The Muniz Academy: A Dual-Language High School

Have you heard of the Margarita Muniz Academy? As the Hispanic population in Boston continues to grow, the Boston Public School system has been seeking new ways to address issues they face. Hispanic students are both most likely to drop out of the city’s schools and least likely to enroll in college when compared with black, white, and Asian students, but as the academy enters its sixth full year, the school’s student outcomes are drawing praise from a variety of sources, and the numbers are starting to change.

The idea behind Jamaica Plain’s Margarita Muniz Academy, a dual-language high school, was that many Hispanic students would do better in schools that supported their cultural background and their first language. In Boston Public Schools, approximately 40% of Hispanic high school students are classified as “English language learners” (ELL), meaning they don’t speak English fluently. This can make learning extremely challenging and these students drop out at higher rates than any other major subgroup, but things are different at the Muniz Academy. In 2016, 75% of its ELL students graduated. To put this in perspective, this figure is just 1 percentage point below the academy’s overall graduation rate, and 14 percentage points above the district’s average for this group. The ELLs from Muniz Academy also bested the overall graduation rate for the Boston Public School system.

Teachers at Muniz must be flexible, but they believe that sticking to a prescribed language is less important than making sure students understand the content and participate in class. This holds particularly true for immigrant students who know very little English. “Things the kids say out loud are the things they’re remembering,” says one Muniz Academy teacher. “The more they talk, the better.” The back-and-forth between languages also ensures all students hear key vocabulary in both Spanish and English. Students do not learn the same content twice, however; they learn something in one language and then build on it in the other.

Dual-language education has surged in popularity in recent years, driven in part by parents who speak only English and see the value of raising bilingual children who can navigate a globalized world. Boston’s leaders see dual-language programs additionally as a way to better serve students from the city’s large immigrant communities. However, while creating new dual-language programs is on the district’s agenda, it may be a while before there’s a second school like the Muniz Academy in Boston–or maybe anywhere. Finding teachers who can lead high school-level courses in two languages is difficult, and accommodating students across a wide spectrum of language proficiency, even more so. Muniz is clearly getting something right, though, and we should work towards opening more programs like it. The numbers speak for themselves:

1. 73.5% of seniors at Muniz Academy took an Advanced Placement class in 2016-17, compared with 37.1% for Boston Public Schools overall, and 40.6% statewide. 67% of these Muniz students scored at least 3 (out of 5) on their AP tests, on par with state averages.

2. 284 students attended Muniz Academy in 2016-17. More than 64% were economically disadvantaged, more than 50% were English language learners, and more than 11% had disabilities.

3. 93% of Muniz Academy students in 2016-17 were Hispanic, versus 41% for Boston Public Schools. Another 4% of Muniz students were African-American. White and multi-race/non-Hispanic were just over 1% each.

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services