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TUSD ends foreign-language mandate

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The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board made the only fair decision it could when it decided Tuesday night to end a graduation requirement that every high-school student had to take two credits of a foreign language.

It wasn't a good decision in the sense that it was beneficial to students or a wise move — it was a decision made necessary by the realities of public school life in Arizona. Qualified and certified foreign-language teachers are too hard to come by and funding is too tight to allow for such a forward-thinking graduation requirement.

The value of a high-school foreign-language requirement is obvious: Students who can speak more than one language are more marketable in many jobs. They benefit from learning about other countries, cultures and parts of the world. Research has shown that students, even those in elementary school, who study a foreign language do better in math, English literacy and on college admission tests. In fact, some experts say high school is really too late to begin learning a new language.

The Governing Board isn't arguing that the foreign-language requirement — which only began to affect students who are freshmen this year — was a bad idea. Rather, the board majority voted the only way they responsibly could. It's irresponsible to make particular courses a district graduation requirement when officials know full well that schools don't have the personnel or money to make those classes readily available to students.

While the state does not require foreign-language credits to graduate from high school, some school districts do and TUSD was to be one of them. The three Arizona public universities do require at least two language credits for admission.

Ideally, high-school graduation requirements would match state university admission credits, so all students would be academically ready for college upon graduation. Not every student would choose to go to college, or these days could afford to go, but at least they would be better qualified for admission.

TUSD officials say the language classes will be offered as electives, but the number of classes won't be increased as they would have had to be if the graduation requirement had remained, according to a Thursday story by the Star's Rhonda Bodfield.

About 55 percent of graduating seniors last year had taken two credits of a foreign language, and chief TUSD academic officer Ross Sheard said that it would take $500,000 to ensure that all graduating seniors have the two language credits.

"We want our students to be global citizens and have the skills necessary to be 21st-century students, but what it comes down to is that we don't have the money to pay for it," Sheard said, according to Bodfield's story. "We do believe it's good for kids, and that's the frustrating part."

Also, in four years, the state will require students to take a half-credit of economics and in 2013 they must take another credit of math and another of science. TUSD must prepare to add teachers, equipment and books to meet this demand, and it's not optional.

While the language-requirement vote is a disappointment, it's also encouraging. While outgoing board members Alex Rodriguez and Joel Ireland voted against lifting the requirement, saying that TUSD should prepare students for a global economy and that the district could find other places in the budget to cut, the majority stood strong.

We appreciated what board member Judy Burns said: "What kind of sacrifices will we have to ask other children to make in order to require that?"

The board could have taken the politically easy way out and kept the requirements to temporarily avoid a conflict, but instead the majority made a difficult decision based not on what they'd like the situation to be — but what it really is.

We predict that as the state budget deficit gets bigger and bigger, the TUSD board will have to make more of these kinds of decisions, and we hope this decision serves as an example of doing not what's desired within the district, but what is responsible and possible.