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

2. Agenda
Introduction
Study questions
Findings
Study guidelines

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. 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%

6. Orange County School Districts

7. Finding 1: 8 Languages offered

8. Finding 2: Total language courses offered in Orange County

9. Finding: Spanish

10. Finding: French

11. Finding: Japanese

12. Finding: Chinese

13. Finding: German

14. Finding: Latin

15. Finding: Vietnamese

16. Finding: Korean

17. 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

18. 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.

19. Study guidelines
Data Collection
Data Processing
Display results

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

21. 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

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

23. Thank you

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