International Education in SPS
I had been meaning to write this thread for some time now. It's a worthy example of how Seattle Schools starts off with a good idea but cannot follow-thru with execution.
I will be upfront and say I probably should have done more research so fill in the gaps if you know more. But the issues are in very sharp focus right now and it is a program that is going to reach a stress level soon.
Background
(I confess I don't know much about foreign languages in SPS before the JSIS was created. I assume that most of the high schools and middle schools had at least one foreign language for decades. I am also aware that several elementaries had foreign language instruction either during the school day or after school with the costs being borne by PTAs or other groups.)
John Stanford advanced the idea of a foreign language immersion school before his death in 1998. He thought that a district with many students speaking many languages could be an asset and had put forth the idea of a foreign language immersion school. Backed by the School Board and under the leadership of principal Karen Kodama, the John Stanford International School opened in the Latona building in the fall of 2000.
When it started it was dual language immersion for either Spanish or Japanese (these languages were chosen in a survey of parents and business leaders). Additionally, it was one of the elementary Bilingual Orientation Centers for elementary students. That was primarily where the native speakers came from who became part of the two-way learning for other students.
In 1999, JSIS was one of five of the University of Washington's K-12 initiatives. The goals* were:
- Design imaginative new curricula with an international focus
-Link to Internet2 (new super-fast version of the Internet)
-Provide educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students
-Create an educational laboratory for faculty and student researchers
-Extend international curricula into middle and high schools
-Identify school partners around the world
(*This info is via the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University website. I don't know if the UW/SPS connection still continues. I see no evidence of it at the JSIS website.)
What didn't happen is a vision for a plan of how to expand or, more importantly, where these students would go to continue this learning for middle and high school. It may have seemed important just to get the school off the ground but this lack of planning beyond a few years didn't help the program.
Today
The immersion at JSIS is in core subjects, like math and science, for half the day. The teachers are usually native speakers of the immersion languages. In addition, there are generally IAs (Immersion Assistants) who are also native speakers who assist the teacher. The BOC has long since moved on.
The start-up costs for a foreign language immersion school (beyond finding native speakers who can teach) is around $75k-100k (based on district information).
Besides JSIS, there are these elementaries:
Beacon Hill's tentative pathway is Mercer Middle and then Franklin High School.
Concord's pathway will be Denny and then Chief Sealth High School.
I don't find clear information about how foreign language immersion plays out in middle or high school at any of the schools' web pages.
Issues
1) These programs are not accessible in any way to all students. That such desirable programming remains available only to those who live in those neighborhoods seems wrong. I think some on the Board know this but have been repeatedly told by Enrollment that these schools must remain neighborhood schools for the NSAP to work.
2) Costs. These schools have higher costs than other schools. The main one is huge - the IAs. (To note, with the IA's, the student to teacher ratio goes down to 14:1. Lower class size, a huge bonus.)
I know JSIS and McDonald have the IAs. Beacon Hill and Concord do as well but I don't see fundraising towards it. I suspect there are Title One dollars for this effort.
From McDonald's website:
An Immersion Assistant is a full-time presence in every immersion classroom. He or she is a native speaker of Spanish or Japanese.
The language immersion teaching model we’ll be using at McDonald is largely based on the system developed at John Stanford. There, they've demonstrated:
Immersion Assistants are integral to kids’ success learning Math and Science in a foreign language.
IAs are part of the model. In the words of one John Stanford parent, “The IAs make the program possible.”
But IAs are not funded by the school district. Parents raise this money. (bold mine)
Some of these are Immersion Interns, rather than Immersion Assistants. The interns are teachers from foreign countries who come to the US for a year to teach. The interns are paid through their sponsoring program with the PTA funding living expenses (around $5k) and housing with school families.
How much money? It costs out to $1,000 per student. Last year McDonald raised $95k just for this purpose (and I'd be willing to be they raised more for other needs). This year they are attempting to raise - drumroll please - $300,000 just for IAs.
From their website:
If every family could afford to give $1k per student, we would meet our goal. But we understand this level of giving is not possible for all families.
They also have a Q&A where one question is "Will We Do This Every Year?" - the question is never answered directly but the wording suggests, yes, it will have to be done every year.
Going Forward
Clearly, not everyone who wants foreign language immersion for their child can access it in our district.
The fundraising concern is really one of mixed signals and I have to wonder how it plays out at the schools who do pay for IAs. As a former PTSA co-president, I would have a hard time with supporting this kind of staffing. It is a HUGE amount of pressure for a PTA to have to take on, year in and year out. It is a HUGE amount of pressure for parents.
Look, I'm sure for some parents giving $1-2k per year for a foreign language immersion program is cheap compared to a private school. But the problem is, this is a public school and no parent should have any pressure to give money for what really should be a district cost, not a parent one.
To note, Duggan Harmon told Sherry Carr at an A&F meeting a couple of months ago that parents were told they did not have to fund these positions. But clearly, if you want the best outcomes, you need the IAs.
If this program were to expand to a school that was not in a position to fund IAs, either privately nor through federal dollars, then that school would have to forego what the other schools have in support of their programs. Those new schools' students would have a lesser experience because of the lack of IAs.
That the district started down this road and now has differing programs - some have two languages, some have one, some have native speakers in their schools and some do not - and passes costs onto parents for needed supports for the program is an example of lack of planning and vision.
This was all good and well when it was one school started to honor the memory of a lionized leader who died. But it wasn't a name put on building or a plaque in his honor. It was a program and someone should have costed this out down the road and asked what the district projected for the future.
Well, the future is upon us and I have to wonder if each program will look different and end up in the Spectrum camp where you have differing programs at each site.
It will be worth hearing the discussion at the Work Session on International Education on Wednesday before the Board meeting.
I will be upfront and say I probably should have done more research so fill in the gaps if you know more. But the issues are in very sharp focus right now and it is a program that is going to reach a stress level soon.
Background
(I confess I don't know much about foreign languages in SPS before the JSIS was created. I assume that most of the high schools and middle schools had at least one foreign language for decades. I am also aware that several elementaries had foreign language instruction either during the school day or after school with the costs being borne by PTAs or other groups.)
John Stanford advanced the idea of a foreign language immersion school before his death in 1998. He thought that a district with many students speaking many languages could be an asset and had put forth the idea of a foreign language immersion school. Backed by the School Board and under the leadership of principal Karen Kodama, the John Stanford International School opened in the Latona building in the fall of 2000.
When it started it was dual language immersion for either Spanish or Japanese (these languages were chosen in a survey of parents and business leaders). Additionally, it was one of the elementary Bilingual Orientation Centers for elementary students. That was primarily where the native speakers came from who became part of the two-way learning for other students.
In 1999, JSIS was one of five of the University of Washington's K-12 initiatives. The goals* were:
- Design imaginative new curricula with an international focus
-Link to Internet2 (new super-fast version of the Internet)
-Provide educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students
-Create an educational laboratory for faculty and student researchers
-Extend international curricula into middle and high schools
-Identify school partners around the world
(*This info is via the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University website. I don't know if the UW/SPS connection still continues. I see no evidence of it at the JSIS website.)
What didn't happen is a vision for a plan of how to expand or, more importantly, where these students would go to continue this learning for middle and high school. It may have seemed important just to get the school off the ground but this lack of planning beyond a few years didn't help the program.
Today
The immersion at JSIS is in core subjects, like math and science, for half the day. The teachers are usually native speakers of the immersion languages. In addition, there are generally IAs (Immersion Assistants) who are also native speakers who assist the teacher. The BOC has long since moved on.
The start-up costs for a foreign language immersion school (beyond finding native speakers who can teach) is around $75k-100k (based on district information).
Besides JSIS, there are these elementaries:
- Concord International School - they have a dual two-way program in Spanish- English. Meaning, the native speakers of English help/are helped by the native speakers of Spanish.
- Beacon Hill International School - they have three programs. These are Spanish/English Dual Language Immersion, Chinese Mandarin/English partial Language Immersion and an English Language Immersion. BH receives federal funding for the Chinese Mandarin classes.
- McDonald (which has not yet received its "international school" naming). They offer Spanish and Japanese. It only has foreign language immersion in K and 1st and will roll-up each year. The current students in 2nd-5th have a regular ed program with some foreign language "exposure".
Beacon Hill's tentative pathway is Mercer Middle and then Franklin High School.
Concord's pathway will be Denny and then Chief Sealth High School.
I don't find clear information about how foreign language immersion plays out in middle or high school at any of the schools' web pages.
Issues
1) These programs are not accessible in any way to all students. That such desirable programming remains available only to those who live in those neighborhoods seems wrong. I think some on the Board know this but have been repeatedly told by Enrollment that these schools must remain neighborhood schools for the NSAP to work.
2) Costs. These schools have higher costs than other schools. The main one is huge - the IAs. (To note, with the IA's, the student to teacher ratio goes down to 14:1. Lower class size, a huge bonus.)
I know JSIS and McDonald have the IAs. Beacon Hill and Concord do as well but I don't see fundraising towards it. I suspect there are Title One dollars for this effort.
From McDonald's website:
An Immersion Assistant is a full-time presence in every immersion classroom. He or she is a native speaker of Spanish or Japanese.
The language immersion teaching model we’ll be using at McDonald is largely based on the system developed at John Stanford. There, they've demonstrated:
Immersion Assistants are integral to kids’ success learning Math and Science in a foreign language.
IAs are part of the model. In the words of one John Stanford parent, “The IAs make the program possible.”
But IAs are not funded by the school district. Parents raise this money. (bold mine)
Some of these are Immersion Interns, rather than Immersion Assistants. The interns are teachers from foreign countries who come to the US for a year to teach. The interns are paid through their sponsoring program with the PTA funding living expenses (around $5k) and housing with school families.
How much money? It costs out to $1,000 per student. Last year McDonald raised $95k just for this purpose (and I'd be willing to be they raised more for other needs). This year they are attempting to raise - drumroll please - $300,000 just for IAs.
From their website:
If every family could afford to give $1k per student, we would meet our goal. But we understand this level of giving is not possible for all families.
They also have a Q&A where one question is "Will We Do This Every Year?" - the question is never answered directly but the wording suggests, yes, it will have to be done every year.
Going Forward
Clearly, not everyone who wants foreign language immersion for their child can access it in our district.
The fundraising concern is really one of mixed signals and I have to wonder how it plays out at the schools who do pay for IAs. As a former PTSA co-president, I would have a hard time with supporting this kind of staffing. It is a HUGE amount of pressure for a PTA to have to take on, year in and year out. It is a HUGE amount of pressure for parents.
Look, I'm sure for some parents giving $1-2k per year for a foreign language immersion program is cheap compared to a private school. But the problem is, this is a public school and no parent should have any pressure to give money for what really should be a district cost, not a parent one.
To note, Duggan Harmon told Sherry Carr at an A&F meeting a couple of months ago that parents were told they did not have to fund these positions. But clearly, if you want the best outcomes, you need the IAs.
If this program were to expand to a school that was not in a position to fund IAs, either privately nor through federal dollars, then that school would have to forego what the other schools have in support of their programs. Those new schools' students would have a lesser experience because of the lack of IAs.
That the district started down this road and now has differing programs - some have two languages, some have one, some have native speakers in their schools and some do not - and passes costs onto parents for needed supports for the program is an example of lack of planning and vision.
This was all good and well when it was one school started to honor the memory of a lionized leader who died. But it wasn't a name put on building or a plaque in his honor. It was a program and someone should have costed this out down the road and asked what the district projected for the future.
Well, the future is upon us and I have to wonder if each program will look different and end up in the Spectrum camp where you have differing programs at each site.
It will be worth hearing the discussion at the Work Session on International Education on Wednesday before the Board meeting.
Comments
I've been trying to understand why SPS version requires IAs--perhaps because it's a lower performing district overall? Our old school had a bit less diversity and pretty high parent education levels, so maybe that's a factor?
This is not to say I don't like having the IAs, because I do. I'm just not clear on why things are so different here...
Unclear
Unclear, good question and interesting to hear what other schools/states have. I'm thinking JSIS started with IAs and it continued on. It may be a best practice although as you point out, perhaps not a necessary one.
Disillusioned
The only way around this to my mind is to allow option schools, which are SUPPOSED to be different, to have these supplemental IAs. But neither JSIS or MacDonald is option. This is the fault of a stubborn Tracy Libros in Enrollment and a wimpy board who has not addressed this problem for a decade by my reckoning.
As usual, it seems a lawsuit will be the only way to force action.
DistrictWatcher
Disillusioned
But yes, I wonder why there isn't a Board policy on who can pay for staff in a school (and should PTAs be on the hiring team if they are paying for the person)?
I just feel for McDonald parents to try to raise $300k JUST for this? What about any other school needs?
My cursory look at immersion education has been that there must be multiple native speakers (i.e. not just the teacher) in a classroom in order for it to work well. In some districts (for example, in California), these native speakers come in the form of the students themselves. Is this a possible explanation for the success in your old district? Were some percent of the kids (it doesn't have to be big native speakers of the immersion language)?
And, what are the percentages in our public immersion schools (i.e. how many native spanish/japanese speakers are there in the younger classrooms at JSIS)? My tentative explanation on the need for IAs would be the need for additional native speakers in the classroom.
(zb)
I watched with great interest and enthusiasm the creation of JSIS. I cannot believe that its 2012 and many of the same questions about pathways, access, and district support are still unanswered.
We have two internationally adopted children. My husband and I both have MAs in International Studies. Our family would be a great fit for one of these programs. But there was no chance for us--or many of the other families that might be interested in these programs--because we live in the wrong neighborhood.
--FedMomof2
For at least these first few years the McDonald families and staff thinks it's important to do all we can to support these teachers. The District should build that support into the model. The District does allocate the funds needed in the first year to provide teacher training, materials, flags, books etc. The in-class support to teachers in their first few years is a missing piece of the model.
It's a frustrating burden on families, particularly in this neighborhood based model where families want to go to their neighborhood school, and for the most part are glad to have the immersion option, but the financial burden just isn't right.
Yes, many other families would like to have their children in this model, and it should be an option school, not just for those who live in the greater Wallingford area. But that's not the situation right now.
WSPTA's possible effort to ban PTAs from funding school staff, while understandable from an equity perspective, doesn't help those of us in the immersion model either.
-McDonald Parent
I question how, having "helpful" native-speakers in the form of students, actually helps THOSE very students. They are there to learn academics AND english, not serve as linguistic peer models for students who elect to learn a second language.
I'll also add that not everyone in Wallingford is super-excited that the neighborhood schools are all foreign language immersion. It's not a good fit for some kids, and I've heard some sad stories from special ed families whose children didn't get the support they needed there.
B.F. Day has always been an option for these folks, but now some disgruntled neighbors who got zoned out of JSIS want to coopt B.F. Day for language immersion too. (Doesn't seem likely to happen, but still.)
And, if you do, why do you think: If all the Int'l schools went option than the district would most likely not fund transportation?
Other Option Schools get transportation from their entire Middle School Service area. Salmon Bay currently gets it from TWO MS areas. If the Hamilton area had their own Option school Salmon Bay could only get busing from the Whitman area--so no cost increase to SPS for that area.
mirmac1, re: your questioning of how having "helpful" native-speakers in the form of students, actually helps THOSE very students, who are there to learn academics AND english, not serve as linguistic peer models for students who elect to learn a second language, I disagree with your take on this and think this approach can actually be very beneficial for English Language Learners. They get to be taught the academics in their native language, while also interacting with their classmates usually in English. Also, since in the early grades most English-speaking immersion students don't understand the new language yet, teachers tend to translate much of what they say anyway, so they hear both languages. It seems to me to be a great arrangement for native speakers.
Unclear
That's probably because it doesn't really. At least at Hamilton, language immersion simply means you can take a more conversational language class (conducted entirely in the foreign language) rather than a more traditional grammar-based class for those learning the language. Those coming from immersion elementary feeder schools don't have to test in to the "immersion" class, whereas others would have to demonstrate sufficient fluency and would be assigned only on a space-available basis.
That's the extent of what "immersion" represents at the middle school level, at least as far as I can tell--you take a different language class than other kids who take a language class.
Unclear
Are there beginner-level foreign language classes at Hamilton for students who aren't in the immersion program?
Also, I support foreign language immersion and I talk it up as a great sign of why we don't need charters (in other states, they are mostly charters).
This thread isn't my lack of support - it's my worry over how to continue and strengthen the program.
I can't believe the district pays for this when general ed schools struggle so hard to provide even the basics.
If you want language immersion, go to private school. Or have your child take a class on the side.
As another poster pointed out, not every child in Wallingford is a good fit for these programs. Kids who have special needs at either end of the spectrum are not usually best served by language immersion. Can someone explain this craziness to me?
-???
My kid's at JSIS, and I have a hard time seeing things working without the IA's. Maybe if the classes were more reasonable, but with 31 or 32 kids in a Japanese Kindergarten or first grade, I think it would be tough.
Maybe it would be more doable in a Spanish class where parents could more easily provide support at home.
What was the language of your old school? What was the class size?
I have doubts, but honestly when you have a Kindergartener, it's hard to believe the whole thing works ever, but it sure seems to in the end.
JSIS parent
-ST
-SPS mom
Not saying DeBell is right. Just saying I think the comparison is stretched.
JSIS parent, our class sizes were similar, but you may be onto something with the Japanese vs. Spanish issue. Most parents in our Spanish immersion school didn't speak the language and struggled a bit with homework help those first couple years, but I imagine it would have been much more of a challenge in Japanese.
Unclear
Immersion or international programs should be Option Schools.
-My vote
ostrich
At any rate, I agree that JSIS should be an option school. The boundaries are already at the size of an option school rather than an attendance school anyway, they might as well just take the next step.
- Another JSIS Parent
Optimistic