Global Strategies: To PPS: Add Mandarin immersion, advocate for ...

The Board of Portland Public Schools has an agenda item ?ESL/Dual Language Update and Forum Discussion? for their meeting on 11/19/12. In the materials for the Board meeting, there is a memo from GM Garcia, Dual Language Director, that gives an update on PPS?s dual language immersion programs (here).

Back in February, 2012, I made several recommendations in my blog post ?Clear up the ESL and immersion muddle in Portland Public Schools? (here): I wrote:

First, recognize the strategic importance of developing foreign language immersion programs (and a high school study abroad program) for English-native students.

Garcia?s memo does not do that. The Board should do so at their meeting.

Do not let discussion of immersion programs become, as has seemed the tendency, a discussion only of the needs of Spanish-native ESL students

Garcia?s memo, unfortunately, seems to continue this tendency, and, in some cases, suggests that developing Spanish or Russian immersion programs are delayed awaiting native speakers to maintain the desired balance of native to English speakers. There are differing models of the mix of native and English speakers. The mix in any school should be driven by parental/student demand.

Second, do not let local elementary school principals (or onsite teachers) veto the development of needed immersion programs. Let immersion program development be driven by strategic needs and parental demand.

I think this is still a problem and not clearly addressed in Garcia?s memo.

Garcia?s memo does, thankfully, look to both the expansion of immersion programs into more schools and to the strengthening of the programs in grades 6 through 12. Both are needed, and the issues are complex.

Garcia?s memo also highlights many additional issues. I would emphasize two as of major significance. First, there is a racial equity issue. African-Americans are not well represented in any of the non-Spanish immersion programs. Second, there is a general lack of ?highly qualified? immersion teachers.

So, I have sent the following email to Board members with two recommended actions for their Board meeting.

Dear members of the Portland Public Schools Board,

I note that an ?ESL/Dual Language Update and Forum Discussion? is on your Board agenda for 11/19/12. Please take two Board actions related to these issues:

(1)?? Instruct the Dual Language Director to make opening (or expanding) an additional Mandarin immersion program for the Fall of 2013 a priority.

And (2), with the signatures of the Board Co-Chairs and Superintendent, authorize sending the following letter to the members of the Oregon Education Investment Board, the Chancellor and members of the Board of Higher Education, and the deans of each school of education within the Oregon University System.

?Dear member of the Oregon Education Investment Board,

?Portland Public Schools recognizes that, in an increasingly interdependent and globalized economy, both future economic opportunities for individual students and economic growth for our region and state will depend upon the foreign language skills of our graduates.

?We note that the state of Utah is rapidly expanding immersion programs in languages prioritized for its economic future (Spanish, French, Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese). We also note that Australia in its recent white paper ?Australia in the Asian Century? has recommended that ?All students will have the opportunity to undertake a continuous course of study in a priority Asian language,? (Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian or Japanese). ?

?Our long term goal is to provide the opportunities for all our high school graduates to graduate bilingual, fluent in at least two languages (well beyond what two years of high school study produces).

?Portland Public School currently offers immersion programs in Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese and Russian. And we also have a French immersion charter school. We are committed to promoting and expanding these programs as rapidly as there is parental/student demand (and there is current demand in excess of our current capacities).

?We need your help in finding and training good teachers to staff such schools. The current credentialing system for foreign language immersion teachers (PK-12) is outdated, unrealistic, and inadequate. Training programs in the Oregon schools of education are either non-existent or inadequate both in quality and in numbers trained. It is a crisis.

?Please make training foreign language immersion teachers (PK to 12) a priority for the Oregon University System.

?Sincerely ? Co-Chairs, Superintendent?

Thank you ? Dave Porter

?

Source: http://daveporter.typepad.com/global_strategies/2012/11/to-pps-add-mandarin-immersion-advocate-for-more-immersion-tescher-training.html

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