Districts Adopt Mexican Curriculum to Help Hispanic Students: Several school districts in the South and West that serve large populations of Spanish-speaking immigrant students are moving to align their middle- and high-school curriculae with what is being taught in Mexico.
Public school districts in California, Texas, Washington state, Florida, Oregon, among others, are desperately looking for ways to prevent large numbers of immigrant students from falling behind in their classes while they struggle to learn English. Providing bilingual education can be a daunting task where there is a dearth of Spanish-speaking teachers. In Oregon, while just 2 percent of teachers are Hispanic, 15 percent of students are of that background.
One of the most creative solutions to this problem is to use supplemental and Web-based Spanish language curriculum that is being provided in cooperation with the Mexican Ministry of Education. Mexico has a single national curriculum, and the central government has developed high-quality materials, including many more distance-learning classes designed for self-study, than are being used in American schools.
