Expert speaks for bilingual education Expert speaks for bilingual education (February 27, 2004)

Students can learn two languages at Castro

By Julie O'Shea

In an effort to enroll more kindergarten students in the Spanish-English dual-immersion program at Castro Elementary School, school officials invited an expert on child development to talk with prospective parents last Monday.

Applications for the program will be available starting March 4. Parents have until March 31 to return them to the superintendent's office at district headquarters.

"Students who are bilingual outperform students who are monolingual," said Kathryn Lindholm-Leary, a professor at San Jose State University who has written extensively on two-way language immersion education.

Dual immersion is an intense program that integrates two groups of students -- native English speakers and native Spanish speakers, in the case of Castro -- who receive academic instruction in both languages.

Castro uses a 90-10 model, where kindergarteners are taught 90 percent of the school day in Spanish and 10 percent of the day in English. The percentage is gradually changed to a 50-50 split by the time students reach fourth grade. Castro also offers English-only classes

The dual-immersion program has come under fire by some who argue it is not preparing students -- primarily native Spanish speakers -- for high school and beyond. However, school administrators point out that student test scores are on the rise.

Lindholm-Leary presented statistics on the program's effectiveness to a group of about 30 parents on Monday. She stressed that while she has not evaluated Castro specifically, she has studied schools with demographics similar to the Escuela Avenue campus, where 80 percent of the student body speaks a language other than English at home.

Most native Spanish speakers who are involved in the program will be proficient in English by the fourth grade, Lindholm-Leary said. And native English speakers tend to develop proficiency in Spanish by fifth grade.

When interviewed about the program, Lindholm-Leary said she finds students feel academically competent and do well in their schoolwork.

The college professor emphasized that it is important to have an even balance of native English to native Spanish speakers in dual-immersion classrooms. Officials with the Mountain View-Whisman School District said they hope to bring those numbers closer together by this fall.

For more information on the program, contact Castro principal Carla Tarazi at 526-3590.

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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