Which languages are taught where in our state?

This is the question that prompted the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), the Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT), and the Washington State Coalition for International Education to conduct the first World Languages & Technology Survey in the spring of 2004. All K-12 public schools in the state were contacted by email to participate in the online survey; about 19% responded. Data from that survey are presented on this website.

The work of the 2004 World Languages Survey has now been transferred to a new project at the University of Washington, called Mapping & Enhancing Language Learning (MELL). Please visit UW LLC MELLWA to learn more about the MELL project. To contribute data to the MELL survey, please ask a knowledgeable person at the school or community program to complete the MELL Survey.

Preliminary Queries (from 2004)

Click on a link below to view that query:

• All High Schools (in WA) -- "2004" indicates schools that participated in the survey
• High Schools that offer Spanish, French, German, ASL, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic
• Middle Schools that offer Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese
• Elementary Schools that offer Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese

Note: Schools that operate K-8 are listed in both Elementary and Middle. Schools that operate K-12 are listed in Elementary, Middle, and High School.

Queries in development

• Additional languages, such as Arabic, ASL, and Native languages
• Which schools offer multiple languages?
• How long do schools offer a language?
• Which schools are not represented in the survey yet?
• Which schools offer languages in other years? (For example, currently we query on grades 10, 11, and 12 for high school, but perhaps some schools just offer languages grades 10-11. We need to refine the queries to get the full range.)

Plans for Collecting More Data

During 2006-7, we plan to:

1. Focus on high schools first. As part of the new MELL (Mapping & Enhancing Language Learning) Project at the University of Washington, we are contacting all high schools in the state to complete the new survey.
2. Update the database with the new data.
3. Rerun the queries and update the web pages with current information.
4. If possible, add links to contact information for schools, such as websites and emails.

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