Dual Language Proposal

Portland, Oregon is currently the fastest gentrifying city in the U.S., and the rapid increases in housing and other living costs have pushed many low-income families to the east side of they city, where David Douglas School District is located. In this school district, more than 80 percent of students come from economically-disadvantaged families and more than 70 different languages are spoken across students’ households.

The city of Portland’s largest school district, Portland Public Schools, runs some of the country’s oldest and best-established dual language programs in Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, and Vietnamese. However, David Douglas School District generally has too many languages to support ELs’ home languages through dual language programs. As a result, it has pursued a different approach to addressing the needs of its ELs overall and its pre-K ELs.

Demographics
Total state pre-K enrollment: 7,209
Total state pre-K EL student enrollment: 2,296

The top languages spoken by ELs in Oregon are Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Somali.

Policies
In 2013, the …show more content…
David Douglas School District provided initial training to support implementation of the new ELD model and also offered ongoing coaching and support from the language coaches. Teachers new to the district get three days of training on the ELD model before they arrive in their classrooms. The district also provides ongoing professional development for their current teachers. In the 2014-2015 school year, David Douglas partnered with Stanford University, Oregon State University, the Oregon Department of Education, and the Oregon Leadership Network at Education Northwest to offer educators a free massive open online course (MOOC) on language development research and best practices for acting on it in the classroom: “Supporting English Language Learners under New