Utah

Utah held two summits in rapid succession in 2008 and 2009, bringing stakeholders together to craft a roadmap for world language and to make recommendations for a more holistic and comprehensive focus on international education. Those summits helped frame the current work in Utah. The Governor's World Language and International Education Task Force is now meeting regularly and working to implement recommendations and create ideas for next steps.

In the world language arena, Utah continues to forge ahead with a focus on critical languages and Dual Immersion programs. For the 2011-12 school year, there will be 95 secondary schools offering Mandarin Chinese, 12 secondary schools offering Arabic. In addition, as a direct result of a State funded Legislative Initiative, Senate Bill 41 in 2008, there will be 59 Dual Immersion programs; 9 in French, 17 in Mandarin Chinese, and 33 in Spanish in the State of Utah. Governor Gary Herbert and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Larry Shumway have committed to reaching 100 Dual Immersion programs with 30,000 students in five languages (Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish) by 2015.

Utah's international education efforts include actively seeking out mutually beneficial Memoranda of Understanding with nations rich in language resources that are providing over 60 International Guest Teachers to work in Utah schools. They include France, Spain, Mexico, China and Taiwan. The members of the Governor's task force are using the Longview Foundation's International Education Planning Rubric as they take stock of current practice and chart the path forward. Individual sister-school partnerships continue to grow across the state, and the state continues to collaborate with the CCSSO's EdSteps Global Competence work group.