Georgia opens its first public, dual language school, an elementary school where students will be taught in both Spanish and English (Associated Press, CNN).
(Via L. Lamor Williams, Star-Telegram) Texas has a large percentage of Hispanic students: more than 30% of 80,000 students in Forth Worth and more than 30% of 16,000 in Arlington. Dual-language programs are becoming popular; there are 231 programs in Texas with approximately 606,000 students. In these programs, both English and Spanish speakers are in the same class with a curriculum taught half in English and half in Spanish for a period of years so that the students become fluent in both languages.
According to Mildred Vazquez, a bilingual teacher in the article, the students need to continue through the fifth grade (they begin in kindergarten) for the program to be effective. Obviously a school needs a large number of L2 students for the program to be viable, which limits the programs primarily to Spanish. And it's not a small commitment on the part of families, but if I had the opportunity, I would place my son in such a program.
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