Dual language program at NC school shows signs of success

MORGANTON, NC (AP) — With the inaugural class of the Global Immersion Academy at Mountain View Elementary School entering fourth grade this year, Burke County Public Schools is seeing more signs of success for its dual language program.

Lannie Simpsons, BCPS ELL director, presented testing data for the program to the Burke County Board of Education on Sept. 6. The data shows GIA students significantly outperforming their peers at Mountain View Elementary School and matching levels seen at some of the district’s higher-performing schools in many key areas.

Simpson said this is the first year they have been able to compare End of Grade test results between GIA students and the rest of the school since the program’s inaugural class only reached third grade last year.

The data shows Global Immersion Academy students outperforming the general student population at the school by nearly 11 points in math and 25 points in reading. The results were less dramatic for English Language Learners than for native English-speakers, but Simpson pointed to other data suggesting those gaps may continue to close as GIA students advance to higher grades.

Simpson said these results are not surprising given research showing dual language programs come with many educational benefits.

“There are a lot of brain benefits to learning two languages,” Simpson told The News Herald. “One is improving working memory; one is mental flexibility – solving new problems in new ways … and the other one is the ability to focus on what’s important.”

Simpson said research shows these benefits translate across cultural, racial and economic barriers making quality dual language programs one of the best ways to erase the achievement gap.

“It is the most robust way I know of to close all achievement gaps,” she said. “Research shows that achievement gaps are closed by the end elementary school, and it’s all achievement gaps, not just English learners versus all students. For example, it could be EC students versus all students, it could be African American students versus all students. It closes all achievement gaps.”

The BCPS Global Immersion Academy currently has 10 classes serving 199 Burke County students between kindergarten and fourth grade. Participate Learning, which helps schools build dual language programs like GIA, helps the district find specially certified teachers who are fluent and literate in both Spanish and English.

Students at GIA, half of whom are native English speakers and half of whom are native Spanish speakers, spend 50% of their day learning in English and 50% in Spanish.

The first group started in kindergarten five years ago and will continue throughout elementary school. Simpson said she is currently developing options that will allow GIA students to carry their dual language education into middle and high school. She told the board middle and high school programs would look different than the elementary program but would allow students who complete them to earn a Global Language Endorsement on their high school diploma.

Brittany Deal, the mother of a native English-speaking GIA student said the program is challenging, especially for kindergarten students learning a new language during the first months of school.

“It was really overwhelming for her, at first, to have all Spanish,” she said.

Deal reached out to the school’s guidance counselor who told her that her daughter’s experience was common for many of the English-speaking children in the program. The counselor told Deal it would suddenly “click” for her, probably some time in November.

“That’s what happened with Landry,” Deal said. “She just fell in love with Spanish. She actually says now she wants to be a Spanish translator when she grows up.”

According to the data presented by Simpson on Sept. 6, this extra effort seems to be paying off for GIA students.

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction Star Reading Test administered near the end of each school year shows the number of students at or above benchmark reading levels in Spanish continue to grow each year. For the 2021-22 school year, only 17% of third graders and 13% of second graders needed reading intervention, according to the test. This is down from 40% and 33% respectively a year ago.

According to the AAPPL Assessment administered to second graders, GIA is well ahead of the curve when compared to other Participate Learning programs in North Carolina. At GIA, 83% of second graders met or exceeded oral language goals in Spanish during 2021-22 compared with 63% of students in Participate Learning schools statewide.

Beyond the data, GIA teachers and parents see many other benefits to the program.

“It’s a global world,” said Karen Maldonado, a GIA teacher who has been with the program since its inception. “We are learning globally. We are exchanging cultural experiences and opening that window and that door.”

For Deal, this aspect of the program is what first drew her attention to it.

“It has really broadened her worldview and I think that’s invaluable,” Deal said. “Landry has had a teacher from Honduras, Colombia, Chile and then her teacher last year, her family was from Cuba.”

She is also impressed with what the program has helped her daughter achieve at such a young age.

“The fact that my child can read on a third-grade level in Spanish and in English, that is amazing to me,” she said.

Deal is currently planning an upcoming family trip to Central America and said she plans to lean on her 8-year-old as the translator for the group.