III Status
Donna Christian, Discussion Leader CAL” Summary: Two-Way Immersion Programs” p.39-43. Research and Practice….1998.
Typical Gaols for Dual Immersion Programs are “high academic Acheivment, high levels of proficiency in the native language and in a second language, positive croass cultural attitudes and understanding.
“While foreign language programs including one way immersion are often treated indifferently in many communities, bilingual education programs for lanfuage minorities are often a source of controversy. Such political perspectives can influence the implementation of programs.” P.39
In 1995 182 schools in US, 25,000 students, Spanish-English most common also, Korean, French, Navajo, Cantonese, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese and Russian.
Chritian p.9 “Two way programs exist in an environment of increasingly negative attitudes towards immigrant and minority groups and their languages.”
p.10 quotes McCullum (1993) on cultural capital carried by languages. Schools can send message that English is more important in subtle ways like doing announcements in English and then Spanish, valueing English tests more, etc. Dialectical Spanish was not valued in schools, negating the value of their L1.
p.11 Dual immersion exists with no mandate.
I think we could get some statistics on how many programs exist through CAL.