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- © Copyright 1997 California Foreign Language Project. All rights reserved
Funding for the 14 projects involved in this evaluation study constituted the first time that these projects had received support from outside the local school district for their efforts to teach a less-commonly taught language (LCTL). Because of funding received through the FLAAP grant, the project coordinators were able to hire teachers and/or teaching aides, purchase learning materials such as books, software, and even computers, and take students on field trips. However, throughout the period of our interaction with teachers and program administrators, many of these individuals indicated that they were very appreciative of the FLAAP grant because without it, the school would not have been able to support instruction in a LCTL at their school.
One question that surfaced early on in our work with the program staff at the various sites was whether projects would survive after the FLAAP grant terminated. This question persisted in one form or another throughout the period of funding because of the tenuous nature of the project in many teachers' and administrators' view. These individuals expressed concern about their lack of support from administrators at the school site or in the central administration.
In order to be better informed about the projects and the challenges experienced by teachers and administrators, several efforts were made to obtain additional information from the individuals involved at each school site. One such effort involved a 13-item questionnaire for teachers and administrators (see Appendix 6) which asked a series of questions about their specific language program and the prospect of continuation of the program following termination of the grant. The questionnaire was completed by 16 teachers and 8 administrators during the final workshop held at Stanford University in Spring 1996. Representative of all 14 projects are included in the sample. In addition, discussions were also held with some principals and heads of foreign language departments in Spring 1996 to assess their impressions of the language program at their respective schools.
The findings gleaned from the questionnaires and the interviews will be summarized next. In order to maintain the confidentiality of our respondents, we will not mention specific schools or language programs. However, we will summarize general trends and provide some quotes from informants that reflect broadly on most of the programs studied.
On the questionnaire, the respondents indicated that they believed that the program was very successful. As support of their belief, 88% of the teachers and administrators felt that students were very interested in enrolling in the program and 96% believed that students in the program were enthusiastic about learning the language. These same respondents felt less support from the parent community, here only 63% maintained that there was good to very strong support for the program on the part of parents.
The major difficulty for most of the teachers and administrators had to do with their perception of lack of support for their program. The expression of lack of support was not fixed on any certain individual or school administrative unit. Only two respondents believed that they had the support of their local Board of Education and only one person felt that the local school site council was supportive of their efforts to introduce a LCTL into the high school foreign language curriculum. Somewhat troubling is the fact that only 39% of the respondents felt that their principal was highly supportive of their LCTL program. Another 30% reported an "average" level of support from the principal and 30% indicated low support from the principal. Among those teachers whose administrative structure included a departmental head, 53% reported that they received a "high" level of support and 33% reported "average" support from the chair of their school foreign language department.
Most of the respondents indicated optimism in one way or another that their program would continue after the grant terminated. However, some also expressed concerns that without outside funding their program would be adversely impacted. One respondent commented:
Another respondent expressed even more concern about the future of the program:
Finally, another respondent indicates how the LCTL will be offered once grant funds are no longer available. According to this respondent:
In the case of several schools, school administrators had already decided by Spring 1996 to discontinue the program once funding ended. One respondent described what action was being taken by parents to the decision to discontinue the program:
Finally, at one school the decision to terminate the project was followed-up immediately by an effort to redirect students to other classes. The respondent explains:
Thus, it is fair to conclude that teachers' and administrators' concern about the prospects of continuation of their programs were justified. Most programs have continued in some form after termination of the grant, but schools are no longer able to provide all the resources to teachers and students that were available while there were funds from the grant.
Most principals that were interviewed indicated interest in the programs, but also felt strapped for resources to provide for the classes. They indicated, for example, that without grant support the programs would get what the other foreign language programs get -- which is "damn little" as one principal summarized the discussion. Several high school administrators also worried that the LCTL programs would lose out to the other foreign language programs because the Japanese teachers were not as experienced and several were not even credentialed to teach in high school. In sum, from the perspective of some administrators the LCTL programs were "experimental" and they could avoid being overly concerned about language teachers who were not credentialed or who had little teaching experience since grant funds were offsetting teachers salaries. For instance, in some programs it was necessary to hire native language speakers with little teaching experience to teach the LCTL under the supervision of a master foreign language teacher. However, there was some indication that this procedure would not be followed once the grant terminated forcing school administrators to hire credentialed teachers or cancel the class.
Summary
There was considerable variation in how the FLAAP funded programs were managed at each site. However, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 students were did acquire the LCTLs regardless of school level (elementary vs. high school), limitations of curricular materials and related instructional supports (e.g., language laboratory) or whether the instructor was credentialed in California to teach. Considering the difficulty of learning a LCTL, students did present evidence of learning. It would be a shame if the momentum that most of the 14 projects achieved through FLAAP funding be would lost. Our parent questionnaire data indicates that parents are generally quite favorable toward the study of foreign languages and perceive themselves to be involved in their child's study of the selected language (see Chapter 5). Also the demographics of the State of California indicate that ethnic heritage parents and students might be especially motivated to learn a LCTL in a public school. Our data regarding ethnic heritage background reinforces the idea that Asian students are highly motivated to acquire an ancestral language. In some way these considerations must be entered into any equation directed at expanding kindergarten to twelfth grade education in the less commonly-taught languages.
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