This article briefly reviews the social, political, and economic context that explains the present status of elementary language education in the United States and addresses the challenges identified by recent reports on the state of language education in the United States. Different curricular models of world language education--exploratory,…

This paper describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of the first year of a three-year pilot project to teach Japanese to all students in grades K through five at a Pittsburgh elementary school. Findings from this multiple perspectives analysis are reviewed. (41 references) (JL)