As dual-language programs are added around the country, Massachusetts falls farther behind in promoting language education:
School leaders in New York City, the nation’s largest district, are expanding their dual-language offerings beyond Spanish and Mandarin to include Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, and Haitian Creole.
The Houston school district opened an Arabic-language school this year, in part because the metropolitan region has seen its Arabic-speaking population spike in recent years.
And in the Westminster, Calif., schools, the state’s first Vietnamese dual-language program opened in Little Saigon, a Vietnamese enclave in Orange County.
Education Week: Districts Diversify Languages Offered in Dual-Immersion
White House Task Force on New Americans Offers Fourth of Educational and Linguistic Integration Webinar Series, on “The Benefits of Dual-Language Learning,”
While employers are clamoring for bilingual or even multilingual employees for an increasingly globalized economy, U.S. schools turn out relatively few students who are even somewhat competent in a second language. Hard figures are unavailable, but we know that only 5 percent of the 4.2 million Advanced Placement exams given in 2014 were in a foreign language, and only slightly more than half these students scored a 4 or a 5. That’s about 100,000 students—about six-tenths of 1 percent of the country’s nearly 16 million high school students. Most egregiously, instead of maintaining and building on the home-language abilities of 11 million students in our public schools, we actually attempt to quash them, if only by neglect.
When it comes to educating the surging immigrant population in Boston, many in educational and political circles ignore the evidence of failure all around them. The achievement gap for so-called English-language learners — students enrolled in school but without English proficiency — promises to haunt Boston for a generation unless the ineffective and highly unsuccessful English immersion mandate is reversed. The Boston Public Schools continue to watch these students fall through the cracks. Their dropout rates are consistently higher, and they have among the lowest MCAS scores in the city. Saving more of these students from a life without meaningful educational achievement stands as one of the signal challenges for new superintendent Tommy Chang. 
Parents in Framingham, Massachusetts, have submitted a petition to the superintendent requesting that the district establish a dual language program.
A report on Dual Language programs in a Seattle school district.
Two Letters to the Editor were published in The Boston Globe in support of the March 31 
A Boston Globe editorial endorses the LOOK Bill filed by Rep. Sánchez and Sen. DiDomenico:
Language Opportunity 
You must be logged in to post a comment.