Fresno Unified’s dual-language program has surged in popularity. Who’s enrolling?
Over the past decade, Fresno Unified’s dual-language immersion program has quadrupled in popularity, growing from 900 pupils to 4,665 students at 20 schools.
Dual-language immersion classrooms, in which teachers deliver instruction in two languages, should be comprised of 50% English learners and 50% native English speakers to achieve “maximum effectiveness,” according to the California Department of Education.
While Fresno Unified has strived to have an equal number of native English speakers and English learners in its dual-language immersion program, it has struggled to meet that target in most of its dual-language classrooms.
Four sites — Leavenworth, Ewing, Sunset, and Wawona elementary schools — have dual-language programs where enrollment is determined through a “lottery system.” Because of this, those dual-language classrooms “will see more of that balance” between English speakers and Spanish speakers, said Erica Piedra, the district’s executive officer of English Learner Services.
The other sites offering dual-language instruction are “neighborhood schools” where enrollment is based on who lives in the surrounding community, oftentimes impacting the ratio of native English speakers and English learners.
“They draw from what the dynamic and reality is in their community. Sometimes in those neighborhood schools, if 80% of our students are Latino, then we’re probably going to see that in the classrooms,” Piedra said. “Our biggest demographic in our program is Latino students. Many of them are identified as English learners.”
However, the district says there’s value in striving for an enrollment makeup in which English learners and native English speakers are more evenly distributed, as it allows students to learn from one another.
“During the Spanish time of instruction, the kids that come from Spanish-speaking homes kind of serve as models for that language,” Piedra said. “During the English portion of the time, our English-speaking students become the models, and they have their Spanish-speaking counterpart that they’re paired with. And there’s a codependency that’s established between those two groups.”
During the 2024-25 school year, there were a total of 4,665 students enrolled in Fresno Unified’s dual-language immersion initiatives — 442 in Hmong-English classes, and the remainder in Spanish-English classes. The latter was comprised of 52% English-only students and 48% English learners, though there was more of a disparity in the Hmong-English classes.
Between the district’s three schools that offer Hmong dual-language immersion courses, 74% of last year’s participating students were English-only, while 26% were identified as English learners.
McLane High was the school with the largest disparity between these groups, with only 15% of its dual-language immersion students last year being English-only.
Piedra says English learners who complete dual-language opportunities reclassify, or demonstrate proficiency in English, sooner than those in non-dual-language classrooms.
“These programs were designated to best support our English learner students,” Piedra said. “These programs should be accessible to English learners, and that’s the way that we’ve tried to design them.”
While the vast majority of Fresno Unified’s dual-language classrooms consist of English-Spanish instruction, three sites — Vang Pao, Balderas, and Sequoia Middle School — offer a Hmong-English option, which Piedra said the district developed in-house.
Piedra said the Hmong-language program has several students “not from the Hmong culture,” including Latino students who are “on their pathway to being trilingual.” Students enrolled in dual-language opportunities “outperform students who are not enrolled in dual-language programs,” she said.
At the start of the 2024-25 school year, 92 high-school seniors had gone through the district’s dual-language program. By the end of the year, 73 Fresno Unified students currently or formerly enrolled in a dual-language program earned a Seal of Biliteracy on their diploma, indicating that they’ve achieved proficiency in two or more languages.
In total, 712 Fresno Unified seniors earned the Seal of Biliteracy last year, with the majority coming from Edison and Sunnyside.
EdSource reports that dual-language opportunities extending into secondary school oftentimes yield better results. McLane is the only one of Fresno Unified’s high schools to currently offer the program, though this year saw it expand to four new middle schools, offering students more of a “pathway” to continue if they wish.
Bullard High is set to unveil a dual-language immersion program during the 2026-27 school year.
