Elementary Pupils Immersed in Foreign Language

While speaking only in Mandarin, teacher Li Jing Jing shows her kindergartners at J. Ralph McIlvaine Early Childhood Center in Delaware how to fold a paper turkey. Half the day the children are taught in Chinese and half the day in English.

—Matt Roth for Education Week

States are teaching core content in other tongues

By Jamaal Abdul-alim

When it comes to lessons in other tongues, Kevin Fitzgerald, the superintendent of the Caesar Rodney school district in northeastern Delaware, is never at a loss for words.

He speaks with pride about the fact that his district’s high school, Caesar Rodney High School, offers six foreign languages: French, Spanish, German, Latin, and, more recently, Arabic and Mandarin.

This school year, the district introduced a more novel and potentially more effective foreign-language initiative to talk up: a new Chinese-immersion program for 101 kindergartners, which the district plans to offer those children and successive...