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From https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/louisiana-french-dual-language.html

Louisiana Says ‘Oui’ to French, Amid Explosion in Dual-Language Schools
This fall, more American students than ever will start their first day of school learning in a language other than English.
by Richard Fausset
August 21, 2019

This fall, more American students than ever will start their first day of school learning in a language other than English. Robert Slater, a senior fellow at the American Councils for International Education, said there had been a “growth explosion” over the last several years of dual-language immersion programs, including in Spanish, Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

Though exact numbers are difficult to come by, Mr. Slater estimated there were now at least 3,000 such programs in the United States, up from an estimated 2,000 cited in a 2017 study published by the RAND Corporation, and a significant upsurge from about 260 cited by the Department of Education in 2000.

Some of the schools exist not only to broaden horizons, but to shore up languages and cultures. In Hogansburg, N.Y., near the Canadian border, students at Akwesasne Freedom School started their school year last week speaking Mohawk. In Hawaii, a State Supreme Court ruling last week could force more school districts to expand the state’s existing network of Hawaiian-language immersion programs.

Louisiana French is the legacy of early settlers and later arrivals, among them the Cajuns, 18th-century exiles from eastern Canada. But the language was nearly smothered in the 20th century by laws and customs that encouraged assimilation with the Anglophone world.

Read the full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/louisiana-french-dual-language.html