Photo Courtesy Anne Arundel County Public Schools
Annapolis, MD - Building on the experience and success of the initial program at Tyler Heights Elementary School, Anne Arundel County Public Schools will spend the next year planning to open its second Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program at Maryland City Elementary School in the 2026-27 school year.
As is the case at Tyler Heights, the Maryland City program will have Spanish as the target language. In DLI programs, English-speaking and non-English-speaking students are taught in two languages with the goal of developing and enhancing bilingualism, academic achievement, and cross-cultural understanding in all students. As a two-way, 50-50 immersion model, students are taught in English for half of the day and Spanish for the other half of the day. Literacy instruction is grounded in the Science of Reading for both languages to ensure that students become biliterate as well as bilingual. Other subjects may be taught in one or both languages.
“What we have seen at Tyler Heights is that instruction in two languages has proven to be a huge benefit to multilingual students and native English speakers alike,” Superintendent of Schools Dr. Mark Bedell said. “As our county, our state, and our nation become more diverse, programs like this one are key to cultivating students who can be leaders in the society in which they will grow up.”
At Tyler Heights, 49 percent of kindergarten students in the DLI program scored at or above grade level on the end-of-year DIBELS literacy assessment, compared to 13 percent of students receiving traditional instructional program. In first grade, 42 percent of DLI students scored at or above grade level on the assessment, compared to 30 percent of students receiving traditional instruction. Additionally, 83 percent of identified English learners in Tyler Heights’ DLI program met their proficiency goal on the WIDA ACCESS, the annual state assessment for English language proficiency, compared to 30 percent of students receiving traditional instruction.
At Maryland City, the program will open for students in kindergarten and first grade in 2026-27 and grow by one grade per year. Approximately 46 percent of Maryland City’s 483 students are multilingual learners and 85 percent of those students speak Spanish as their native language. Nearly half of Maryland City’s 85 kindergarten students in the just-completed school year are multilingual learners.
The DLI program expansion also aligns with the recommendation from the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future’s Workgroup on English Learners in Public Schools that schools “Maryland should develop, fund, and implement a statewide approach to expansion of two-way immersion programs.”
Tyler Heights began its program as an option within kindergarten and first grades in the 2023-24 school year and grew to second-grade students in the just-completed school year. The school will have students in kindergarten through third grade enrolled in the DLI program in the upcoming school year and will continue to grow by a grade level each year. The program, which will have approximately 160 students at Tyler Heights next year, is not a magnet program and is open only to students who attend the school in which it is housed. Families register for their students to be included in the program.
