ASPIRA of PA
charter schools have helped blaze the trail for bilingual English/Spanish education
in our region. Eugenio Maria de Hostos
Charter School, ASPIRA of PA’s first charter school founded in 1998, was the
first bilingual charter school in the state of Pennsylvania. In 2010, ASPIRA of PA launched the first
bilingual cyber charter school in the state too, ASPIRA Bilingual Cyber Charter
School.
Opening
bilingual schools is not the whole story though - ASPIRA of PA bilingual schools have proven
successful! Our two dual-language
brick-and-mortar schools, Hostos Charter and Pantoja Charter, both have
performed higher than the School District of Philadelphia average on state
assessments and have attained Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for several
consecutive years.
Although
proven highly effective, these schools continue to perfect their dual language
instructional strategies. In the 2013-14
school year, a 90-10 model will be in place, where all Kindergarten students
will have instruction provided 90% in Spanish and 10% in English. Each year as students progress to the next
grade, more classes are taught in English, eventually reaching a 50/50 bilingual
school day. Spanish as a Second Language
is offered in all ASPIRA of PA Schools to ensure native-English speaking
students are equally supported. Our goal
is for all Hostos and Pantoja students to be biliterate and bilingual by the
time they graduate 8th grade.
Providing
instruction, parent communication, and hallway banter in both English and
Spanish have become hallmarks within ASPIRA of PA charter schools, and a
practice that has positively set us apart from other schools in our city and
state.