Title: Bilingual Ed: Texas Overtakes Cali in Language Learnin’
On a Monday morning at Lively Middle School in Austin, Texas, Wendell Norris Marquez teaches pre-AP Spanish to seventh graders. The students were gearing up to read a story in Spanish by Gabriel Garcia Marquez when Norris Marquez asked them if legends were real. The kids decided no, legends are not real, they’re like Santa Claus stories.
This class is real fancy, but guess what? They’re not high schoolers, they’re seventh graders. And they’re going to take the AP Spanish test before they even finish middle school. Norris Marquez said, “It’s not your typical language class, ’cause these kids already know Spanish by the time they get to us, they’re already bilingual. So it’s all about taking them to the next level.”
It’s really unclear why this even matters, but it turns out Texas has way more bilingual programs than California. So like, why should we care? Multiple factors could be affecting test scores, but research suggests bilingual ed helps students do better over time. So, maybe it’s a good thing?
