Arizona: Experts: Students must have an international focus

Tue Dec 25 17:48:56 UTC 2007

Experts: Students must have an international focus

Ray Parker
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 24, 2007 12:00 AM

In Mesa's Westwood High School, an International Baccalaureate class
tests in the Theory of Knowledge. Students greet each other in
Mandarin Chinese at Desert Ridge High, part of Gilbert Public Schools.
In Scottsdale, students soon could team with international businesses
to get more of a global perspective. advertisement  Across Arizona,
experts are pushing for education with an international focus as the
Internet breaks down physical barriers and a world economy requires
more cross-border trade and knowledge. As Tom Horne, state
superintendent of public instruction, puts it: "The economic future is
in international trade."

Statewide initiatives on international education have faltered so far.
But many schools across the state are creating programs of their own
or building on existing ones. Hoping to broaden students'
international knowledge, Mesa Public Schools will expand the demanding
International Baccalaureate program from kindergarten through 12th
grade.

IB programs

The IB program launching next year into Frost Elementary and Hendrix
Junior High schools will link the primary- and middle-school years
into the established high-school program at Westwood High.

The Geneva, Switzerland-based IB organization reviews schools as they
start the programs, monitoring the process that leads to becoming
IB-authorized. It takes time, and it takes money.

Mesa will spend more than $60,000 in start-up costs. That's in
addition to annual costs, which are highest at the high-school level,
where registration and student testing costs about $35,000 and require
a part-time program administrator.

In elementary and middle school, IB programs focus on a common theme
that includes an international context, such as how countries share
the planet's resources. "It's the best thing I've seen for students
and staff," Frost Elementary Principal Tim Moe said.

The approach means moving away from textbooks. Students direct their
own learning using critical-thinking skills, while teachers lecture
less and ask more questions.

The most popular IB program in the United States involves the
high-school Diploma Program, where students must test at the end of
their senior year in each of six subject areas, including a foreign
language. There's one big advantage to having an IB diploma: Many
universities accept students as college sophomores because an IB
diploma earns them college credit.

Once found in a handful of Arizona schools, IB has been growing the
past few years as more districts, such as Mesa and Paradise Valley
Unified districts, offer the program throughout the K-12 grades.

Chinese more popular

In the past couple of years, more Valley students have enrolled in
Chinese-language courses, following a national trend.

These students could one day be counted among the 1 billion speakers
of Mandarin Chinese, the most common language in the world. Mandarin
is the main language of government, education and the media in China
and Taiwan.

The number of students studying Chinese in the United States has risen
from 5,000 in 2000 to about 40,000 today, according to the American
Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

At Desert Ridge, educators added Mandarin this year to the school's
language courses.

After a trip to Leshan, China, as part of the Gilbert Sister Cities
Exchange Program, Gilbert Superintendent Brad Barrett said he decided
to seek board approval to add the language. Barrett and other
educators were motivated to take the trip after reading Thomas
Friedman's 2005 best-seller The World Is Flat, which shows how the
United States already is competing with the Chinese in the same
marketplace.

"What we learned in that book is that we neglect ... China and India
at our own peril," Barrett told the Gilbert Town Council last year in
his presentation on the trip.

Students not ready

Many schools fail to prepare students for the globally competitive
workforce, according to a national poll from the Partnership for 21st
Century Skills, a Tucson-based organization of businesses, education
leaders and policy makers advocating new skills for students.

Of those surveyed, 80 percent agreed that the skills students need to
learn today are different than those of 20 years ago.

Mesa parent Maria Flores-Beck agreed. She hired a private Chinese
tutor for her daughter to help her get a competitive edge.

"I keep reading about the global economy ... and I was so happy when I
discovered it would be available here," said Flores-Beck, whose
sixth-grader, Elizabeth, now learns Chinese at the Mesa Academy for
Advanced Studies.

In the Valley, several public schools have responded to the new
Chinese language demand:

• Mesa Public Schools offers it at Dobson High.

• Scottsdale Basis, a public charter school, offers it to its
middle-school students.

• Phoenix Union offers it at Central High and Bioscience High.

• The Chandler Unified School District will offer courses at its four
high schools next year.

Striking a nerve

During the last legislative session, Arizona Superintendent Horne and
other supporters, which included university leaders and business
executives, asked lawmakers for $2.3 million to pilot international
school programs across the state.

The right dash of international flavoring, they reasoned, would help
Arizona students compete successfully in the 21st century. The
proposal was rejected.

To its more extreme detractors, the international proposal was a
fuzzy, anti-American approach to education that could be the first
domino to dominance by the United Nations. That was the opinion of
Rep. Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican.

"We ought to concentrate on United States history and United States
heroes," Pearce said in June.

Meanwhile, international-education supporters look for private and
federal grants to help move the concept forward.

Horne said several schools have started or will begin international
programs: Rhodes Junior High in Mesa; Desert Willow Elementary in Cave
Creek; and Pueblo Elementary in Scottsdale, and the Whiteriver Unified
high school on the Apache reservation.

"There's a push to have all students learn more science, math, world
languages and information literacy so they can discriminate what's
valid" on the Internet, said Katy Cavanagh, Scottsdale's assistant
superintendent for teaching and learning. "It's a whole new world."

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1224globaled.html
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