Immersion Incorporates
Standards
The ACIE Newsletter, February 1998, Vol.
1, No. 2
By Marty Abbott, Foreign Language Program
Coordinator, Fairfax County Public Schools, Fairfax, Virginia
The impact of state and national standards has left school
districts across the country reeling with curricular changes
and the need to reprioritize budget allocations and assessment
initiatives. Although national standards have been developed
in all disciplines, we remain a nation of 50 states plus the
District of Columbia, each with a different set of state standards
and possibly state assessments.
What impact does this have on immersion programs? How can
they survive amid the changing expectations and political
whims of state legislatures?
Perhaps in sharing our experiences in Virginia, we can engage
in a discussion of the impact of these initiatives on early
language programs and implement some proactive measures to
address them.
Fairfax County Public Schools' Partial-Immersion Program
The program began in 1989 and has been implemented at 13
elementary schools in four languages: French, German, Japanese,
and Spanish. Students begin in first grade and learn math,
science, and health in the target language, and social studies
and language arts in English. Fairfax County has mathematics
Program of Studies tests that are based on our local curriculum,
which students take each year in English. Two evaluations
of the program (one in 1991 and the other in 1996) both indicate
that students in the immersion program score as well as or
better than non-immersion students on both nationally-normed
and criterion-referenced tests in math and English language
arts.
New State Testing
In an effort to raise student achievement and encouraged
by the Governor of Virginia, the State School Board initiated
a statewide mandatory testing program in the four core areas:
math, science, social studies, and English language arts in
grades 3, 5, and 8, as well as prescribed courses and testing
for the high school level. Schools will be issued an annual
report card, which will be made public, indicating test scores
and percent of students who are successful on the tests.
Challenges for the Immersion Program
Because the students in the immersion program had always
taken standardized tests in English, most grade-level teams
of teachers had worked out a way to introduce students to
the vocabulary they would need in order to be able to make
their way through the tests. We all know that students who
have taken tests with similar directions and similar formats
usually do better on standardized tests, and this was important
for the immersion students, who were accustomed to reading
directions for homework assignments and tests in the target
language. In particular, it was important for the students
of a non-cognate language (such as Japanese) to be introduced
to terms like integer and quotient in English. The preparation
of students was left up to individual teams, since we did
not want to mandate that it had to be done by the English-speaking
teachers on the team. In most cases it was indeed done during
the English portion of the day, but for program public relations
it was beneficial to have the teachers agree among themselves
exactly how and when it would take place.
The new state tests in Virginia present new challenges. The
tests are multiple-choice and based on new state Standards
of Learning that tend to focus on the core knowledge that
students learn in a discipline rather than the process or
problem-solving aspects of a curriculum. They also do not
coincide with our current curriculum objectives in each grade
level, so curriculum revisions are being made. This has an
impact on the materials that have already been prepared in
the target language.
To manage this challenge, we have developed packets that
can be sent home of activities that parents can do with their
children that highlight the necessary vocabulary. Trade books
that make use of the terms and concepts can also be borrowed
by students for reading at home in English. The grade-level
teams of teachers in some cases are also working together
to figure out the best way to prepare students. We are attempting
to translate as much of the new materials as possible for
use by teachers during the immersion portion of the day.
It will be several years before we are able to determine
the impact of this mandatory testing on the academic preparation
of students in the immersion program. Prior research studies
and data analysis provide school system administrators with
the necessary support to continue the program. Careful supervision
of curriculum changes and translations will provide teachers
with the support they need. Periodic sharing of information
with parents strengthens their resolve to keep their children
in the program. Anyone involved with immersion programs knows
that it is "labor intensive" for all; new state standards
and mandatory testing simply challenge us to figure out ways
to manage change. We look at the results of immersion programs
with students, and we know it's all worth it!
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