Relationship Between Foreign Language Courses and School Locations Au Vo Meshari Alsawat Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California

Agenda Introduction Study questions Findings Study guidelines

Introduction -America is a multicultural country -The curriculum should reflect the diversity of the community -To prepare for the future, high school students are encouraged and required to take foreign language courses -Are the language courses offered in the community reflect the community composition?

Study questions How many types of world languages are being offered in each Orange County school district? How many courses per each language? Is there a relationship between the number of language courses and the population residing in the associated district?

Orange County Facts 3 million inhabitants (2012 estimate) Top 10 Languages spoken at home. (100+) English only (1,542,700) Spanish (665,070) Vietnamese (124,540) Korean (50,365) Chinese (33,040) Tagalog (32,180) Persian (23,880) Japanese (15,650) Arabic (13,800) German (12,960) People Quick Facts Orange County California White alone, percent, 2012 74.5% 73.7% Black or African American alone, percent, 2012 2.0% 6.6% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2012 1.1% 1.7% Asian alone, percent, 2012 18.9% 13.9% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2012 0.4% 0.5% Two or More Races, percent, 2012 3.2% 3.6% Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2012 34.1% 38.2% White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2012 43.1% 39.4%

Orange County School Districts

Finding 1: 8 Languages offered

Finding 2: Total language courses offered in Orange County

Finding: Spanish

Finding: French

Finding: Japanese

Finding: Chinese

Finding: German

Finding: Latin

Finding: Vietnamese

Finding: Korean

Implications -Data for languages are disparate -Weak correlation between language and the surrounding community -Districts should offer more related language courses to match with the community

Next step -Expand the study into other districts -Expand the study into other institution types -Explore the reasons behind the association between language courses offered and the surrounding community.

Study guidelines Data Collection Data Processing Display results

Data Collection 15 High School Districts in Orange County 95 High Schools in Orange County 8 Languages offered School’s curriculum guide 2013-2014 Schedule of classes Teacher’s school webpages Communication with curriculum Principal Census Tract data – languages speaking at home Census Tract shapefile School district shapefile

Data Processing Aggregate language courses per school district Join census tract data with its shapefile Spatial join school district spatial data with the census tract join

Display results Filter by each language 5 classification breaks on language speakers 8 maps with 8 results

Thank you

Acknowledgement Dr. Brian Hilton, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA