The National Association of Bilingual Education is meeting in Portland for its annual conference this week. And the Beaverton School District is actively looking for input from parents on how to expand its dual-language program. Toshiko Maurizio is the administrator for the district’s multilingual programs and she says with more than 100 languages spoken in the district, it’s critical to hear from kindergarten through fourth-grade parents in particular where they would like to see the district invest their dual language dollars. We talk with Maurizio about the district’s plan and what the research shows about how bilingual students compare academically with those who only speak English.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. There’s been a big focus on bilingual education in Oregon this week. The National Association of Bilingual Education is meeting in Portland right now for its annual conference. Before the snowstorm, the U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, was scheduled to travel to Woodburn to hear about multilingual and multicultural education programs there. Meanwhile, the Beaverton School District, right now, is looking to expand its dual language programs and is actively looking for input from families on how best to proceed. Toshiko Maurizio is the administrator for the district’s multilingual programs and she joins us now. It’s good to have you on Think Out Loud.
Toshiko Maurizio: Good afternoon, thank you for having me.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. What’s the extent of dual language immersion programs in the district right now?
Maurizio: In Beaverton, we currently have three elementary dual language programs at Aloha-Huber Park, Barnes and Vose elementary schools. We have expanded it to three middle school programs. Also Aloha-Huber Park, which is a K-8 school. We have Whitford Middle School as well as Meadow Park Middle school. And just in the last few years, we wanted to extend the K-12 experience for our students and added high school level programs at Aloha High School, Beaverton High, as well as Southridge High School. And the idea really for bilingual programs is that when students start the program in elementary, they really should continue their journey towards that biliteracy and multiliteracy all the way through middle school and then high school, with the hopes of obtaining the seal of biliteracy for the state of Oregon.
Miller: And the idea being that this is not just language instruction, but bilingual education, meaning, say, if it’s Spanish, that they would be learning math in Spanish as well or history in Spanish, right?
Maurizio: Yes, that is the goal of the program. So in these programs you have to have highly skilled bilingual teachers which is very, very critical. The teachers in these programs are bilingual, multilingual and are able to teach content, like you just mentioned in both languages. And when I say both languages, it’s English and a partner language and the partner language could be Spanish, it could be Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, whatever languages that the district offers. In Beaverton, we just offer English and Spanish at this point. We are looking at expanding to different languages, but the important part to know is that in a dual language program, both of the languages are strategically woven into the instructional craft of the teachers.
Miller: You’ve done now a multi-year evaluation of your dual language programs in the district. What’s working well and what could use some work?
Maurizio: The research for bilingual programs and dual language programs is very, very clear and we’ve been looking and monitoring the national research, but we also have been doing our own internal research with our own students. Just for example, recent Beaverton studies showed that elementary ELL students in dual language programs (in 2019) grew 1-6% points more in grade to grade English language proficiency than students in other English-only programs. And then a recent study that we’ve been working on right now with Education Northwest, is that students in dual language programs had an on track to graduation rate 6% points higher than students who were not in dual language. And additionally, students who were in dual language had a graduation rate that was 4% points higher than students who were not in dual language.
So in the national research, we know that bilingual programs are really the best programs for multilingual learners, but we also see nationally that bilingual ed improves math and language arts scores and students in these programs typically outperform their peers academically.
Miller: Is that causal, I mean, is it because of the programs or is it because of some kind of self selection bias? And that, say, families who are putting their kids in these programs maybe are more likely to also be supporting them at home in other ways?
Maurizio: Yeah, it’s a combination. And in Beaverton, the first study we did was pretty much correlational. We’ve been looking at that data. With this current research that we’re working on, we hope to add some of that causal qualitative data as well by interviewing a lot of our students, our staff and our families, to really get at what is causing these results. It is a combination. So yes, just to answer your question.
Miller: Portland Public Schools right now, some of our listeners may know, has dual language programs in Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian and Vietnamese. I’ve read that families in the Beaverton School District speak more than 100 languages at home. What other languages are you considering offering programming in?
Maurizio: Yes, we are very, very linguistically diverse as a district. This is actually a really good plug for our survey. So just recently, we sent out a dual language survey to our community, for parents that [have] students coming in as kindergartners to fourth-grade, asking them their feedback on whether they would be interested in a dual language program and also which language. So we are hoping to get that data from our community, an interest on which languages to add. Like I mentioned before, we just have Spanish and English right now. We do have charter schools. We do have a Hope Chinese Charter School in our district, as well as Arco Iris Spanish Charter School. But we are interested in looking at a variety of languages.
We know that we’ve been receiving calls from our community, from organizations or organization leaders in our community for Mandarin Chinese, Arabic language. So we are getting the interest, but we also have a survey, that we’ve just extended the deadline to March 2nd. So if you are in the Beaverton community and you receive this email, please take this survey. We extended the deadline to March 2nd.
Miller: The recent press release about this expansion plan, it also mentions the hope to expand access to heritage languages, which I have to admit, it’s a phrase I’m not familiar with. What does that mean?
Maurizio: Heritage language is basically, if you are a Spanish speaker, you might take a heritage language that is taught through our world language curriculum, but you’re learning your language or Spanish, for example, in a class where that language is taught. So it’s not necessarily a dual language, where you’re learning content in that language. It’s mostly the language part of the instruction in that language, if that makes sense. So you could add a heritage language for Korean, you can add a heritage language for Japanese, but not necessarily in the form of a dual language where you’re actually learning the content in those languages.
Miller: Let’s say you decide to add Mandarin and Vietnamese and Arabic, say. How challenging would it be to actually find high quality, qualified instructors who can teach both the content and the languages in say, both Arabic and English? And you have one minute to answer that question.
Maurizio: Yeah, that is going to be our challenge, which is why, as we’re expanding, we have to take that in consideration, reach out to our community, to see if we can get help with recruiting. And our Human Resources Department is aware of our plans to expand and so it’s gonna take a lot of intentional recruiting in different parts of the country to get these highly qualified teachers that can actually teach content in both languages. So it is gonna be our challenge, but we are ready for that challenge and we have ideas of how to go about recruiting for those positions.
Miller: Toshiko Maurizio, thanks very much for joining us.
Maurizio: Thank you.
Miller: Toshiko Maurizio is the administrator for Multilingual Programs at the Beaverton School District. She joined us to talk about their plans right now to expand bilingual immersion programs in the district.
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