This study aims to provide an in-depth case study of a Chinese-English bilingual program in the largest ISD of aSouthwestern state, and the 7th largest school district in the U.S, in the hope of shedding light on what makes abilingual education program successful. This school is the first 100% dedicated Mandarin language immersion school inthis state. It is a two-way immersion or dual language immersion—strong additive bilingual education program, withbilingualism and biliteracy as the aim for the students.Data from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) suggest that immersion education has been steadily increasing inthe United States since the 1970s. However, language education in general is actually declining across the country,especially in the lower grades (Freemark & Smith, 2014). “The number of American students who learned a languageother than English decreased by about 100,000 between 2009 and 2013, according to research by the Modern LanguageAssociation” (Noack, 2015). The majority of the studies on bilingual education examined elementary Spanish-Englishprograms; there is not much research on Chinese-English bilingual education. This study intends to add to this body ofresearch by unpacking this particular Chinese-English bilingual program, grounded in Cummins’ argument that “(t)heaccumulation of such case studies presents a rich and robust picture of bilingual education that can benefit practice andinfluence policy (Cummins, 1999, p. 8).” It is hoped that it will make the educational efficacy of bilingual/immersionprograms clearer to a wider policy and public audience.II. BACKGROUND OF THE SCHOOLWhen opened in August 2012, this school served only grades PK-2. Since then, it has gone up to a grade level eachyear in the past five years, and is currently serving students from PK through the 7th grade. This school is a magnetschool, which means, unlike regular public schools where students are zoned to, the parents at this school need to applyfor the limited spots. Students in the prekindergarten and kindergarten grade levels are not required to have previousexperiences with Chinese. Those entering the 1st grade and above must demonstrate proficiency in Chinese as evaluatedby the teachers to be included in the lottery process due to the limited availability. Since it opened, this school hasbecome one of the district’s most popular magnet programs, with more than eight applications for every available spot.With a $32.2 million fund appropriated by the district, a brand-new building and campus were completed in Aug 2016that allows the school to fulfill its ultimate goal of developing into a well-rounded middle school immersion program inthe coming years. As stated on the school website, its vision is “to immerse students in a culture-rich environment thatallows them to become balanced bi-cultural and bi-literate citizens for the global economy.”As illustrated in Table 1, the school has a highly diverse student population. Asian take up almost 1/3 of the studentbody, and African American, Hispanic, and White students each constitute approximately 1/4 of the student population.The school was ranked on the Public School Review "Most Diverse Schools in the U.S."ISSN 1798-4769Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 1191-1198, November 2018DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0906.08© 2018 ACADEMY PUBLICATIONbrought to you by COREView metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.ukprovided by Academy Publication Online