Some Ga. Schools Make Mandarin Mandatory

EnlargeAdam Ragusea for NPRInstructor Huiling Li encourages second-grader Trinity Faulkner on the first day of Mandarin Chinese classes at Brookdale Elementary School in Macon, Ga.

Public schools in Macon, Ga., and surrounding Bibb County have a lot of problems. Most of the 25,000 students are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced lunch, and about half don’t graduate.

Bibb County’s Haitian-born superintendent Romain Dallemand came into the job last year with a bag of changes he calls “The Macon Miracle.” There are now longer schools days, year-round instruction, and one mandate nobody saw coming: Mandarin Chinese for every student, pre-K through 12th grade.

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