Want to fill up your school district? Add immersion!
Like many school districts, St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota has struggled with enrollment decline. But the addition of language immersion programs, which now include Spanish, Mandarin, French, German and Hmong, For the first time since 2018, St. Paul Public Schools’ enrollment decline was barely noticeable. The district schools that have added the most students since 2022 were two Hmong programs, a new East African Elementary Magnet School and a Spanish immersion school.
St. Paul school district halts enrollment slide. The secret: listening to immigrant communities.
Schools offering Hmong, Spanish and East African language or cultural programs saw the district’s biggest gains.
by Becky Z. Dernbach, Sahan Journal
The second-graders in Mee Kong’s classroom had not finished their breakfast yet, but they were ready to get to work.
Their assignment: to create a book about their mom’s side of the family. One child sketched her siblings on virtual pages on her tablet. Another pulled up an old photo of her family celebrating Christmas.
“How many of your brothers and sisters go to school here?” the principal, May Lee Xiong, asked her.
Please read more here.
A conference on immersion education
This might be of interest to teachers and program administrators.
The 9th International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education will be held October 2-5, 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Grand America Hotel. Inclusive of all languages, program models, and educational levels, the 2024 conference brings together researchers and practitioners from the U.S. and around the world to share knowledge, expertise and best practices in dual language and immersion education. The 2024 theme is Multilingualism for All: Transforming Education One Community at a Time.
More information here.
Newly updated Mandarin immersion school list
I’ve posted the full list as of February 1, 2024. We’re up to 394 schools in the United States that I’m aware of. If there are schools that aren’t on the list, please contact me.
Click here to access the list page.
Updates February 2024
ADDITIONS
Pacific Academy
Private
Costa Mesa, CA K – 8
Launched 2023 – 2023
Global Citizens Public Charter School
Washington DC
Charter, K – 5
Opened 2022-2023
Also offers Spanish immersion
Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet (FLAIM)
East Baton Rouge Parish School System
Baton Rouge, LA
K – 5
Opened 2015-2016
Barrington High School
Barrington School District
Public, 9 – 12
Barrington, IL
Began 2019-2020
Triad International Studies Academy
North Carolina
Greensboro, NC
K – 8
To open 2025-2026
MOVES
Portland, Oregon
Portland Public Schools – Lots of movement
The Mandarin immersion program that was once at Harrison Park Elementary has moved to Clark Elementary.
Harrison Park is now a middle school and hosts the Mandarin immersion students who have completed the programs at Clark Elementary and Woodstock Elementary.
Hosford Middle School, which formerly took MI students from Woodstock no longer does as those students now go to Harrison Park Middle School.
Jefferson High School added classes for students coming from Portland’s Mandarin immersion schools.
CLOSURES
Camelot Academy of Arts, Science and Technology
Esplanade, CA
They don’t appear to offer Mandarin immersion any more so I’ve removed them from the list.
Dutchtown Elementary School
Henry County Schools
Hampton, GA
Opened in 2013-2014, can’t tell when they ended it.
Box Canyon Utah
Blue Valley Utah
Valley Park Elementary School
Programs ”sunsetting” due to low enrollment.
Kensington Elementary
Union County Public Schools
Waxhaw, NC
Program phasing out in 2023-2023, Spanish phasing in.
Utah won’t cut funding to its renowned immersion programs
SALT LAKE CITY — A legislative committee is recommending no change to how Utah’s dual language immersion program is funded.
During a meeting Thursday of the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee, the chairs announced they recommend retaining the roughly $7.3 million funding for the program that allows students to learn languages such as Chinese, French, German, Spanish and Russian.
This comes after former state Sen. Howard Stephenson, the original sponsor of the dual language immersion program, had warned lawmakers were considering defunding it by reallocating the money in a way that would “decimate the DLI program as we know it.”
Please read more here.
But some Utah Mandarin immersion programs are struggling
BRIGHAM CITY — The Box Elder School District is going to remove the Chinese immersion program for new students, citing “declining interest.” Still, some parents are urging them to reconsider.
The Chinese dual immersion program at Golden Spike Elementary School is ideally supposed to have 60 new kids each year to make up two classes. Instead, its enrollment is about half of that amount. Despite the low enrollment, parents who have seen the program work say it’s too valuable to drop.
Please read more here.
And here Blue Valley is also cutting its program.
DeSantis suspends scholarships to Florida schools with ‘ties to the Chinese Communist Party’
What’s interesting about this for Mandarin immersion parents is that the Spring Education Group, which owns more than 220 schools in 19 states, runs Stratford Schools in Los Angeles and San Francisco. One of those San Francisco schools offers a Mandarin immersion program. I had not realized Stratford was part of such a large, for-profit network of schools.
Spring Education Group consists of 28 “school brands” at least two of which, Stratford and L’Etoile French Immersion School in Portland, Oregon, offer immersion.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) office announced Friday the suspension of school choice scholarships to four schools over their alleged “direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Hill, by Tara Suter, Sept. 23, 2023
“Through a thorough investigation, [the Florida Department of Education] has determined that Lower and Upper Sagemont Preparatory Schools in Weston, Parke House Academy in Winter Park, and Park Maitland School in Winter Park have direct ties to the CCP and their connections constitute an imminent threat to the health, safety, and welfare of these school’s students and the public,” reads a news release from the governor’s office.
The release also noted a bill DeSantis signed into law in May barring private schools in the state from “participating in an educational scholarship program” if they are “owned or operated by a person or an entity domiciled in, owned by, or in any way controlled by a foreign country of concern or foreign principal.” The law then references a different law that lists China as a “country of concern.”
Please read more here.
Schools respond after FDOE suspends scholarships over accusations of “Chinese Communist Party” ties
Story here.
Caught in the middle: Chinese scholars targeted by new Florida laws that take aim at China
Story here.
Mandarin immersion programmes persist in American schools despite high-level US-China tensions
- From Utah to Michigan, half-day programmes in which regular classes are taught entirely in Chinese find fervent support among parents
- Desire for children to get global perspective and life opportunities drives demand
Bochen Han in Washington
South China Morning Post 27 Dec, 2023
What does Washington, DC, have in common with Provo, Utah? Or Greenville, Michigan? Or Overland Park, Kansas?
All are home to publicly funded Mandarin immersion programmes, where kids as young as three years old spend half of each school day taking their regular classes – like math, science or physical education – entirely in Chinese.
Most of the programmes began during a period of American engagement with China under the administration of Barack Obama, when Mandarin was increasingly seen as a language of global business, optimism for bilateral cooperation was the norm and federal grants for Chinese language learning were more abundant.
In 2015, Obama pledged that by 2020, 1 million American students would be learning Mandarin.
Please read more here.
Some shows for middle and high schoolers
K-dramas out of Korea get all the press, but there are popular ones in Chinese as well. Here’s a nice list of high school and college-age-focused dramas, all romances (are there any other kind?)
To watch them it looks like one might have to get an account on Rakuten Viki, which is an Asian-focused streaming service that costs $5.99 a month as far as I can tell.
The one thing I like about Asian shows is that they don’t feature high schoolers having steamy sex every other second. The thing I don’t like about Asian shows is that too often the female characters are long-suffering while the men get to be jerks. But thankfully that seems to be less common than it was a decade ago.
And yes, our family did watch all 16 episodes of Crash Landing on You. Some, and I won’t name names, watched it several times. It’s total fluff and requires a fair amount of putting aside reality (life in North Korea is not in fact simply an austere version of Green Acres). But then, I grew up enjoying Hogans Heros, and I of course now realize life in a German POW camp wasn’t a laugh-riot either.
Here are a couple of ideas for your kids as they’re at loose ends over the holidays.
12 Chinese School Dramas to Add to Your Watch List
Looking for something new to watch? These Chinese school shows might be worth it.
MovieWeb SEP 9, 2023
Like many other international dramas, Chinese-language shows are having a moment on the global stage. While they may not have achieved as much attention as, for example, Korean historical shows or Japanese romances, Chinese shows have been creating a solid niche for themselves in the international network of drama fans. Some of the most famous television series from mainland China include historical dramas and fantasies, many of which draw on the rich cultural history of the country and regions surrounding it. Those familiar with television shows from the area are able to note how they implement elements of Chinese mythology and costuming to create extravagant sets in historical periods.
Please read more here.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 