Check out this article from Scholastic Administrators magazine from 2007, then take a look at the list of Mandarin immersion schools under our U.S. and Bay area tabs. We’ve come a long way in just two years.

www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3746848

Year of the Chinese Language

Is your district or school considering Mandarin instruction? These five early adopters have found it a fortunate choice indeed.

Two years ago, Starr King Elementary principal Chris Rosenberg was faced with an awful possibility: His San Francisco Unified school was on the chopping block, slated for potential closure. Enrollment was down sharply: 151 students in 2005 compared to 406 in 1993. Eleven classrooms sat vacant. And despite seven years of steadily rising test scores, Starr King, flanked by housing projects, hardly had parents and students flocking to its doors.

Fast-forward to September 2006. Starr King now hosts one of a handful of K–5 Mandarin-immersion programs in the country. “It’s been fantastic,” says Rosenberg, himself a former Spanish bilingual teacher. “It’s a totally different thing now.” In the fall of 2006, 24 families signed up for total-immersion kindergarten classes, in which the children received all instruction in Mandarin. The Mandarin program will likely save Starr King.

Across the country, the demand for Mandarin immersion is so great that districts from Massachusetts to Minnesota are jumping on the Mandarin bandwagon.