Note: in response to recent threats targeted at immigrant families in and around this school’s community, educators involved in this program requested that their names—and the names of their school and students—be changed.
Nearly every student in Ms. Sanders’ middle school class in King County, Washington speaks Spanish at home. In Sanders’ Spanish Language Arts (SLA) class, they work on deepening those Spanish skills. Ask students why they’ve chosen schooling in two languages and the answer is clear. “Yo quería estar en el dual language porque quiero mejorar mi español, y también quiero aprender a escribir mejor en español,” says Mila. She pauses a moment. She blushes. “Y no quiero ser un ‘no sabo.’” (“I wanted to be in dual language because I want to improve my Spanish, especially my written Spanish…and I don’t want to be a ‘No Sabo.’”)
This prompts a burst of laughter from Sanders—and Mila’s classmates. “No Sabo Kid” is a complicated term, referring to children whose Spanish usage reflects informal language structures that don’t always follow traditional syntax or verb conjugations. Mila’s fear of ever being seen that way drove her to this middle school dual-language immersion program, which allows her to develop greater facility in both of her languages.
And indeed, research indicates that Mila’s instincts are right: dual-language immersion (DLI) programs like this one are the best way to support the linguistic (and academic) development of multilingual children like Mila and her classmates. Schools like this appear to be growing rapidly from coast to coast, as states like Utah, North Carolina, Delaware, and Texas invest significant new resources.
But this school’s program is relatively unique, in that dual-language programs are considerably rarer in the secondary grades. Even more remarkable, the program has been in place for more than fifteen years, making it one of the older secondary DLI programs in the United States. The program’s resilience reflects a series of state and local policy choices that could be a guide for other education leaders.
Setting the Right Priorities for Enrollment
To be sure, the growth of DLI programs is good for students, families, and public schools in general. These schools advance educational equity by helping English learners (ELs) like Mila maintain their primary languages, help them access academic content, and—perhaps counterintuitively—appear to be the most effective way for them to learn English. They’re also good for—and popular with—English-dominant families, particularly those from privileged backgrounds. Research indicates that dual-language learning opportunities can prompt these families to enroll in more diverse schools than they might otherwise consider. Perhaps best of all, emerging research from Utah suggests that the most effective dual-language programs are linguistically diverse “two-way” programs that enroll equal shares of English learners and English-dominant children.
And yet, as TCF and Children’s Equity Project researchers argued in our 2023 report “Ensuring Equitable Access to Dual-Language Immersion Programs: Supporting English Learners’ Emerging Bilingualism,” “without structures in place to protect equity, the linguistic integration that appears to be key to two-way DLI’s success can become colonization that eventually displaces ELs from these schools.”
When education leaders launch and grow schools like Mila’s, they need to establish rules that prioritize ELs’ access and protect the programs’ diverse enrollment. They also need to ensure the public understands that, while multilingualism can be valuable to all children, ELs garner unique benefits from enrolling in programs that support their emerging bilingualism. Further, they should help English-dominant families recognize, as suggested by the Utah research mentioned above, that dual-language immersion may also work better for their children when ELs also enroll.
When education leaders launch and grow schools like Mila’s, they need to establish rules that prioritize ELs’ access and protect the programs’ diverse enrollment.
Washington’s state education leaders have encoded these principles in state policy—particularly in their public dual language goals: “In Washington, multilingual/English learners and American Indian/Alaska Native students are prioritized for at least half of the seats in two-way dual language programs to prevent opportunity gaps and encourage students to fully develop their first or heritage language.” The state maintains a public database of dual-language programs so that families can easily find multilingual learning opportunities in their communities. Further, state legislators have signaled their intention to grow these programs in the coming decades—and have backed that promise with an initial round of grant funding.
This equity-first approach to DLI begins with access. Roughly two-thirds of Sanders’ class are current or former ELs, and the remaining third are “heritage speakers”—students who may have some exposure to Spanish in their homes, but who are not formally identified for English-language support services. The district reserves seats for native Spanish speakers in many of its dual-language programs, though local officials report that this has proven more difficult to maintain in the face of ongoing gentrification and high levels of demand from privileged, English-dominant families.
No One-Size-Fits-All Answer to Balancing Parallel Curricula
DLI equity is also a matter of structured pedagogy and instructional content. This can be a challenge for secondary-grade DLI programs, since U.S. middle and high schools offer a wider range of courses than most elementary schools. Secondary schools tend to incorporate more academic tracking and more student choice; they also have to manage all this flexibility in the context of state distribution and graduation requirements.
For instance, when a secondary school begins running DLI, leaders have to work out which courses will be offered in which languages—and how to schedule those in ways that provide paths to ongoing bilingual development without unduly limiting DLI students’ other choices. If the school’s DLI students are in Spanish Language Arts (SLA) during the period when honors biology is offered, this might force some students to abandon their years of language learning. But if the school leader moves the SLA course to another time, she may find that this interferes with DLI students’ access to algebra—a required course for graduation. She might then decide to propose teaching biology in Spanish during another period, only to realize that she lacks both the curriculum and a credentialed teacher to do so.
Solutions to these quandaries will inherently be unique to each community. At Mila’s school, students follow the relatively common secondary DLI practice of taking SLA and social studies in Spanish. District leaders were able to streamline the program somewhat by aligning the DLI-specific social studies curriculum with state requirements—and the International Baccalaureate program. Specifically, Mila’s campus (and other district schools) offer bilingual ethnic studies coursework, as well as programming designed to support linguistically and culturally diverse students through community projects, career services, leadership opportunities, and partnerships with local organizations.
“I try to tailor it to what’s happening in the class and who we’ve got here. They bring their own connections to whatever it is we’re studying,” Sanders says. “So, for U.S. History, we spend a lot of time on how events [here] impacted things in Mexico and in Central America, because those are the countries that most of our students come from—or that their parents or relatives come from.”
The school believes that this cultural element is key for helping its ELs go from Spanish-dominant at home to fully bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English. “That’s the work being done around addressing power and privilege and language,” says district official Joe Richards. “There’s all kinds of layers there.” By centering the needs of this diverse and ambitious student population, Washington has enabled its schools to approach these complexities with the consideration they deserve.
Tags: diverse schools, English learners, dual-language immersion
State Support Can Help Grow Dual-Language Programs into the Secondary Years
Note: in response to recent threats targeted at immigrant families in and around this school’s community, educators involved in this program requested that their names—and the names of their school and students—be changed.
Nearly every student in Ms. Sanders’ middle school class in King County, Washington speaks Spanish at home. In Sanders’ Spanish Language Arts (SLA) class, they work on deepening those Spanish skills. Ask students why they’ve chosen schooling in two languages and the answer is clear. “Yo quería estar en el dual language porque quiero mejorar mi español, y también quiero aprender a escribir mejor en español,” says Mila. She pauses a moment. She blushes. “Y no quiero ser un ‘no sabo.’” (“I wanted to be in dual language because I want to improve my Spanish, especially my written Spanish…and I don’t want to be a ‘No Sabo.’”)
This prompts a burst of laughter from Sanders—and Mila’s classmates. “No Sabo Kid” is a complicated term, referring to children whose Spanish usage reflects informal language structures that don’t always follow traditional syntax or verb conjugations. Mila’s fear of ever being seen that way drove her to this middle school dual-language immersion program, which allows her to develop greater facility in both of her languages.
And indeed, research indicates that Mila’s instincts are right: dual-language immersion (DLI) programs like this one are the best way to support the linguistic (and academic) development of multilingual children like Mila and her classmates. Schools like this appear to be growing rapidly from coast to coast, as states like Utah, North Carolina, Delaware, and Texas invest significant new resources.
But this school’s program is relatively unique, in that dual-language programs are considerably rarer in the secondary grades. Even more remarkable, the program has been in place for more than fifteen years, making it one of the older secondary DLI programs in the United States. The program’s resilience reflects a series of state and local policy choices that could be a guide for other education leaders.
Setting the Right Priorities for Enrollment
To be sure, the growth of DLI programs is good for students, families, and public schools in general. These schools advance educational equity by helping English learners (ELs) like Mila maintain their primary languages, help them access academic content, and—perhaps counterintuitively—appear to be the most effective way for them to learn English. They’re also good for—and popular with—English-dominant families, particularly those from privileged backgrounds. Research indicates that dual-language learning opportunities can prompt these families to enroll in more diverse schools than they might otherwise consider. Perhaps best of all, emerging research from Utah suggests that the most effective dual-language programs are linguistically diverse “two-way” programs that enroll equal shares of English learners and English-dominant children.
And yet, as TCF and Children’s Equity Project researchers argued in our 2023 report “Ensuring Equitable Access to Dual-Language Immersion Programs: Supporting English Learners’ Emerging Bilingualism,” “without structures in place to protect equity, the linguistic integration that appears to be key to two-way DLI’s success can become colonization that eventually displaces ELs from these schools.”
When education leaders launch and grow schools like Mila’s, they need to establish rules that prioritize ELs’ access and protect the programs’ diverse enrollment. They also need to ensure the public understands that, while multilingualism can be valuable to all children, ELs garner unique benefits from enrolling in programs that support their emerging bilingualism. Further, they should help English-dominant families recognize, as suggested by the Utah research mentioned above, that dual-language immersion may also work better for their children when ELs also enroll.
Washington’s state education leaders have encoded these principles in state policy—particularly in their public dual language goals: “In Washington, multilingual/English learners and American Indian/Alaska Native students are prioritized for at least half of the seats in two-way dual language programs to prevent opportunity gaps and encourage students to fully develop their first or heritage language.” The state maintains a public database of dual-language programs so that families can easily find multilingual learning opportunities in their communities. Further, state legislators have signaled their intention to grow these programs in the coming decades—and have backed that promise with an initial round of grant funding.
This equity-first approach to DLI begins with access. Roughly two-thirds of Sanders’ class are current or former ELs, and the remaining third are “heritage speakers”—students who may have some exposure to Spanish in their homes, but who are not formally identified for English-language support services. The district reserves seats for native Spanish speakers in many of its dual-language programs, though local officials report that this has proven more difficult to maintain in the face of ongoing gentrification and high levels of demand from privileged, English-dominant families.
No One-Size-Fits-All Answer to Balancing Parallel Curricula
DLI equity is also a matter of structured pedagogy and instructional content. This can be a challenge for secondary-grade DLI programs, since U.S. middle and high schools offer a wider range of courses than most elementary schools. Secondary schools tend to incorporate more academic tracking and more student choice; they also have to manage all this flexibility in the context of state distribution and graduation requirements.
For instance, when a secondary school begins running DLI, leaders have to work out which courses will be offered in which languages—and how to schedule those in ways that provide paths to ongoing bilingual development without unduly limiting DLI students’ other choices. If the school’s DLI students are in Spanish Language Arts (SLA) during the period when honors biology is offered, this might force some students to abandon their years of language learning. But if the school leader moves the SLA course to another time, she may find that this interferes with DLI students’ access to algebra—a required course for graduation. She might then decide to propose teaching biology in Spanish during another period, only to realize that she lacks both the curriculum and a credentialed teacher to do so.
Solutions to these quandaries will inherently be unique to each community. At Mila’s school, students follow the relatively common secondary DLI practice of taking SLA and social studies in Spanish. District leaders were able to streamline the program somewhat by aligning the DLI-specific social studies curriculum with state requirements—and the International Baccalaureate program. Specifically, Mila’s campus (and other district schools) offer bilingual ethnic studies coursework, as well as programming designed to support linguistically and culturally diverse students through community projects, career services, leadership opportunities, and partnerships with local organizations.
“I try to tailor it to what’s happening in the class and who we’ve got here. They bring their own connections to whatever it is we’re studying,” Sanders says. “So, for U.S. History, we spend a lot of time on how events [here] impacted things in Mexico and in Central America, because those are the countries that most of our students come from—or that their parents or relatives come from.”
The school believes that this cultural element is key for helping its ELs go from Spanish-dominant at home to fully bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English. “That’s the work being done around addressing power and privilege and language,” says district official Joe Richards. “There’s all kinds of layers there.” By centering the needs of this diverse and ambitious student population, Washington has enabled its schools to approach these complexities with the consideration they deserve.
Tags: diverse schools, English learners, dual-language immersion