Parent: Cambridge kids need world language skills now – and always
K-5 world language instruction could help raise English-language literacy achievement in Cambridge and close achievement gaps seen as early as third grade. (Photo: sarspri)
One of the new mottos of the Cambridge Public Schools is “Educating students for their future, not our past.” That is, we need to realize that we’re in the 21st century now, and already many years into it.
When I went to school in the 20th century, my school system didn’t start world language instruction until the sixth grade. (Though we called it “foreign” language instruction.) That was decades ago, but is still the case for most of the Cambridge schools now. Fortunately, the superintendent and School Committee have made a commitment to developing a K-5 world language program. Let’s hope that their commitment is robust, and CPS will offer world language instruction in all the K-5 grades beginning next year. Most importantly, let’s hope they can explain to the city manager and City Council how important world language skills and early world language instruction are as they negotiate for the School Department’s budget allotment for the 2014 fiscal year. The K-5 program doesn’t have to be perfect next fall – we can “build the plane while we’re flying it” – but let’s get it started next September in all grades and all schools.
Cambridge students who don’t start learning an additional language when they are young are disadvantaged in two ways. First, the later they start, the fewer years they have to gain proficiency before they graduate from high school. Second, they miss the chance to learn an additional language when they are young and forming their early understanding of language, culture and other people. This is particularly true for monolingual English-speaking students.
When children study another language, they learn that different groups of people have developed different words and grammars to describe the same world. That is the deepest lesson in perspective-taking, empathy and multiculturalism that can be taught: to learn to speak a language other than one’s own, regardless of whether you learn to speak it badly or well. It is also one of the best ways to develop “metalinguistic” skills – the ability to reflect on and talk about language – that are so important when learning to read and write in one’s first language. In fact, K-5 world language instruction could help raise English-language literacy achievement in Cambridge and help close the pernicious achievement gaps we see as early as third grade. (And there are many research studies showing that early second-language instruction has positive effects on academic, cognitive and creative skills.)
“Phasing in” language lessons
The school administration has advised “phasing in” a K-5 world language program a couple of grades every year, which means it could be three years or more before we have a complete K-5 program. The reasoning behind this recommendation is that some school systems put a complete K-5 program in place in one year, only to have it fall apart a few years later when the funding gets tight. That could happen in Cambridge, but only if the city’s commitment to world language instruction is tepid and tentative. If the School Committee, CPS administration and City Council have a strong and unwavering commitment to providing all Cambridge students with 21st century multilingual skills, they will put a K-5 program in place next year with a clear statement that this is a necessary part of our elementary program, as permanent and necessary as the math curriculum, and not a luxury or frill – and that it will continue to be funded, no matter what.
Over the river in Brookline, part of the school department’s mission statement is that students “will succeed in a diverse and evolving global society.” To that end, the city raised property taxes above the Prop 2½ limit and pared down central office costs to be able to offer world language instruction in every elementary grade, including kindergarten. In January 2009, they started a K-6 world language program, which has developed and improved since then, despite budget challenges faced by the whole system. They were committed to it, and they figure out how to pay for it. With roughly the same number of students as we have in Cambridge and a smaller school department budget, their school budget for the 2013 fiscal year includes salaries and benefits for 23 world language teachers at the K-8 level.
Let’s hope that, beginning next year, Cambridge will provide world language instruction from the first day of kindergarten to the last day of high school. That would be a 21st century innovation Cambridge could be proud of, and would make our city truly one of the best places to raise 21st century children for their future, and not our past.
Emily Dexter is a Cambridge resident who has sent two daughters to the Cambridge Public Schools, kindergarten through high school. Her oldest daughter graduated from CRLS two years ago and her younger daughter is a CRLS junior.
Ms. Dexter,
Thank you for your letters in this publication and the other local paper over the last couple of weeks. It is eye opening to see how you wish to increase the expenditures of the Cambridge Public Schools above the already significant level at which they sit.
You ask the Schools, City Council and City Administration to commit to funding world language instruction at all levels “no matter what”. That’s a pretty big statement and grand gesture but you have indicated ways in which the City can accomplish this increased commitment to education.
You point to Brookline as an example where the residents voted to increase their taxes above the Prop 2 1/2 limit to fund more school expenditures. Luckily, Cambridge is not at its Prop 2 1/2 limit so the Council can approve a tax increase of 40% or so without the residents of Cambridge having to vote to do so. So much more are you asking the taxpayers of Cambridge to reach into their pockets to fund the CPS, one of the best funded school systems in the state?
There are thousands of seniors living in the City on fixed incomes, incomes that are being squeezed every day by higher energy prices, higher food bills, higher medical costs and the never ending march upward of prescription drug costs. How much more do you want them to pay?
There is still more people struggling to get enough work to meet their mortgage payments, put food on the table and cover their daily living expenses. How much more do you want them to pay?
We already have two new schools on the way that will be built without a dime of state aid or reimbursement. Is that not a sign of the commitment that the City and its residents place on the schools? $170 million in two new schools that will be paid out of City tax dollars.
So I am left with two questions:
1). How much is enough, in your opinion, for Cambridge to be spending per pupil on the Cambridge Public Schools?
2). When will you be announcing your candidacy for the School Committee?
As you can tell, I do not agree with your desire to spend more money on an already well funded school system, but I do appreciate your commitment to working to make the Cambridge Pubic Schools even better. We agree on the goal just not the path to get their.
Happy New Year and best wishes.
Dear JohnM,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response to my essay above, and to my Guest Column in last week’s Chronicle (“Cambridge Schools Deserve a Raise”). Let me try to respond, not to argue with you, but to further the conversation, with the hope that other Cambridge Day readers will join this thread.
1. I think that asking how much we SHOULD spend on our public schools is the wrong place to start, because the answer depends on what we want the schools to accomplish for our young people and our city as a whole. What are our goals, and what is the mission of our public school system? I don’t think city residents, the City Council (CC), the School Committee (SC), or the CPS administration has even begun to articulate that. Our official Mission Statement says very little about that vision, and has too little specificity to be meaningful: “CPS will be a diverse urban school system that educates ALL students at high levels.” That articulates pretty much the lowest common denominator. After all, what city wants to educate only SOME of its students to high levels; or what city wants to educate its students to LOW levels? So I would say that Cambridge has not really articulated what the mission of its schools is, what kids of citizens we want to shape, and what our vision is for our school system. Therefore we’re not at the point of discussing how much that would cost.
2. Is CPS “one of the best funded systems in the state?” That depends on your metric. Measured as the total School Department budget, we’re only 10th in the state, even though we are one of the richest cities in the state. Measured as per pupil spending, little tiny Provincetown spends about 20% more per pupil than us. Can’t we afford to spend at least as much per pupil as Provincetown? Let’s try another metric: total school spending measured as a percentage of total city spending. In 2004, the school budget was ~34% of the total city budget, now it’s down to ~30%. By that measure, school spending has DECREASED. Is 30% too much? Last year Brookline spent ~31%, Newton more than 40%. If CPS, last year been alotted 31% of the City budget rather than 30%, it would have given the School Department more than $4 million additional dollars–enough to add K-5 World Language, extend the school day, and do many other things our elected School Committee, in their wisdom, says we need.
3. Buildings. Cambridge will spend $170 million on two buildings. But we have no choice but to provide adequate school buildings, so that’s non-negotiable; just like we need libraries and police stations. One reason we have to spend a lot now is that we haven’t renovated or rebuilt any K-8 buildings for 10 years. The City SAVED money during those 10 years. (At the expense of the kids’s well-being. According to the City, the ML King School gym wasn’t even safe when we were sending kids there!) Some think that $170 million is too lavish and we could have good-enough buildings for less, but according to the City Manager, that’s what we have to spend. Maybe we should get a second set of quotes if we’re not confident we need to spend so much. (Did we spend too much on the library? Did we need one so nice?)
4. Taxes. Of course we’re not going to get State aid for our school buildings when we aren’t even willing to tax ourselves to the level that other municipalities tax theirs; and when we are the richest city per capita in the state. All municipalities have seniors living on fixed incomes, but many tax at 2.5% and some pass overrides to tax above that; we tax at a rate far lower than that.
According to the 2010 census, only 14% of all Cambridge residents are 60 years old or older, but 54% are between 25 and 60–prime earning years. Only 10% of all Cambridge households include someone who is 65 or older, 90% do not. And not all of those senior are poor. That means there are many households in Cambridge that could pay higher taxes, including many very wealthy people. The Brookline average property values are just as high as in Cambridge, they have seniors too, and they are taxing above 2.5%. If there are seniors struggling in our city, THEY would be much better off if we raised property taxes and then used the additional tax revenue to help them out. (What Obama would call “redistribution” and what others would call “progressive taxation.”)
5. I think what many people are really worried about is not that the city spends too much money on the schools, but that it spends it inefficiently. I won’t weigh in on that, but IF that’s true, it should be corrected. But we shouldn’t handicap the students just because the adults can’t budget efficiently. Our elected officials–the SC and the CC–sign off on that budget every year, and the City Manager has the budget “audited” every year. If they think the School Department is wasting money, they shouldn’t be approving those budgets.
But it is logically possible that we are wasting too much money AND we need to increase the School Department budget if we want an exemplary school system. I’d love it if we could get better schools for LESS money, or better schools for the SAME money; but with our current spending, our schools are not good enough and we shouldn’t be satisfied with them.
So again, with all due respect for your very valid concerns, I want us all to get beyond what I consider to be a reflexive and unexamined “we spend too much money on schools” and “we can’t raise taxes because of the seniors” response, and really ask ourselves what we want our schools to accomplish, how much that will cost if money was spent efficiently, and how we are going to best fund that mission. Maybe we can spend less, maybe we need to spend more, but we aren’t ready to answer that yet. I welcome your further thoughts and those of anyone else reading these posts.
Respectfully and with gratitude for your engagement,
Emily Dexter