Board to Vote on Mandarin at December 14 Meeting

At the December 2, 2015 Board of Education meeting, President Lee Maude instructed Board members that at the next Board meeting scheduled on December 14 they would vote on the issue of including Mandarin in the middle school for 2016-2017. She added that each Board member should be prepared to make an individual statement as to why he or she has voted "yes" or "no" on the subject. She asked that Board members quickly issue a request for any further information needed in order to make a thoughtful decision on that date.

Board members will also be asked to vote on the issue of revising the busing policy. Some Board members expressed concern about having to make a decision in isolation of other budget considerations. Other Board members thought it was valuable to separate the decisions from the crunch of the budget. In any event, it was deemed important to respond to the community now on these two issues that have generated a lot of discussion. Click on these links to read our coverage of busing and Mandarin instruction in the schools.  

Also, Board President Maude announced that on December 1 the Board received a detailed report from the community Mandarin Team providing further advocacy for Mandarin in the middle school as well as recommendations for addressing issues with scheduling and leveling within the confines of the house system. The Executive Summary of the report appears below. If any community member is interested in reviewing the entire report, please send an email request to Mayra Kirkendall-Rodriguez ([email protected]).

Be sure to attend the December 14, 2015 business meeting that begins at 8:00pm to see the how the Board votes.

Executive Summary of Report from The Mandarin Team

Recently, Mandarin in the Middle School Initiative Team (MMSIT), compromised of a group of Scarsdale parents, submitted a memorandum to the Scarsdale school administration and the School Board with detailed analysis of the benefits of extending Mandarin into the Middle School. MMSIT will be commenting on this report at the December 14th school board meeting and welcomes you to join them. This is the Executive Summary of the 100-page memorandum prepared by Claire He, Brice Kirkendall-Rodríguez, Mayra Kirkendall-Rodríguez, Joanne Teoh, and Julie Zhu.

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik on October 1957, the United States Congress signed the National Defense Education Act , establishing the legitimacy of federal funding for higher education, including for foreign language education. Almost six decades later, the US is in a second language illiteracy crisis . Less than 20% of Americans report speaking a language other than English, while 53% of Europeans and increasing numbers in other parts of the world can converse in a second language .

Numerous studies demonstrate that studying and speaking a foreign language aid with cognitive development . Even without ever leaving the US, the private and public sectors have significant demand for foreign languages speakers , especially those who speak non-Romance languages. Additionally, foreign language speakers in the US command a salary premium .

In a World Language Committee assembled by the Scarsdale Union Free School District , the committee stated in April 2008 that 'Mandarin remains the Committee's language choice for its strategic importance in the world economic scene, its connection to 21st century skills, and its interest to Scarsdale students and the community.' The World Language Committee recommended that Mandarin be added starting in the sixth grade. At that time, due to budget constraints and a desire to further analyze how Mandarin would be implemented in the middle school, the decision was made to add Mandarin only to the high school curriculum.

Over seven years later, Mandarin has not been introduced in the Scarsdale Middle School. Foreign language instruction does not begin until the second grade and is limited to Spanish, which is taught only twice every six days without differentiating ability; courses are often taught by non-native instructors. In the Middle School, foreign language choice consists of two Romance languages, Spanish and French, where students also are not differentiated by ability and classes are often taught by non-native speakers.

The Mandarin in the Middle School Initiative Team , advocates Mandarin inclusion. China is of paramount importance to the United States, since it is the second largest economy globally. China is now the US's second largest trading partner after Canada .

Mandarin is spoken by over a billion people globally, while in the US, Mandarin is the third most spoken language after English and Spanish. The Chinese population is the fastest growing group in the US .

President Obama launched 'The 1 Million Initiative' to increase the number of Mandarin speakers in the US; moreover, Mandarin is one of the languages considered to be critical to the U.S. national security by the U.S. Department of Education . Across the United States and in nearby tri-state public and private schools, Mandarin is already being taught in middle schools and sometimes even in pre-school and elementary schools. Middle schools in nearby Brewster, Croton Harmon, Mamaroneck, New Rochelle, Pelham, Rye, and White Plains offer Mandarin, as do middle schools in Westport, Connecticut, Linden and Princeton, New Jersey, and Great Neck, Syosset, and New York, New York.

On October 2015, the Scarsdale School Administration sent out four surveys to determine language demand both in the Middle and High Schools. The response to all surveys was significantly higher than typical email surveys and far higher than voter turnout for the Scarsdale school budget . Over 80% of Scarsdale parents who responded to the K-5th grade survey want the current Romance language program expanded. Of those parents, over 50% want Mandarin included. Despite the survey results, the Scarsdale administration determined that the survey response rate was 'too low' without providing a comparison benchmark.

The Mandarin in the Middle School Initiative Team proposes that the administration improve the current course scheduling. We recommend that an entire house takes languages in the same period. Periods 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8 do not conflict with lunch for any grade. Four of these could be used to teach world languages. Students within each house should be enrolled in classes on the basis of their language ability and not grade. Placement tests (oral and verbal) would determine student distribution among levels at the start of each school year .

Our recommendation would allow not only including Mandarin in the Middle School, but also would provide the ability to improve greatly how Spanish and French are currently taught by teaching those languages at different levels to accommodate students' different language backgrounds.