Week - December 5, 2012

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