A group of Madison parents want their children’s intensive Spanish lessons to continue past 5th grade.
Currently, Nuestro Mundo’s Dual Immersion Program is only available for K-5.
Last Saturday, parents presented a proposal to create Wisconsin’s first dual immersion middle school.
Classrooms would be split between native English and Spanish speakers.
Parents worry without a middle school, bilingual students will lose their language skills.
3 thoughts on “Madison Parents Want Bilingual Education Through 8th Grade”
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Perhaps those parents who want to continue their charter schooling into middle school might also offer to pony up the costs for it? This is the danger of going down that path…next thing you know, we have a spanish language immersion high school, paid for by the district, while TAG and athletics and other offerings suffer.If they are so worried about their kids’ skills eroding, perhaps their kids should just hang out with their classmates and speak en espanol 24/7? Much cheaper than adding immersion schooling for the middle and high school level.
I think it is a very reasonable idea to continue the intensive bilingual studies after elementary school. Why should it end with elementary school?
About the cost, is there really evidence that a charter costs the district a lot more?
And about money for TAG resources. These are sorely needed, but I really don’t think eliminating future options such as charters is what will help TAG. Money is shunted from TAG because it (pathetically and shortsightedly) isn’t valued by the powers that be.
They don’t value TAG, so why on earth should they value bilingualism? Devaluing both is about equally shortsighted. Study after study has shown that kids who are educated bilingually (as in, academically bilingual) have an easier time learning third or fourth languages, outperform their monolingual peers in English-language testing and situational competencies by sixth grade, and are more likely to go on to higher education. What a coincidence, but the same has been shown to be true of kids who are challeneged from early on in elementary school to achieve at their highest potential. That means not making the upper 2/3 of a class wait through the same lessons over and over until the ‘at-risk’ kids ‘get it’, but challenging them with truly differentiated tasks and letting them go on and get deeper. MMSD does not seem to value that in either case. Letting a few kids get a bilingual education K-5 IF they live in the right neighborhood, at the right stage (i.e., right away in Kindergarten) is not really equitable or district-changing. Supplying real TAG services across the board (which hasn’t been done for years here either) would be. I truly believe in the value of bilingual education. But I also believe it should be available to any child and/or family who is motivated and engaged. It is not right now. It will not be any time soon. Not until it is available district-wide.
Is it fair to give further middle school options to the only families who have gotten any options so far? I don’t know. The Spanish-speaking families who are involved in this do tend to be the families who have not had options pre-Nuestro-Mundo, it’s true. But the English-home-language parents involved have mostly been the ones who are likely to speak up for their children’s needs all along. These are the same families who have been most likely to speak up for their gifted children too. What about the ones who don’t know there are options and have no knowledge of how to speak up or insist on them? They are not getting any TAG services or bilingual educational options from MMSD. That certainly is not equitable.
I like options too. I am angered by the lack of options. But I do not think it will help to give more options to the people who already have access to options. What can we do really, without investing a great deal more on options for any child in the district who needs them? It will most definitely cost more money to provide more charter options at any level. A charter needs its own principal, its own support staff (even if they are not full-time), or they cannot be considered their own school. If it is a sub-program within an existing school (not just a charter that happens to be housed within another school’s building), that “optional programming” can be withdrawn or substantially changed with no public notice or input. They do it all the time here.