S R E I R R A B ts n e d u lp st ies e h h panis cess var S d n c l ish a d s , b u t a g n E t in ckgroun h S g u a HARD a t b N RIC I s R s E e Class om variou BY KRISTIN L AM AND fr os Angeles preschool teacher Rosa Ramirez has a special way of asking her students to line up for playtime outside. “Pueden pararse si llevan puesto algo de color amarillo, como una abeja,” she tells them. In English, Ramirez would say, “You can stand up if you are wearing yellow — like a bee.” But this is the half of the school day in which she teaches exclusively in Spanish. The preschool dual-language program at Gates Street Early Education Center in Lincoln Heights, one of Los Angeles’ oldest neighborhoods with dense populations of Latino and Asian residents, is part of a growing number of bilingual education models taking root in California and across the country. Many of them are designed
L
to serve students from Spanish-speaking families, as well as students from other cultures, with mounting evidence that learning two languages can help people from all backgrounds become stronger students. Roughly 3.8 million students in U.S. schools are native Spanish-speakers who are not proficient in English. They make up the bulk of the approximately 5 million students nationwide identified as Englishlanguage learners, the fastest-growing demographic in schools — and the lowestperforming, as judged by achievement tests and graduation rates. Sixty-seven percent of students with limited English skills graduated high school after four years in 2016, compared with 84 percent of all students, according to federal data. >
69