Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • New Mandarin immersion school list posted

    I’ve spent the last two weeks going through the full Mandarin immersion school list and have updated and cleaned it up as much as I am able. There are still some gaps (Examples: Just when was the Baltimore International Academy East founded? Does Triad International Studies Academy in North Carolina use traditional or simplified characters?)

    As of today, we have 367 schools with Mandarin immersion programs in the United States.

    Here’s the latest list:

    To see the list, click the link above. It will download to your computer and you can open the file there. There are also tabs at the bottom for international programs and Cantonese programs.

    Click here to access the list

    Some analysis

    The number of schools has fallen by 27 since July when I last updated the list However, there’s some nuance to that. Some schools have indeed closed, and I expect we’ll see even more closures over this year as school districts struggle with a decrease in students.

    In addition, a number of schools that had been set to open, or in fact did open, ended up closing or never opening in the first place. This was especially true in California, where several Mandarin immersion private schools were announced but never opened. These included Balboa International Education, Cornerstone Mandarin Immersion School, Avenues: Silicon Valley and Green Ivy Silicon Valley. It’s not clear to me if this was related to COVID-19 disruptions or lower interest overall.

    There were also schools that had said at one point that they offered Mandarin immersion which proved in the end to offer only an hour a day of language class, which doesn’t count as immersion. The actual term for this is FLEX, for “foreign language experience.” These tend to achieve cultural awareness but don’t really teach kids to speak another language.

    There’s also some oddness going on in New York City, with several expensive private schools either not opening or jettisoning Mandarin immersion. That includes Polis Montessori World School and Avenues: The World School. Polis never opened, Avenues is down to only offering Mandarin in K – 5 (and it’s a K – 12 school.) I’ve gone back and forth about Green Ivy International Schools in Manhattan, which only offers between 60 and 90 minutes a day of Mandarin in grade school. That’s not 50% of the day and so it’s really immersion. They’re still on the list but I’m thinking I should take them off.

    Why do I think there’s so much movement in the Mandarin immersion world? A couple of reasons:

    • There’s less interest in Chinese language from American parents. Today, China doesn’t feel like the amazing opportunity and great jumping off place for young Americans that it did ten years ago. Parents don’t seem to be thinking “Wow, if my kid could only work in China when they get out of college, they’d be set,” as they once did.
      • That said, tides turn and we’ll always need people who are bicultural and comfortable in both languages. When I was in college everyone said Japanese was the way to go and they made fun of us for studying Chinese. Then things changed. They will change again. And China is 1.4 billion people – we need to be able to talk to them!
    • It’s getting a lot harder to hire bilingual teachers. There were multiple programs through the Chinese Ministry of Education which sent seasoned Chinese teachers to schools across the United States. Those have mostly shut down now, making it difficult to staff new programs.
    • School districts are realizing that it’s difficult to support programs as they move up through the grades. In many districts, there are classroom size limits for Kindergarten through second grade. So say you can only have 20 students in a second grade class, but that bumps up to 33 for third grade. Suddenly you’ve got two second-grade classes of 20 which is 40 students all told. When they start third grade, classes they’ve enlarge to 33 students, meaning you’ve got one and a half classes. It can’t be done. Which either means Mandarin immersion classrooms have fewer students (which is an equity issue for English classes) or you do a 4th/5th grade split class where you mix them up so you get enough kids in each. But that’s a really hard way to teach and requires expert teachers and lots of support. So hard to pull off.
    • The “would you like Mandarin with that?” thinking that was prevalent a few years ago has lulled. As parents know, there are always fads in schools. One year everyone wants arts magnet schools. A few years later it’s STEM in everything. (Or STEAM, which is science, technology, engineering, arts and math – which is basically school but don’t get me started….) Next everyone’s clamoring for social-emotional learning with a strong dose of computer science. And project-based learning! Language immersion in general but Mandarin in particular was one of those fads and schools that weren’t strongly committed are moving on to whatever comes next. Lately I’m seeing lots of schools with titles that include “Renaissance,” “Traditional” and “Classical.”
    • What else am I missing? What are you seeing where you live? I welcome your thoughts.

  • Kansas school district parents argue for immersion program

    Johnson County Post, February 2024

    Shawnee Mission dual language proponents hope idea makes it into next strategic plan

    An organized effort to get a dual language program in the Shawnee Mission School District (Kansas) received strong support in a recent public input effort, buoying supporters’ hopes that it might make it onto the district’s long-range strategic plan later this year.

    The district is in the early stages of its planning process for a new strategic plan.

    At a school board meeting Monday, Leigh Anne Neal, Shawnee Mission’s chief of early childhood learning and sustainability, presented six guiding principles for the strategic plan approved by a 31-member steering committee.

    Please read more here.

  • Nation’s oldest Mandarin immersion school moves, adds middle school language pathway

    The Chinese American International School, founded in 1981, is the oldest Mandarin immersion school in the country and, as far as I can tell, the world.

    It’s long been split between multiple buildings, for preschool, grade school and middle school, to accomodate its growing student population. Until last year the grade school shared a building with the French American International School.

    This year, CAIS moved into a new campus on San Francisco’s west side, into the building of the former Mercy High School, a Catholic girls’ school that opened in 1952 and closed in 2020.

    CAIS (pronounced “case”) purchased the campus and after two years of renovation, moved in earlier this month.

    In addition to having all its students in one place, the school has also added a new strand for incoming middle school students. As its website says, “No Mandarin (Yet?) No problem!”

    The Mandarin World Language Pathway allows students to join the school who haven’t studied Chinese. The school’s site says “The Mandarin World Language Pathway program is a much more robust language instruction than students would get in a monolingual school setting.”

    This is an attempt to deal with a problem that tends to dog Mandarin immersion programs – it’s impossible to bring in new students after first grade because they can’t catch up to immersion students. This means that class sizes tend to shrink by grades as students move away. Of course, it also means it’s easier to move between Mandarin immersion schools nationally because they’re generally eager to get students in higher grades who have the necessary language background.

    The idea of creating a new, middle school path for students without the required language proficiency is one that’s being tried in immersion schools around the country, not just Mandarin but also French and German that I’m aware of.

    For example, HudsonWay Immersion School, which has campuses in Manhattan and Stirling, NJ, is now offering an Accelerated Bilingual Cohort in its middle school program.

    If you know of schools that have this type of program, please reach out to me and I’ll include them.

  • Private Mandarin immersion schools flourish in San Francisco

    There’s also the Stratford School in San Francisco, which is a chain that has some Mandarin immersion at some of its schools, including the one in San Francisco. That brings to five the private Mandarin immersion schools in the city (including the one opening next year) compared with just two public Mandarin immersion schools. As I keep saying, it’s a clear missed opportunity for San Francisco Unified, which will be closing schools this year due to under-enrollment.

    From: The San Francisco Standard

    Chris Livaccari thought he had seen the rise and fall of Chinese-language instruction in the U.S. over the three decades since he began studying Mandarin. But San Francisco never disappointed him.

    Livaccari, principal of Presidio Knolls School in SoMa, a private immersion facility offering Mandarin programs for preschool to eighth grade, said the student body has increased from 300 to 400 over the past five years.

    Please read more here.

  • A fascinating story of having your kids go to school in China

    Peter Hessler’s book River Town came out in 2001. About his years in the late 1990s as a Peace Corps volunteer there, it’s a brilliant portrait of China as it emerged from isolation and was beginning an era of rapid change. He later reported from China and has written several books since, all worth reading. Now he’s published one that will be of special interest to parents whose children are in Mandarin immersion, if they’ve ever wondered “What would this all be like in China?” Your answer will come as you read Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, which came out in August. It covers the two years his twin daughters attended a large public school in Sichuan. I’ve always loved Hessler’s work because while he clearly has deep affection for China and the Chinese people, he isn’t shy about talking about its issues as well.

    The exerpt linked to below appeared in The Guardian newspaper.

    Our twins spent two years at primary school in Chengdu. Their lessons featured alarming cautionary tales and stories of Chinese superiority, but there was fun and irreverence, too

    By Peter Hessler The Guardian

    Near the end of third grade, my twin daughters, Ariel and Natasha, officially joined the Young Pioneers of China. This organisation is under the auspices of the Chinese Communist party, and members are between the ages of six and 14. In order to become a Young Pioneer at Chengdu Experimental primary school, the public institution my daughters attended in the south-western Chinese city, there was no application, no interview and no ceremony. Parents were not consulted or informed. The twins simply came home one afternoon wearing Young Pioneer pins on their right breasts. The pins featured a gold star, a red torch and the name of the organisation – Zhongguo Shaoxiandui – in gold Chinese characters. Ariel and Natasha told me and my wife, Leslie, that from now on they would be required to wear the pins on Mondays, when Chengdu Experimental held its weekly flag-raising ceremony, as well as on other special occasions.

    Please read more here.

  • The Magic of Bilingual Education

    Seven educators and one former student on how learning another language can change lives

    The Washington Post

    My favorite memory as a bilingual teacher

    Bilingual education for me has been a validation of my language, culture and identity that I did not receive as a child of public education. I grew up in a time when English was the sole focus of language acquisition. For my students, our school system’s Vietnamese dual-language program opens the door of access for their present and future. Most of the students have been with the program since kindergarten; those now in high school have reached notable achievements that are recognized at the state level and can be put on résumés for work or higher education. A more personal triumph for me is seeing how dual-language education affects students’ present lives. The most impactful memory I carry is the deep gratitude a grandmother once shared at an end-of-year celebration. She thanked me for giving her 7-year-old grandson the ability to communicate with her. It was, she said, the first time that she was able to get to know her grandson.

    Tu Dinh is a language learning specialist at the district office of Highline Public Schools in Washington state. He spent five years at White Center Heights Elementary School as the first-grade Vietnamese dual-language teacher and two years as a Vietnamese instructional coach and dual-language facilitator.

    Please read more here.

  • Slightly off topic – Major research university in China removes English requirement

    I have no doubt this decision is more about politics than anything else, which is far beyond the scope of this blog. But it’s interesting that some of the arguments being made for and against English in China are the same ones we see being made about immersion education here in the United States:

    Yu suggested that some companies and most universities in China may require English proficiency because of the positive qualities associated with having a “second language experience”, such as strong memory.

    Yu, who was educated in Chengdu, as well as New Orleans and Cambridge, said the concept that learning a second language would interfere with the learner’s native language skills is misguided.

    Leading Chinese university becomes first to remove English requirements for students

    22 SEP 2023

    HONG KONG – A leading university in China has removed an English language test from its degree requirements amid a growing debate about the subject’s practical benefits for many people.

    Xi’an Jiaotong University, a public research university in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, has confirmed that it no longer requires students to complete the College English Test, or CET, to enter…

    The CET is an annual exam for undergraduate and postgraduate students, who usually must pass two levels – Band 4 to be given a place at a university and Band 6 to graduate.

    According to the university’s academic affairs office, the change was “a normal measure made by the school according to current developments”. It added that college-level English courses based on the CET.

    Please read more here.