Huff Post Education – Erik Robelen
“Rhode Island leaders in education, business, and politics this month unveiled a blueprint to ensure that students learn a foreign language and build their understanding of other cultures. “It’s not just nice to know another language; it’s increasingly essential,” said U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, in a press release. One goal is to develop a set of pilot school sites that offer dual-language immersion at the elementary level, with half of each day’s instruction in English and the other in a second language, according to the announcement. This would start in three to five districts next fall, with such offerings available across all the state’s districts by 2016-17. The first step to carry the plan forward is to develop greater public awareness about the benefits of world language proficiency, the press release says…” (more)