Minnesota
Minnesota Department of Education
1500 Highway 36 West
Roseville, MN 55113-4266
Minnesota Model K-12 Immersion Program and Professional Development

Spanish

The goals of this project are to develop an exemplary model of K-12 immersion education and to develop foreign language immersion teachers' capacity to meet Minnesota's growing need for immersion instructors. The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), the St. Louis Park Public School District, the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), and the Minnesota Advocates for Immersion Network (MAIN), with support from the University of Minnesota will form a consortium that has the expertise necessary to realize both goals.

Mississippi
Mississippi Department of Education
359 North West Street
Jackson, MS
Mississippi Department of Education's Early Elementary Spanish Language Instruction Program

Spanish

The Mississippi Department of Education in Jackson, Mississippi proposes a three year project that will: 1) benefit a large number of Mississippi children by replicating a successful K-2 Spanish language instructional program, currently in operation in the Gulfport School District, in four other Mississippi school districts; 2) demonstrate how districts in high poverty areas can introduce program enhancements such as early foreign language instruction despite limited funds; and 3) demonstrate how local school and community human resources can be maximized by districts to address a critical shortage of qualified foreign language teachers.


Mississippi SEA in collaboration with Hattiesburg School District

The Mississippi Department of Education is proposing a project that will benefit Mississippi children by expanding an existing K-6 FLES program into the middle school years in the Hattiesburg School District. The model will provide a K-12 foreign language program for dissemination to other districts.

Montana
Montana Office of Public Instruction
PO Box 202501-2501
Helena, MT 59620-2501
Early Language Learning: An Innovative Model Program Providing Foreign Language Study for K-8 Students

Russian and Hmong

This is a proposal to provide for the development and implementation of a model world language program through the collaboration of the Montana Office of Public Instruction, the SEA, and a consortium of schools in western Montana that serve Hmong and Russian students. Through this proposal, the SEA in consortium with MCPS #1, Frenchtown SD#40, Hellgate SD#4, Lolo SD #7, and Target Range SD #23 shall:
1. Increase Missoula County K-8 students' foreign language proficiency by providing Russian and Hmong foreign language classes in an extended-day and year format.
2. Develop a program of intensive professional in-service training for K-8 educators who teach foreign language classes to broaden their knowledge of language acquisition and instruction and improve the quality of teaching foreign languages, which in turn will help students achieve the Montana Standards for World Languages.
3. Develop an educational partnership with the language minority communities in which we teach to link nonnative English speakers in the community with the schools in order to promote two way learning and the sequential study of a foreign language for students, beginning in elementary schools.
The goals of this proposal are to ensure that the students who participate in the study of a foreign language achieve to high academic standards and improve their foreign language proficiency, that the educators who teach foreign language classes acquire research-based, cutting edge teaching methodologies, and that the students themselves value learning languages as an indispensable part of their lives and a necessary skill to communicate successfully in a pluralistic American society and abroad.

Nebraska
Nebraska Department of Education
301 Centennial Mall South
Lincoln, NE 68509
Improving Nebraska Language Literacy (I-NELL)

The Improving Nebraska Language Literacy (I-NELL) Project will allow the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) and its partners to increase foreign language achievement by improving foreign language teaching and learning in K-12 Nebraska classrooms. The quality of foreign language learning in Nebraska will be enhanced by a) increasing elementary foreign language programs as recommended by the NDE Essential Education Policy document, b) providing intensive professional development, and c) implementing a K-12 LinguaFolio Nebraska that will facilitate a sequential, articulated foreign language curriculum.
The I-NELL Project proposal promotes systemic approaches to improving foreign language learning in the state of Nebraska by meeting the following goals:
1. Improving language proficiency of foreign language educators in Nebraska.
2. Increasing the number of elementary language programs in Nebraska.
3. Establishing a PreK-16 foreign language articulated program for the state.
4. Documenting student language progress via LinguaFolio Nebraska.

New Jersey
New Jersey Department of Education
100 River View Plaza
Trenton, NJ 08625
Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment in World Languages

The New Jersey State Board of Education has mandated that districts provide students with world language instruction at the K-8 Level since 1996. However, the implementation of this ambitious policy is threatened by the lack of a reliable and valid system of accountability that measures student achievement and the development of quality programs. This proposal seeks to utilize assessment as a tool to:
1. Measure increasing student proficiency in a world language;
2. Drive program improvement by assisting districts in determining if their current curricular design will enable Grade 8 students to demonstrate proficiency at the Novice-High level;
3. Form the basis for professional development that focuses on the connection between assessing and teaching for language proficiency; and
Provide baseline data for the development of a revised statewide assessment policy in fall 2008.
The project will provide proficiency testing in French, Spanish, German and Japanese for 70,000 Grade 8 students (70 percent of the Grade 8 Student population) along with detailed data on student performance over the three years of the grant using STAMP, the Standards-based Measurement of Proficiency.

North Carolina
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
6353 Mail Service Center.
Raleigh, NC 27699
Building the K-5 Infrastructure for Immersion/Dual Language Programs

The purpose of this project is the creation of an infrastructure in North Carolina to support K-5 immersion/dual language programs. The project has the following objectives:

1. Development of an immersion component at K-5 for the North Carolina Standard Course of Study for Second Languages and a supporting implementation guide.
2. Development of a model for ongoing training of immersion/dual language teachers with emphasis on language production in the languages other than English, literacy instruction through a second language, grade level content instruction through a second language, and proficiency assessment for languages other than English.
3. Establishment of a K-5 teaching license for immersion/dual language instruction.

As a result of the proposed project, we expect to see an increase in the numbers of immersion/dual language programs, an increase in the numbers of well-trained immersion/dual language teachers, and improved achievement of students in the programs, especially in relation to their proficiency in speaking and writing in the languages other than English. The establishment of the teaching license and the creation of college/university teacher training programs will provide a mechanism for ensuring ongoing professional development for immersion/dual language teachers after the grant period ends.

Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Department of Education
333 Market Street.
Harrisburg City, PA 17126

The PA Department of Education, led by the advisor of Foreign/World Languages, in collaboration and consortium with Erie City School District, Harrisburg City School District, the City of Philadelphia School District and York City School District will pilot various unique FLES (Foreign Language in the Elementary School) and Elementary Immersion programs. These four programs in high poverty urban districts will creatively model and "showcase" the types of FLES and Immersion programs that can be duplicated all across the state and in other urban, rural and suburban public and charter schools. This work will initiate a paradigm shift in "English only" philosophy of some members of the PA State Board of Education, many school educators, administrators, students and parents in the communities. A paradigm shift in foreign language philosophy will promote, rather than cause resistance to systemic approaches to improving, enhancing and expanding foreign language learning in the state of Pennsylvania. If these four districts can have highly creative successful programs, then any other district is capable of doing the same, regardless of financial status or demographics.

Washington, DC
District of Columbia Public Schools
825 North Capitol Street, NE
305 Washington St.
Washington, DC 20002
Foreign Languages in Elementary Schools (FLIES)

The DC FLIES (Foreign Language in Elementary Schools) Project represents a collaboration between the State Education Agency and the Local Education Agency of DC Public Schools. The project proposes to build technical expertise and capacity within DCPS, through the hiring of an experienced Project Coordinator, to help principals, especially at the elementary level, introduce new, research-based foreign language programs at their schools. The immediate impact of this three-year project will be to dramatically increase access of elementary students to quality foreign language programs, especially in sections of the city where no such instructional programs currently exist.
This project will strengthen elementary language education in DCPS through: 1)extensive professional development for principals, administrators, and teachers, 2) targeted technical assistance to 15 selected schools over the grant period, 3) establishment of a Resource Center, 4) purchase of instructional materials for targeted schools, and 5) identification of external resources that can support these new programs. Among these new programs will be a Chinese immersion or partial immersion program, a Spanish dual language immersion program, and one additional immersion program (Spanish, French, or Japanese).

West Virginia
West Virginia Department of Education
1900 Kanawha Blvd., E.
Charleston, WV 25305
West Virginia Foreign Language Expansion

WV Foreign Language Expansion will build upon current initiatives to increase foreign language programs in West Virginia by providing the curriculum and delivery for a 6th grade foreign language exploratory course that will be available to all schools and school systems in the state. These initiatives are (1) a requirement that foreign languages be offered to students in the seventh and eighth grades as of the fall 2002, (2) the creation and delivery of a technologically hybrid web-based course, West Virginia Virtual School Spanish 1A and 1B, that meets the needs of schools and counties that cannot provide the 7th and 8th grade in a traditional manner, (3) a recent requirement in West Virginia Department of Education Policy 2510 that will require foreign language level 1A/1B to be the state model for 7th and 8th grades by the fall of 2008, and (4) compliance with the Agreed Court Order of the Tomblin v. Gainer court case. Additionally, a professional development component for school administrators and site-based teacher-facilitators is an integral part of the program proposal.

Wyoming
Wyoming Department of Education
2300 Capitol Avenue.
Cheyenne, WY 82002
The National Online Early Language Learning Assessment (NOELLA)

French, Japanese, and Spanish

The Wyoming Department of Education-in collaboration with twenty-six (26) elementary schools in the state's K-6 language pilot program, five cooperating state departments of education, the University of Oregon, the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center at Iowa State University-proposes to develop, pilot, verify, and disseminate nationally a standards-based online assessment of proficiency for upper elementary foreign language learners (grades 3-6). The assessment will be developed in French, Japanese, and Spanish with potential for additional languages as funding becomes available.
The goal of the project: Beginning in the elementary grades, all children in Wyoming and the collaborating states will demonstrate proficiency in at least one language other than English.