Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Los Angeles parents have launched a website to keep families up to date on news about  their hugely-popular (among parents) but beleaguered (by the district) program at Broadway Elementary School.

You can check out their blog here.

Here’s some of the background on this.

June 4, 2015
By Joyce Gemperlein
Tyler and his mother Susan Kramer in a classroom at Ohlone Elementary School in Palo Alto, Calif. (Photo by Norbert von der Groeben)
Tyler and Susan Kramer in the Palo Alto, Calif., school where he studies Mandarin. (Photo by Norbert von der Groeben )

Two studies led by Amado Padilla show that young immersion program students achieve proficiency in Mandarin without falling behind in other subjects.
Stanford Graduate School of Education researchers found that 4th and 5th graders in a Palo Alto, Calif., Mandarin immersion program attained a level of linguistic competency comparable with that of nearby high schoolers completing the 4th and 5th level Advanced Placement Mandarin courses.

Some of those Ohlone Elementary School immersion students even outperformed the teenagers in reading. Perhaps most startling, there was little difference in achievement between the heritage learners at Ohlone and their classmates who had no previous exposure to Mandarin.

Those findings and more are detailed in the Spring 2015 issue (link is external) of Foreign Language Annals from a research project led by Stanford GSE’s Amado Padilla. It is the first study to compare exiting elementary immersion students — in any language — with high school students studying the same language, he said.

“We were really surprised how strong the immersion language learners emerged when compared with the high school students — stronger than we had imagined,” Padilla, professor of psychological studies in education, said, adding that the findings show the benefit.

Please read more here.

Uploaded: Thu, Jun 4, 2015, 2:41 pm

Stanford study bolsters support for Mandarin immersion program
Researchers suggest sustained language immersion increases reading skills, proficiency

by Elena Kadvany / Palo Alto Weekly
Findings from a new Stanford Graduate School of Education study on the benefits of Ohlone Elementary School’s Mandarin immersion program might just convince any naysayers of expanding the program in Palo Alto Unified School District.

Fourth- and fifth-grade students who participate in Ohlone’s Mandarin immersion program leave with a level of linguistic competency comparable to that of Palo Alto high schoolers taking AP-level Mandarin courses, the group of Stanford researchers found. Some of the elementary school students even outperformed the teenagers in reading.

“We were really surprised how strong the immersion-language learners emerged when compared with the high school students — stronger than we had imagined,” said Amado Padilla, a professor of psychological studies in education who led the study.

Ohlone’s Mandarin immersion program began eight years ago as a controversial pilot program with only 40 students. Today, it’s an incredibly popular and in-demand program, with 124 students by the 2012-2013 school year.

Please read more here.

What city has the largest, most intensive Chinese immersion program in North America?

I heard a new term last night as we were at the dining room table. There was a discussion of Chinese and reading and keeping up over the summer and my middle schooler said of one of her classmate’s moms, “Oh, she’s a white tiger.”

“White tiger?” I asked.

“That’s a white parent who’s a tiger mom,” she said, as if I should have known the answer.

I asked if I was a white tiger and there was a looooong pause.

I’m thinking we need t-shirts!

FYI, 甝 is the word for white tiger, it’s pronounced hán.

So anyone else running into this term among students?

And, more importantly, how do you feel about it?

World Language Immersion Program Expands for 2015-16 School Year

Date Posted: Wednesday, January 7th, 2015
Categories:  Department of Education News Office of Governor Markell

Next fall, more than 2,300 kindergarten through third grade students will be enrolled in Governor Jack Markell’s World Language Expansion Initiative, as six more schools across the state begin offering students the opportunity to participate in an elementary immersion program studying either Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.

The initiative launched in the 2012-13 school year with four programs in three elementary schools. An annual investment of $1.9 million will support programs reaching nearly 10,000 students in K-8 immersion programs by 2022.

“We know that the most natural language learning and the most effective language instruction happens when students start the process as early as possible. By continuing to expand language learning in Delaware, we have the chance to provide our kids an edge in a multilingual and multicultural workforce and meet our need to build a talent base in Delaware that will compete, lead and win on a global stage,” said Markell, who announced the expansion this afternoon at an event celebrating a new partnership with Wanxiang that will give Delaware high school students the chance to study abroad in China.

Please read more here.