Administration Recommends No Changes to World Language Offerings

Lynne Shain, Scarsdale's Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, presented the results of the world language review community surveys at a BOE study session on November 15. She announced that based on survey results, "the administration recommends continuing the current world language offerings at the middle school and high school for the 2016-17 school year."

As background, during the 2015-16 budgeting process a group of parents presented a petition to the Board requesting Mandarin language instruction in the middle school. In March, the Board responded that it would study the issue for possible addition to the 2016-17 curriculum. This undertaking was further formalized by the inclusion of a world language review as part of the 2015-18 Transition Plan document that is serving as the guidepost for Board of Education endeavors. A committee, comprised of teachers and administrators from the elementary, middle and high school was formed in May to conduct the review and make a recommendation for future changes to the world language program.

The committee sent out four surveys to parents and students over the month of October. Each was designed to gather certain information about interest in world language offerings and potential enrollment in middle school Mandarin.

Survey 1 was sent to parents of students in K-5th grades to determine if adding additional languages to the middle school was important to parents, which languages parents would like to see added and to specifically ask for the language choices by year, if Mandarin was offered. The response rate for this survey was 39%.

Survey 2 was sent to parents of K-11th grade students to determine whether parents would like additional world languages added to the high school program (Mandarin has been offered at the high school since 2011-12) and to determine if parents were interested in their children enrolling in more than one language at a time in their high school program. The response rate for this survey was 17%.

Survey 3 was sent to students in 6th-11th grade to determine their interest in adding an additional language. The response rate for this survey was 9%.

Survey 4 was sent to parents of current 5th graders to get a more accurate count of probable 6th grade student world language choices in the 2016-17 school year if Mandarin was available in the middle school. The response rate for this survey was 54%.

Surveys 1 and 4 had the highest response rate most likely because this group has the most interest in the middle school language offerings in the near term.

Some of the key findings of Survey 1 are that 47% of respondents thought that adding a language at the middle school was very important and an additional 22% ranked it as important. 56% of respondents thought that the additional language should be Mandarin. This survey also determined that a number of the parents who indicated Mandarin as first choice for an additional language at the middle school already have their children enrolled in Mandarin outside of school. This information is considered significant because there would be no leveling of language classes in the middle school. Consequently, there is concern that students who take Mandarin outside of school would already be beyond a 6th grade introductory course.

Survey 4, which attempted to get at the actual middle school language enrollment numbers for next year if Mandarin was offered, indicated that respondents' student enrollment by language would be as shown below.

While the interest in Mandarin is slightly higher than the interest in French, in the administration's view, it is not a strong enough number to justify the programmatic, logistical and financial implications of adding the program at this time. There were some questions raised about the possibility of replacing French with Mandarin. Board member William Natbony noted although the numbers for Mandarin interest were higher than French, surveys did not ask parents if they would like to see French replaced by Mandarin. During discussion Board member Chris Morin supposed, "if we were starting from scratch I think maybe the votes would have been for Spanish and Mandarin rather than Spanish and French, but we are not starting from scratch and we have a very practical set of issues to confront". Some of the issues include the cost of recruiting and hiring a full-time Mandarin teacher and the cost associated with the required corresponding staff reduction in the world language department. Other considerations have to do with the complexities of the middle school schedule driven by the house system (requiring offering the language by grade in all 4 houses), leveling with consideration for the number of students who take Mandarin outside of school, and concern about a drop out rate as has been seen in significant numbers in Mandarin classes in the high school.

The public comment period of the 8:00pm business meeting occurred shortly after the conclusion of Shain's report and recommendation. Mandarin supporters in the community were undeterred and many approached the mic to reiterate their views on the importance of adding Mandarin to the middle school. A few speakers attempted to address some of the concerns raised by Shain such as the drop out rate in the high school may be improved if students began to learn the language earlier and the response rates for surveys 1 and 4 were not "low" even though a low response rate was cited as a factor in driving the Administration's recommendation. Following the meeting, supporters of Mandarin sent a letter to Scarsdale10583 for publication. Read it here.

The detailed survey results as well as further explanations on the issues under consideration can be found in the appendix to the meeting agenda (pages 4-45). The entire study session can be viewed on the Video on Demand site.