Francis Scott Key Elementary School is one of the eighteen elementary schools in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C.. It is a countywide school, meaning that it draw students from various neighborhoods in the county. It is named after Francis Scott Key.
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The school is unique because it has a two-way Spanish-English immersion program that has been in operation in the school since 1986. In Arlington, Spanish is the most widely spoken minority language. Also present are others such as Vietnamese, Urdu, and Tigrinya. Prior to the 1986-87 school year the Key School had no "pullout classes" for minority language students. The school principal collaborated with the Public Schools Bilingual Program Office in Hartford, Connecticut to design the program.
The two-way immersion program begins in Kindergarten in a classroom that consists of English speakers and Spanish speakers. From the beginning, the instruction is split between both languages. The program provides English-speaking children the unique opportunity to acquire a second language early in life through the immersion process. It provides the Spanish-speaking students the opportunity to receive education in English while enhancing their verbal and literacy skills in Spanish. Parents of Spanish-speaking children in the program indicate that their children feel a greater sense of pride and ethnic identity because of their fluency in their mother tongue. Also, since Spanish-speakers see that administrators and others in power value Spanish, they do not view their mother tongue as inferior as do some of their peers who do not have this educational opportunity.
The staff includes 30 classroom teachers, almost all of whom are bilingual, 12 teacher's assistants, nine specials teachers (music, art, PE), 25 resource teachers, and an immersion specialist who serves as coordinator of the program. There are no formal requirements for language proficiency, but it is a major assessment during the interview process.
Classes are conducted in Spanish for half of the day and in English for half of the day. The students learn math, science, Spanish Language arts, music and art in Spanish with one teacher with a different teacher instructing them in English language arts, social studies and health in English. Students switch teachers and languages at mid-day, so that some students study in English in the morning and in Spanish in the afternoon, and some have the reverse schedule. Grades K-3 do not focus heavily on grammar in the Spanish language classes; however, students in Grades 4 and 5 receive a much stronger instruction in this area. Children in the immersion program are held to the same academic standards of all Arlington County Public Schools.
Key School maintains an annual student exchange program with Escuela Americana (EA) in San Salvador, El Salvador. From nine to fifteen fifth-grade students travel to El Salvador for about ten days in January or February each year, and a similar number of EA students travel to the United States six to ten weeks later.
Most of the fifth-grade students continue their immersion studies at the immersion continuation program at Gunston Middle School.