Arlington - Bilingual education

[Anonymous]

My family is moving to Arlington next year and am curious about bilingual education. My DD is 2 and am pregnant as well. What do people who live in the area do if they would like for their kids to learn two languages but are only English speakers at home? I'd like my kids to be fluent in Spanish and from my experience just learning it in middle school is not enough to foster fluency. Are there any schools (preferably public) that are bilingual?

[Anonymous]

Gunston is immersion in middle school and I know a family whose children went through it and were very successful. I know there's an elem program but I don't know which school it is at.

[Anonymous]

Claremont and Key are Spanish immersion elementary schools. Other elementaries offer FLES, which is Spanish class 3x per week.

[Anonymous]

At this point you either need to buy in bounds for Claremont Elementary or Key Elementary, or have Key as your immersion option and do a transfer application. Gunston has immersion for Middle School. There's some talk of offering immersion at Wakefield, but it hasn't happened yet.

I know a family who used Key and Gunston and were very happy. Another family is currently at Claremont and speaks highly of the program.

All Arlington elementaries currently offer FLES but it's nowhere near "immersion" level.

[Anonymous]

Not public, but reasonable private school, Waterfront Academy, is dual-immersion.

[Anonymous]

Communikids Preschool is Spanish immersion and has lots of Arlington families who go on to Key and Claremont. They start at 2 1/2.

[Anonymous]

We got into Key without being in bounds two years ago, but I know both Claremont & Key are overcrowded. I don't know how long that will be an option. We really like Key, by the way.

[Anonymous]

You need to buy into the Clarmont neighborhood if you want it. APS doesn't really have choice anymore.

[Anonymous]

We're doing private in order to get immersion.

[Anonymous]

Key and Claremont are the Spansh Immersion schools.

[Anonymous]

Did that plan to have other languages fall flat for Arlington? I know there were some people asking for French. I'd love to see German or Chinese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My family is moving to Arlington next year and am curious about bilingual education. My DD is 2 and am pregnant as well. What do people who live in the area do if they would like for their kids to learn two languages but are only English speakers at home? I'd like my kids to be fluent in Spanish and from my experience just learning it in middle school is not enough to foster fluency. Are there any schools (preferably public) that are bilingual?

I'm a huge supporter of bilingual education and it definitely has benefits, but it's important to be realistic too. Even a dual immersion school isn't going to be enough to foster fluency, and then it's a big commitment to maintain that fluency once they're in middle and high school.

Here's a snippet from one of the leading organizations on bilingual education in the US (Google CARLA, or for a more local resource the one in DC is CAL):

Finally, outcome-oriented research reveals that immersion students, especially those who begin the program as native English speakers, don't quite achieve native-like levels of speaking and writing skills. Studies consistently find that English-speaking immersion students' oral language lacks grammatical accuracy, lexical specificity, native pronunciation, and is less complex and sociolinguistically appropriate when compared with the language native speakers of the second language produce.[xxxix] Further, students' use of the immersion language appears to become increasingly anglicized over time,[xl] and can be marked by a more formal academic discourse style.[xli] Even in high-performing immersion programs, advancing students' second language proficiency beyond the intermediate levels remains a much sought after end goal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did that plan to have other languages fall flat for Arlington? I know there were some people asking for French. I'd love to see German or Chinese.

I don't think it was a plan, rather it was a petition that didn't really take off. I've heard rumblings about a third Spanish immersion in the near future, since there are so many native Spanish speakers and there's some research that shows dual language immersion benefits ESL kids quite a bit if one of the languages is their native language (as well as being a draw for English dominant students). But German/Chinese immersion programs are not likely since we don't have that many native speakers. Other than Spanish, French would probably be the most likely as I think that may be a more common native language of current Arlington residents.