Curriculum Matters

"School newcomer centers," which educate English language learners who have recently arrived in this country, are increasingly offering academic content to go with basic training in English, my colleague Mary Ann Zehr reports on her Learning the Language blog. Those results were included in the findings of a survey conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics. Among the academic subjects of interest? Pre-algebra, according to the center.

Lack of English skill is a major hurdle for many students in math classes, as well as in science, as I've discussed in previous stories.

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The U.S. Department of State continues to have persistent shortages of staff with critical language skills, despite the fact that such skills help to advance U.S. policy and economic interests around the world, says Jess T. Ford, the director of international affairs and trade for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, in testimony released last week by that office. He says the gaps are particularly high in Afghanistan, where 33 of 45 officers in language-designated positions don't meet the requirement, and in Iraq, where 8 of 14 officers lack adequate language skills.

The statement gives several specific examples of how some State Department staff are not best able to represent the United States because of their lack of language skills, including the fact that officers aren't invited to certain events that would enable them to expand their contacts. It also says intelligence gathering may be hindered because local informants are reluctant to communicate through local interpreters.

Ford recommends in his statement that the Secretary of State create a comprehensive strategic plan to meet the nation's foreign-language requirements.

The report makes no mention of how elementary and secondary schools could possibly help to increase the number of people in this country who speak both English and another language that is critically needed for State Department posts in places such as Afghanistan or Iraq.

But the National Research Council, an entity chartered by the U.S. Congress, criticized the U.S. Department of Education in a report two years ago for not having a "master plan or unifying strategic vision" for the teaching of foreign languages and culture.

So now we have recommendations for at least two federal departments to create strategic plans for this area of education.

Ford's statement in the GAO letter doesn't emphasize financial resources. But every time I talk with people in K-12 education about the need to create a pipeline of students with high proficiency in foreign languages, they express the need for the federal government to step in with more funds for foreign-language programs.

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Take note that Rosetta Stone, a language-software company, has done well in its launch as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange. A Washington Post article published this month says the "company appears to be a bright spot in the economic drudgery." (Hat tip to Colorin colorado.)

The success of the company, which sells software to the U.S. Army and State Department's Foreign Service Institute, as well as schools, indicates that many people in this country desire to learn a foreign language (of course, we really don't know how much they are actually using the software they are purchasing). But at the same time, the Center for Applied Linguistics has documented that the proportion of elementary schools in this country providing foreign-language classes declined over the past decade, which I reported on this year in Education Week.

Could it be that Americans are turning to tools like Rosetta Stone software as adults to learn a foreign language and compensate for something that was missing from their K-12 school curricula?

I've personally used the software for improving my Spanish, and I've found it helpful, but my experiences of being immersed in Spanish during summer study stints in Latin American countries were much more valuable. I also find that my English-Spanish conversation exchanges with Spanish-speakers here in the Washington area have been a better teaching tool than any software.

The software is used as supplementary material in a lot of schools for teaching foreign languages and English as a second language. The lessons use photos to illustrate words and ideas in the target language and don't provide translation into English. Thus, they're based on the concept of immersion.

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