K–12 Language Learning and Foreign Language Educational Policy: A School‐Based Perspective

by researching and documenting the successes and challenges of microlevel school-based acquisition planning, important issues can be brought to light concerning macrolevel national foreign language educational policy. Since 1995, we have been involved closely with the Chartiers Valley School District as it has developed, implemented, and monitored a comprehensive, innovative foreign language program that has been recognized domestically and worldwide. Nestled in a southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, this district of approximately 3,600 students has met the challenges of developing a Spanish program in Grades K-7 for all students. In 1995, the superintendent formed a Foreign Language Program Committee consisting of the district's director of curriculum who chairs the group; the superintendent; principals from the primary, intermediate, and middle schools; selected teachers; the chair of the secondary school foreign languages department; and university collaborators. The committee began its work by conducting a community survey that led to the selection of the foreign language to be taught, Spanish. The committee also carefully planned for implementing the program year by year beginning with kindergarten in 1996-1997 and adding one grade level per year (see Tucker & Donato, 2003). At the primary (K-2) and intermediate (3-5) grade levels, Spanish classes are offered to all children for 20 minutes per day, 5 days per week. The Spanish teachers are all certified in foreign language teaching, and some hold dual certification in foreign language and elementary education. The K-5 curriculum is linked to the elementary school's major interdisciplinary themes and was written by the Spanish teachers in collaboration with the elementary school teachers. When the program expanded to the middle school (Grade 6 in the fall of 2002), a different curricular model was adopted. Best described as content-related instruction, the Grade 6-8 Spanish curriculum uses academic subject matter as both the content of da ly lessons and the vehicle by which Spanish is learned. The content-related curriculum was developed based on selected topics introduced in four academic subject areas of the middle school program-English/language arts, reading, science, and social studies (for a general discussion of approaches such as these, see Crandall, 1993, 1998). In collaboration with the academic subject teachers, the middle school Spanish teachers developed the Spanish curriculum by selecting major concepts (e.g., natural resources, civilization, figures of speech) from each academic subject. Each subject area is taught in the Spanish classes for 40 minutes a day, 5 days a week in four 9-week units of study. By the 2003-2004 school year, the Spanish program was fully in place from kindergarten to the seventh grade. In the fall of 2004, the program's initial kindergarten class reached the eighth grade. From kindergarten to Grade 7, every child was scheduled in Spanish, either in a 20-minute class (K-5) or in a 40-minute core class (Grades 6 and 7). As eighth graders, students received the option to choose two of three course offerings as an elective: (a) year-long Spanish, (b) year-long reading, and (c) a series of three 12week exploratory courses (German, French, literature enrichment). Of the 254 students who entered Grade 8 in