Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Once again, a district sets out to harm a Mandarin immersion program (#2 in a series)

    I’ve decided I’m going to start pulling an Onion, and use the same headline every time a district sets out to mess with a thriving Mandarin immersion program. In this instance, we’re in North Carolina, where a survey found that 41% of families “said they were likely to leave the district if its dual language and world language tracks were split between different schools.”

    CHCCS Board of Education discuss what’s next for Glenwood Elementary’s students, acclaimed Mandarin program

    From: The Daily Tar Heel

    By Sarah Clements, July 21, 2026

    The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education met Thursday in the first regularly scheduled meeting since its vote to closeGlenwood Elementary School after the 2026-27 school year. 

    Last month, the board voted to close Glenwood to save money amid declining student enrollment. Researchers from N.C. State University’s Institute for Transportation Research and Education presented the board with possibilities of where to redistrict students based on the capacity of the district’s other elementary schools and how to best minimize any disruption to students and staff. 

    “We’re going to see a bunch of numbers that deal with enrollment capacity, transportation models — you name it, and all of that is important for making the decision, but much like we’ve heard tonight from parents and community members, and even prior to tonight, behind each of these data points is a student, is a family. Teachers also need to be a part of that,” Superintendent Rodney Trice said. 

    Please read more here.

    ===

    Glenwood Elementary Parents Urge School Board to Keep Programs Together as Relocation Conversations Begin

    From Chapelboro.com
    Aaron Keck | Jul 20, 2026

    On June 4, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education voted to close Glenwood Elementary School next year, due to an expected drop in state-level funding caused by declining enrollment across the district. Glenwood is currently a magnet school that houses the district’s highly acclaimed Mandarin program – meaning the school board now has to decide where those programs will end up next.

    That process began on Thursday, as the school board and district staff gathered to receive data points about Glenwood’s magnet program and the options for rehousing it. And while there were many to be shared and weighed, Superintendent Rodney Trice reminded the board members that “behind each of these data points is a student.”

    What is certain is that the program and focus on Mandarin will be preserved. Commonly referred to as “STEAM²” – or STEAMM, in other words, with the extra M for Mandarin – the dual-language program has earned Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools a reputation that extends literally around the world.

    Please read more here.

    Another story here.

  • Fewer than 2,000 Americans are studying in China today

    A fascinating article. Back in 2015, there were more than 20,000 Americans studying in China. Today it’s less than a tenth that. Whatever the future brings, the U.S. and China need to better understand each other, and you can’t get the level of understanding necessary by watching a few movies on Netflix. It takes making friends, which you need the language for. Kids in Mandarin immersion today are going to be important to decades to come.

    Fewer opportunities, less passion, no clue? How the US’ China expertise is fading

    Geopolitical friction and a lack of career paths are hollowing out the pipeline of US specialists who truly understand China.

    By Meredith Chen, South China Morning Post
    19 Jul 2026

    As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Meredith Chen looks at how tensions and shrinking academic exchange may be eroding America’s deep, experience-based understanding of China.

    Long before China could be studied through satellite images, social media, big data or computer modelling, American scholars learned about the country the slow way.
    Many travelled to the country. Some went far beyond its major cities, reaching remote county towns and villages by train, bus and boat to conduct fieldwork.

    They spent months, even years, knocking on doors, lingering over tea, combing through archives, and interviewing cadres and ordinary members of the public to build a deep understanding of a country undergoing extraordinary transformation.

    This was the reform era. As China reopened and the two countries’ relationship normalised after prolonged Cold War estrangement, American scholars gained access to a society that had been closed to them for decades.


    Many of those who entered China in those years would go on to become the backbone of American expertise on the country, shaping scholarship, training future generations and influencing how Washington dealt with Beijing.

    As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, however, that intellectual tradition is under strain.

    Please read more here.

  • Utah education board wins immunity in Mandarin immersion curriculum dispute

    This is pretty in the weeds, but of interest to a lot of teachers and administrators.

    Utah education board wins immunity in curriculum dispute

    By George Basharis, J.D.

    A curriculum vendor’s copyright and business interference claims failed after a federal court determined that Utah’s education board is entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity as an arm of the state.

    A longstanding curriculum provider for Utah’s Mandarin language immersion program cannot pursue copyright infringement and related business tort claims against the Utah State Board of Education because the board is shielded by Eleventh Amendment immunity, a federal court has concluded. The ruling stems from the board’s decision to stop purchasing the company’s online language-learning licenses and instead work with a competing vendor (Mandarin Matrix Ltd. v. Utah State Board Of Education, No. 2:25-cv-01067-DBB-CMR (D. Utah Jun. 18, 2026)).

    Background. The lawsuit was filed by Mandarin Matrix Limited, a Hong Kong company, and its U.S. affiliate, Mandarin Matrix Inc., which had supplied curriculum materials for Utah’s Chinese Dual Language Immersion program since 2014. According to the complaint, the companies provided printed educational materials and access to an online platform known as the Mandarin Matrix Online Classroom to schools participating in the statewide program.

    Please read more here.

  • Got kids in Mandarin immersion? These researchers would love to interview you

    Note that the referral for this research came through Dr. Shuhan Wang, who for many years ran the Mandarin immersion research group at the Asia Society. So they’re quite reputable.

    About the Research: We are a research team led by Professor Chun Chen-Cheng from the Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language at National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan.

    We are conducting a cross-national research project titled “Family Language Policy: Chinese Identity and Family Language Policies in Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States.”

    This study explores how families make decisions about language use, practices, and identity across different sociocultural contexts.

    Focus on USA

    The United States is an important context for Chinese immersion education. As Mandarin continues to develop in K–12 educational settings, Chinese immersion programs provide a valuable setting for exploring how families negotiate language use, identity, and educational choices.

    We invite U.S. families with children enrolled in Chinese immersion programs to participate in this study.

    How to Participate

    If you are interested, please complete the online questionnaire:

    https://forms.gle/5xWfsNs8pVLEc4MK9

    which takes about 1.5 ~3 minutes and includes a preview of the interview questions. After completion, we will send the interview questions and an informed consent form via email as well as arranging the formal interview.

    NKNU Research Assistants

    (Contact Person): Eunice / Ya-Ling, Chang / Yi-Ying Lai

    Email: eunice.cy@gmail.com / mostnknu@dhakka.nknu.edu.tw / tt-tkids@mail.nknu.edu.tw

    感謝您對本研究的支持與協助！

    THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND PARTICIPATION IN THIS STUDY.

  • A $52,000 private Mandarin immersion school opens as San Francisco Unified’s waitlists grow

    San Francisco Chronicle By Jill Tucker July 4, 2026

    In the race to attract more families to San Francisco’s public schools, district officials are in the process of opening a Mandarin immersion school next year, starting with just under 90 transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students.

    If the district manages to open just over a year from now, it will still have to play catch-up after a private school opens this fall, offering coveted seats for Mandarin bilingual instruction.

    The Hiba Academy, part of a global network of Chinese language international schools, will start with up to 35 students in preschool to first grade at its 68,000-square-foot home in the former Airbnb headquarters, with an expected 400 to 500 K-5 students and a separate school for middle and high school grades, officials said. 

    Please read more here.

  • Once again, a district sets out to destroy a Mandarin immersion program

    Chinese immersion program is renamed after parent pushback

    The parents are correct – immersion programs are at least 50% in the target language through fifth grade, generally shifting to around 30% in middle school and one (or in exceptional cases, two) classes per day in high school. Cambridge no longer has a true Mandarin immersion program, they have “Mandarin immersion lite.”

    Cambridge school district acknowledges reduction in Mandarin instruction time.

    by Tavishi ChattopadhyayMonday, June 22, 2026

    Since 2021, a Mandarin Chinese immersion program that has been a draw for Cambridge families has cut down on its Chinese instruction hours and changed its curriculum. Now, after months of debate between the school district and parents, the program is being renamed. 

    Parents of students at both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School and Putnam Avenue Upper School (PAUS) have been embroiled in conversations with school and district officials about changes to the immersion program’s curriculum and instruction hours. Parents say the program offers full immersion only from kindergarten to 2nd grade. After that, they say, the 50/50 split the program advertises becomes more like 33/67. 

    Please read more here.

  • Fort Collins, CO Mandarin immersion school getting new building

    AXIS International Academy is a K-5 charter school that offers 50/50 immersion programs in Mandarin, Spanish and French.

    An article about their new building (partly behind a paywall) is here.

    Info about the school is here. The school’s enrollment seems to be climbing (figures here.)

    Again, it baffles me that charter schools keep opening that offer immersion and do well while school districts keep trying to cut popular immersion programs.

    .