View Content #20789

From http://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-somali-language-program-somalia-education-maxaa-maay/

Portland Somali Program: 1 Teacher, 2 Languages
by Rob Manning
February 2, 2016

Portland’s Somali students have a 58 percent graduation rate, well below the state average. A recent report found 17 percent of Somali students pass state reading exams, and just 7 percent are passing the math exams.

Numbers like that led Portland administrators to answer the Somali community’s call for a language program.

…Last May, educators visited Minneapolis to see their Somali program.

It was a good sign to Musse Olol, with the Somali American Council of Oregon. He was disappointed that Portland didn’t just implement the Minneapolis model and have classes going already.

…But not everyone thought Portland Public Schools could mirror the Minneapolis program.

“If PPS chooses that route, then they’re not addressing the real need here,” said Abdiasis Mohammed, a Portland’s Somali.

What Mohammed calls the “real need” refers to a cultural divide. It’s a split seen in Olol and Mohammed.

Olol, who favored modeling a program after Minneapolis’s, speaks Somali Maxaa, the language of Somalia’s historic elite. Mohammed is part of the marginalized Somali Bantu community. They speak Maay-Maay, a language Minneapolis wasn’t teaching.

Read the full article or listen to the broadcast at http://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-somali-language-program-somalia-education-maxaa-maay/