Dual-Language Immersion Programs Growing in Popularity

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More than a decade after California voters eliminated most bilingual programs, first-grader Sofia Checchi is taught in Italian nearly all day–as she and her 20 classmates at Franklin Elementary School have been since kindergarten.

Yet in just a year, Sofia has jumped a grade level in reading English. In the view of her mother–an Italian immigrant–Sofia’s achievement validates a growing body of research indicating that learning to read in students’ primary languages helps them become more fluent in English.

The Glendale Unified School District has become one of the nation’s leading laboratories for such dual-language immersion experiments, offering programs in Italian, German, Spanish, Armenian, Japanese and Korean. At Franklin, instruction is 90% in Italian and 10% in English in kindergarten and first grade, a proportion that will shift to 50-50 by fifth grade. {snip}

Growing in popularity, dual-language immersion programs are the new face of bilingual education–without the stigma. Though bilingual education was often perceived–and resented by some–as public handouts only for immigrant families, dual programs offer the chance to learn a second language to native-born American children as well.

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Sugarman [Julie Sugarman of the Center for Applied Linguistics] estimated that dual-language immersion programs have grown in the last few years from a few hundred to 1,000 or more nationwide, with California and Texas leading the way. California had 224 programs in 100 school districts as of 2008–a number that officials say has risen considerably in recent years. The majority of the programs are in elementary schools.

About 1.5 million students, or one-quarter of California’s school-age population, are English-language learners. The vast majority are placed in English-only programs, an approach essentially mandated by Proposition 227 in 1998.

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So far, dual-language programs have not stirred the controversy that surrounded bilingual education.

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Diversity has increased, with the proportion of low-socioeconomic families falling from 77% to 53%, school officials say. Only two families–both Spanish-speaking–declined to select dual programs for their children this fall; they will be offered spots in all-English kindergartens at other district schools.

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