LANGUAGES FOR ALL
Giving Every New York City Student
the Gift of Speaking Another Language
A report on the state of world language education in NYC public
schools, and what we can do to build a 21st-Century language
learning system
Mark Levine
NYC Council Member
District 7
2015
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‫؟ںیہ ےتکس ھڑپ ہی وک پآ‬
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then you have
experienced the power of learning another language. You undoubtedly
know that being multilingual is a major career asset, opens the door to
cross-cultural understanding, and expands a person’s horizons in so many
ways.
Today, sadly, far too few New York City students are achieving these same
benefits.
We need bold action to change this, including dramatic growth in the
number of dual-language programs and other immersion models in the
early grades.
I hope this document will serve as a call to action for parents, advocates,
and policy-makers. I look forward to a robust discussion of how the most
multilingual city in the world can be a place where all young people
acquire 21st Century language skills.
Muchícimas gracias,
Mark Levine
NYC Council Member
District 7
@marklevine
marklevine.nyc
“If you talk to a man in a language he
understands, that goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his own language,
that goes to his heart.”
―Nelson Mandela
Executive Summary
1
The Life-Changing Power of Learning Another Language
3
Strategies That Work: Early Learning and Immersion
4
World Languages in New York City’s Public Schools Today
6
Towards Multilingualism for All New York City Children
8s
Cover Photo Credit: Getty Images
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Learning another language can change a young person’s life. As the
world becomes ever more connected, multilingualism is an
increasingly valuable asset in the job market. Language learning-especially at a young age--aids cognitive development and promotes
academic achievement in other subjects. But relatively few students
in New York City’s public schools receive these benefits today, with
most getting little or no foreign language instruction until high
school. For our young people to succeed in today’s global world, we
need to create a language learning system for the 21st Century,
focused on immersion at a young age.
New York is the most multilingual city on Earth, yet our schools today relegate
world languages to a low priority. Only about 5% of elementary students receive
instruction in languages other than English today. Critical non-European
languages are rarely taught in any grade.
The era of intense focus on standardized
testing in math and English has taken a
heavy toll on foreign language instruction
in New York City. The Department of
Education has no goals for principals or
for the system as a whole for achievement
in world languages. There is little or no
professional development available for
foreign language teachers.
Fortunately, DOE’s currently chancellor,
Carmen Fariña, is a strong advocate of of
multilingualism. She herself was once an
ELL student, is bilingual, and speaks
regularly about the benefits of language
learning.
“It’s one thing to go out with
Japanese businessmen who all
speak English; it’s another thing
to be able to have some dinner
conversation in their language.
That means you are coming to
the table with a different form of
respect, a different form of
acknowledgment, and people
accept and honor that.”
- Carmen Fariña, Chancellor
NYC Department of Education
We know what works in foreign language instruction: early learning and
immersion. Young minds absorb new languages with ease, including the ability
to achieve native-speaker fluency. This facility is lost once children pass puberty.
But even at an early age fluency can only be attained through immersion. An
hour a week of language instruction can help children acquire basic vocabulary
or learn select phrases or songs--but not much more.
Cutting edge schools around the globe, and here in New York City, achieve
immersion by teaching children general content (social studies, math, etc.) in a
foreign language for several periods a day. The state of Utah has reoriented its
entire school system around this strategy, with a steadily growing percentage of
students beginning an immersion track in kindergarten in a variety of foreign
languages. Elite private schools in New York City have adopted a similar strategy.
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
1
New York City’s dual language programs offer a glimpse of the potential of early
immersion here. The 182 existing such programs--including 40 opened this fall
by Chancellor Fariña--are popular with parents and students alike. But in total
these programs are reaching only about 3% of elementary school students, and
virtually none of the programs continue into middle and high school.
The DOE has a target that dual language programs should be composed 50/50
of native English speakers vs. ELL. The programs have become increasingly
popular among middle-class, English-speaking parents. However awareness of
the option is more limited among immigrant parents, though DOE has recently
expanded outreach to this group and is increasingly siting new programs in
schools with large ELL populations.
For generations, New York has been a place where the children of immigrants
have lost their parents’ native languages. Today this should be a city where
children of all backgrounds learn the languages of the world.
New York City needs to set ambitious but achievable goals for its young people
to attain the language skills which are critical for success in the 21st Century:
● Beginning in kindergarten, every family who wants it should have the
option of a foreign language immersion track for their children,
including those with disabilities.
● Every student not in an immersion track should receive at least two
periods per week of foreign language instruction beginning in
kindergarten.
● We should increase the number of languages available for immersion
from the current 9 to 20, with emphasis on the languages in highest
demand by employers, including non-Western European languages like
Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, and Japanese--as well as those most
common among heritage speakers in New York City, including Urdu,
Korean, and Bengali.
To achieve these goals, the we must:
● Dramatically expand dual language programs, with a major push to
inform immigrant families of this option
● Ramp up recruitment of bilingual-certified teachers, and enact State
legislation (A329/S554), sponsored by Assm. Nily Rozic and State
Senator Parker, to establish incentives for college students to pursue this
field.
● Create goals, accountability, and reporting in foreign language learning
(FLL) for principals, districts, and the city as a whole
● Ensure that every FLL teacher has access to high-quality professional
development
● New York State should third-party certify the foreign language
assessment so it can be an eligible component of the Regents diploma.
Only through such bold action will New York City succeed in preparing our
children to compete for jobs in a globalized, polyglot world. With leaders from
Barack Obama to Carmen Fariña extolling the benefits of multilingualism, our
city should be the place where this dream becomes a reality.
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
2
THE LIFE-CHANGING POWER OF
LEARNING ANOTHER LANGUAGE
Language learning yields benefits on many fronts. New York City
employers in a wide range of sectors increasingly demand foreign
language skills. Extensive research shows that when students learn a
new language it improves their academic performance in other
subjects, narrows the achievement gap, and builds young people’s
self-esteem. Perhaps most importantly, speaking a foreign language
opens up vast new horizons of intercultural understanding.
An increasing number of jobs require foreign
language skills, including in sectors such as
tourism, business services, law, sales/marketing,
non-profits
and
multi-national
NGOs,
international relations, law enforcement, and
national security. Every one of these sectors is
strongly represented in New York City, and most
are growing. It is therefore not surprising that
economists ascribe tangible economic value to the
learning of new languages.
Top ten most valuable
languages for global
business:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Mandarin Chinese
French
Arabic
Spanish
Russian
Portuguese
Japanese
German
Italian
Korean
There is a common misperception that learning
multiple languages at a young age slows
developmental growth. Significant research
confirms just the opposite--that in fact
multilingual children achieve at higher rates in
Source: Bloomberg
general academic subjects, including English.
Rankings, 2014
There is evidence that learning a foreign language
promotes abstract and creative thinking. It also
builds students’ sense of achievement, especially because it is often an area
where children not accustomed to achievement in school are able to excel.
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
3
STRATEGIES THAT WORK:
EARLY LEARNING AND IMMERSION
Young children have relatively little difficulty with new forms of
pronunciation and intonations and with acceptance of new cultures.
For this reason foreign language instruction usually begins in
kindergarten in the most effective programs. Fluency in another
language can only be achieved through immersion, a fact which has
contributed to the rapid growth of dual language programs, in which
students spend part of their day learning in English and part in
another language.
Most nations in Europe require at least nine years of foreign language education,
beginning in elementary school. Most of New York City’s elite private schools
now begin such instruction in kindergarten. At cutting-edge private schools,
such as Avenues in Lower Manhattan, every student enrolls in a half-day
immersion track in either Spanish or Mandarin, beginning in pre-Kindergarten
and continuing through high-school graduation.
In 2005 the entire state of Utah
“In my book, dual language is one of
reoriented its schools around dual
the best ways to get economic and
language immersion. Today more
ethnic integration of schools”
than 20% of elementary school
students are enrolled in such
- Clara Hemphill, Founding Editor
programs, which are offered in 13
Insideschools.org
different languages. Admission to
the programs is by lottery, and
across the state most are oversubscribed. The State of Delaware recently
launched a similar world language immersion initiative in its schools.
In explaining the rationale for its program, the Delaware education department
notes:
“Early language learning results in more native-like
pronunciation and fluency in the second language. More
than forty years of research consistently documents the
power of immersion education to help students attain high
levels of world language proficiency. No other type of
instruction, short of living in a non-English-speaking
environment, is as successful. Young children especially
thrive in this type of learning environment where learning a
new language comes as naturally as learning their first one.”
In New York City, dual language programs are usually comprised partly of
English-language learners who are native speakers of the target language, with
the remainder of the students being native English speakers looking to acquire a
second language. This mix allows students to learn from each other, with each
group’s self-esteem boosted by the knowledge that it has something to teach the
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
4
other. ELLs also benefit from developing and maintaining literacy in the native
language.
Dual language programs are some of the most diverse in New York City,
bringing together students across racial, religious, and socioeconomic lines.
Dual language programs are extremely cost effective, because they don’t require
an increase in the amount of classroom time or the amount of curriculum
materials. A participating school might buy science textbooks in Spanish as
opposed to English, but the total number of textbooks purchased remains the
same. Likewise, though a school may hire a french-speaking social studies
teacher, the total staff in dual language programs is the same as those without
this element.
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
5
WORLD LANGUAGES IN NEW YORK
CITY’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS TODAY
In this, the most multilingual city on Earth, our young people learn
in schools where world languages are pushed to the margins. Only
5% of students receive any foreign language instruction during the
critical elementary school years, and many of those who do receive
only an hour or two per week. Since 2010 the State has not offered a
foreign language Regent’s exam. The success of dual language
programs here proves the popularity and effectiveness of immersion
learning, but only a sliver of all the city’s students benefit from this
model.
New York City is seat of the United Nations, and capital of international
business, culture, entertainment, and tourism. No less than 49% of the city’s
population speaks languages other than English at home. Some experts believe
that as many as 800 distinct languages are spoken here. This should make it
easy for New York City to be a leader in the learning of world language.
But foreign language education--never robust here--has been eroded over the
past decade. The intense focus on math and English, the core subjects on
standardized testing, has led to a reduction in the number of elementary and
middle schools offering foreign languages. In recent years many large schools
have been replaced with small ones that do not have the resources to hire fulltime language teachers. At the same time the Federal government has cut
funding for Title VI grants (the “International and Foreign Language Education”
program) and other similar national initiatives.
When the New York State Department of Education disbanded its Office of
Languages Other Than English in 2010, it made the department a subsidiary of
the Office of Bilingual Education. At the City level, foreign languages are
similarly overseen by the division in charge of English language learners (which
itself was grouped together with special education until 2014). This structure has
hampered the City’s ability to develop language learning for students other than
ELLs.
Today New York State requires that students take only two credits of foreign
language in K-8 and one high school credit before the end of ninth grade. At
many schools in New York City even these meager requirements are not met. A
Regents diploma requires just one year of foreign language, and even an honors
diploma doesn’t require any additional coursework or assessment in this area.
In 2010 New York State eliminated both the Second Language Proficiency
examinations and Regents Comprehensive Examinations in German, Hebrew,
and Latin. In response, districts throughout the state, including NYCDOE, have
worked to create “Regents-like examinations” for languages other than English
(LOTE), giving students the opportunity to pursue an Advanced Regents
diploma. DOE’s Office of Assessment administers locally developed LOTE exams
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
6
in the six languages in which Regents exams were previously offered--French,
German, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, and Spanish. In addition, the DOE offers locally
developed LOTE exams in 15 lower incidence languages.
When it comes to instruction, however, less commonly taught languages face
particular challenges in New York City. Seventy-six percent of students studying
a foreign language here are learning Spanish. There is virtually no instruction of
Middle Eastern or Central Asian languages, and almost none of major European
languages like Russian or Portuguese. Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, and Portuguese
each have more than 100 million speakers worldwide--and fewer than 40
students currently studying these languages in DOE schools. Cantonese, Turkish,
Farsi, Vietnamese, Swahili, and Thai each have more than 50 million speakers-and not a single class in DOE schools. We teach very few of the 65 critical needs
languages identified by the Federal government.
The rise of dual language programs in New York City has been a welcome
development. Today there are 182 such programs in 154 schools across the city.
Approximately 90% of the programs offer Spanish, though there is a least one
program each for 8 additional languages: French, Haitian-Creole, Hebrew,
Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Russian and Polish.
While some existing programs comprise entire schools, many consist of a single
class per grade in larger schools. Some programs have as few as 20 students. In
total fewer than 3% of non-ELL elementary school students are enrolled in dual
language programs.
In January, 2015 Chancellor Fariña announced creation of 40 new dual language
programs, which launched this fall. Twenty-five of the these were created from
scratch and 15 were expansions of existing programs. These new and expanded
programs were initiated by schools whose principal or parents had applied for
dual language grants (nearly all existing dual language programs were launched
originally through grassroots efforts by parents or school leaders).
Last year DOE created several foreign language professional development
programs, including a two-day institute for 100 teachers and a city-wide
conference for 300. However the great majority of the city’s approximately 1,100
foreign language teachers still receive no targeted PD. By comparison, teachers
in other subjects routinely receive PD weekly in school, and monthly at a central
location, with on-going support from a master teacher and in many cases the
option of attending summer institutes.
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
7
TOWARDS MULTILINGULAISM FOR
ALL NEW YORK CITY CHILDREN
New York City’s policymakers must think big. Incremental
improvements in foreign language instruction will still leave the vast
majority of our young people without the multilingual skills that will
help them succeed in the 21st Century. Our ambitious goals should
include: dramatically scaling-up the number of dual language
immersion options available; providing all non-immersion students
with at least two hours per week of FLL instruction beginning in
kindergarten; and expanding the diversity of offerings beyond the
small number of Western European languages which predominate
today.
New York City should set an
"My goal is that every child in New
ambitious but achievable goal:
York City speak at least two
every family who wants their child
languages."
in a foreign language immersion
- Chancellor Carmen Fariña,
track should have that option. Over
Testimony to the City Council
the next five years, the number of
May 28th, 2015
elementary students in immersion
programs should grow from the
current level of 3% to 20%--a goal which the state of Utah has already attained.
Expanded outreach to parents of ELL students is key to growth of dual language
programs. Schools should make good-faith efforts to inform immigrant families
about the availability and benefits of such options. If outreach efforts still do not
attract a sufficient number of ELLs, then schools should be allowed flexibility in
enrolling greater than 50% native English speakers, even if that means such
programs will not qualify for Title 3 ELL funds.
DOE should create more dual language immersion programs in middle and high
school, as almost none exist today at these levels. We should increase the
number of languages available for immersion from the current 9 to 20, with
emphasis on the languages in highest demand by employers, including nonWestern European languages like Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, and Japanese.
For those students not in immersion programs, at least two periods per week of
foreign language instruction should begin in Kindergarten. FLL should be
included in the City’s universal pre-K programs as well. In middle and high
school, FLL should be treated as a core subject, not an elective.
Clear goals for foreign language proficiency should be established for principals,
superintendents, and the system as whole. Existing assessment exams for
languages other than English (LOTE) should undergo third-party certification to
make them valid for Regents recognition. Annual reporting on the city’s progress
on ELL should be provided to the City Council and the general public.
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
8
Dramatic expansion of FLL will require an aggressive ramp-up in recruitment of
qualified teachers. Policymakers should work with schools of education to
expand the training of FLL teachers.
FLL teachers should receive professional development on a par with traditional
core subjects, including mentoring by veteran teachers. DOE should work with
publishers to create more textbooks and other curricular content that is written
originally in the target language, not merely translated from English. Foreign
governments such as France and Spain, which invest around the world in
teaching of their languages, should be tapped to fund curriculum development,
teacher training, and more.
LANGUAGES FOR ALL:
Giving Every New York City Student the Gift of Speaking Another Language
Mark Levine, NYC Council Member, District 7
9