The Salt Lake Tribune – Johanna Watzinger-Tharp, Ph.D.
“In 2008, with the passage of Senate Bill 41, the state of Utah made a firm commitment to educating its children in the public school system in two languages. Since then, Utah’s Dual Language Immersion Program has grown to include five languages (Chinese, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish) in 138 schools reaching some 29,000 students in grades 1 through 8…Does this work? Can students learn math in Spanish or German or Chinese? Unequivocally, the answer is yes: Students in Utah’s dual immersion programs perform as well or better than their non-immersion peers in core subjects such as language arts and math…Success tends to generate challenges, and Utah’s dual language immersion project faces an urgent one: Students who complete a world language AP course and exam in ninth grade will have no more high school language courses available to them…To bridge the imminent language education gap between 9th grade and enrollment in college, the University of Utah is seeking support from the 2016 Legislature on behalf of a state-wide public and higher education alliance…Now is the time to make sure we don’t squander the opportunity to make our students truly bilingual, biliterate and bicultural global citizens who successfully face the challenges of the 21st century.”(more)