All Nestor Elementary students would learn in English, Spanish

Full dual-language school weighed
By Chris Moran
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
February 5, 2009

In the mid-1990s, Nestor Elementary was a neighborhood school that started a program for 120 students who wanted to learn in two languages.

Now it's on the brink of becoming a full dual-immersion magnet school that would attract students from across South County who want to learn in Spanish and English.

Dual-immersion language schools teach children almost exclusively in a foreign language in the early grades, gradually increasing the time spent with English-language instruction to 50 percent. There are only a handful of campuses in the county in which every student is taught in two languages.

...The 350 students there who now learn only in English – even if they live just across Hollister Street from the campus – would move to other local schools. Nestor has an enrollment of about 1,000 – 620 in the dual-immersion program. The language academy has a waiting list of about 150 students.

Two external pressures have contributed to what could be the new Nestor.

One is financial. The state funds public education on a per-student basis. So each student a school district can poach from another is worth more than $5,500 a year. Nestor has 186 students from outside South Bay Union, so they bring about $1 million in additional dollars a year with them...

Another force for change is the federal No Child Left Behind Act... Nestor has failed to reach federal benchmarks for five years...

Dual immersion is a growing trend at local elementary schools, but few offer it schoolwide as Nestor plans to...

It's a struggle in the early years for many of these students. Second-and third-graders in dual-immersion programs often score lower than students in English-only classes on standardized tests. But then in fourth grade, according to test score data compiled by Nestor, language academy students surpass the rest of the school and districtwide averages on the state's annual language arts test...