Middle school is often a language desert for immersion students.

Like many Mandarin immersion programs (and immersion programs overall), Sacramento, California’s seven dual-language immersion programs do a great job through fifth grade. The district offers one Mandarin program, one in Cantonese, one in Hmong and four in Spanish.

As this Sacramento Bee article says, everything stops in middle school:

“While the elementary school programs are a “great experience,” kids are left unsupported once they graduate, parents said. With no higher level Chinese or Hmong classes in middle school, parents are left to figure out themselves how to continue supporting their kids’ language learning, bridging the gap to high school classes or an AP test.”

[Note that the linked article above requires a subscription. Sorry about that, but it is a good thing to pay journalists for their work….)

Sacramento parents there are trying to fundraise and advocate for program expansion to offer some middle school immersion classes but it’s not clear the money will be forthcoming from the district.

This isn’t just a problem in Sacramento. In San Francisco, students in the district’s two Mandarin immersion K-5 schools get a 6th grade Social Studies class taught in Mandarin and then are offered “intermediate Mandarin world language” in 7th and 8th grade. Then when they get to high school, they can take the AP Chinese test in 9th grade. In a few of the district’s 17 high schools, there are more advanced Mandarin classes available. Unfortunately, access to high school is by lottery, so a Mandarin immersion student has no certainty that they’ll be assigned a school that offers Mandarin at the appropriate level.

These are just two of many examples. Our K-5 programs do an excellent job, but then there’s nothing for far too many Mandarin immersion students when they get to middle school. And then four years later, when they get to high school, they’ve had time to forget a fair amount and, at best, they’re offered an AP Chinese course and nothing more.

Granted, there are districts that do a great job of articulation (education jargon for a program that progresses in a logical and reasonable sequence. Delaware and Utah do this quite well for their entire state.

And northeast of San Francisco in Contra Costa county, the school district just voted to extend its very popular K – 5 program through middle school.

But for too many schools and too many families, immersion is a road to oblivion. There’s no follow-through after fifth grade and school districts act as if it’s a surprise that anyone who’s kid has worked hard for six years to master a new language would want something that builds on that, rather than wasting all their effort until they can get to high school – where only a year’s worth of classes are available to them because they’re too advanced for Mandarin 1, 2 and 3.

Tell me your stories – what does your district do for middle and high school? How well does it work? What do students do when they get to college?

I’ll report back when I hear more.