Momentum Builds for Dual-Language Learning

After reading a story about a Mexican hat dance, 1st grader Ethan Wheeler tries out the dance himself at the Wharton K-8 Dual Language Academy in Houston, one of the oldest schoolwide dual-language programs in the country. Dual-language programs—in which teachers split instruction between English and another language—are growing in popularity nationwide.

—Michael Stravato for Education Week

In a preschool class at Gardner Academy, a public elementary school near downtown San Jose, teacher Rosemary Zavala sketched a tree as she fired off questions about what plants need to grow. "¿Qué necesitan las plantas?" she asked her 4-year-old charges in Spanish.

"Las flores toman agua" was the exuberant answer from one girl, who said that flowers drink water. A boy answered in English: "I saw a tree in my yard."

The next day, Ms. Zavala's questions about plants would continue—but in English.

This classroom, with its steady stream of lively, vocabulary-laden conversations in Spanish and in English, is what many educators and advocates hope represents the future of language instruction in the United States for both English-language learners and native English-speakers.

The numbers of dual-language-immersion programs like this one have been steadily growing in public schools over the past decade or so, rising to more than 2,000 in 2011-12, according to estimates from national experts.

That growth has come even as the numbers of transitional-bilingual-education programs shrank in the aftermath of heated, politically charged ballot initiatives pushing English immersion in states like Arizona, Massachusetts, and here in California.

Experts say the interest in dual-language programs now is driven by an increased demand for bilingual and biliterate workers and by educators who see positive impacts on academic achievement for both English-learners and students already fluent in English.

In California—home to more than 1 million ELL students and some of the fiercest battles over bilingual education—the earlier controversies are showing signs of ebbing.

While the state's Proposition 227 ballot initiative, approved by voters in 1998, pushed districts to replace many bilingual education programs with English-immersion for English-learners, the state is now taking steps to encourage bilingualism for all students: Graduating seniors can earn a "seal of biliteracy" on their high school transcripts and diplomas, which signifies they have reached fluency in English and a second language. Last year, 6,000 graduates in the state earned the seal.

"The momentum behind these programs is really amazing," said Virginia P. Collier, a professor emeritus of education at George Mason University, in Virginia, who has studied dual-language programs extensively.

"And we are not talking about a remedial, separate program for English-learners or foreign-language programs just for students with picky parents," she said. "These are now mainstream programs where we’re seeing a lot of integration of native speakers of the second language with students who are native English-speakers."

Types of Programs

Part of the 33,000-student San Jose Unified School District, Gardner Academy offers a two-way immersion program, in which native speakers of English and native speakers of a second language—usually Spanish—learn both languages in the same classroom. Generally, to be considered ...

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