The Portland Public Schools may become one of the few in the nation to offer a Vietnamese dual language immersion program, reports the Oregonian.
The proposal has wide support from Portland’s Vietnamese community which sees this as a way to keep its language and culture alive.
“By sending kids to immersion program at an early age, we’re going to make them more successful at listening and reading proficiency for both languages,” Truong Doan testified to the board in support of such a program. “Two languages are always better than one.”
The District currently has 3,700 students in dual language programs in Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese and Russian.
There are currently more than 520 students in the Vietnamese speakers English Language Learners program.
You can read show the District believes the Vietnamese language immersion program would benefit those English language learners in the Oregonian.