Lea esta historia en español aquí.
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In 2017, Colorado passed legislation in support of the Seal of Biliteracy, an award given by a school district in recognition of students who have attained proficiency in two or more languages by high school graduation.
After a couple of years of back-end research and work, St. Vrain Valley School District this year awarded its first Seal of Biliteracy honors to 121 graduates, said Oakley Schilling, English language development coordinator at SVVSD.
“(The seal) is an award that appears on a student’s diploma at graduation. Basically, it certifies that the student has reached academic fluency and proficiency in English and at least one other language,” she said.
Seals awarded to SVVSD students represented eight languages, including Spanish, French, Mandarin, Nepali and American Sign Language. A few students qualified in multiple languages.
Students can demonstrate proficiency through a combination of coursework and assessments, in addition to reaching certain SAT and Advanced Placement benchmarks, Schilling said. The ultimate goal is to encourage and support students’ ability to speak multiple languages.
“The ability to speak multiple languages is really a 21st-century skill that the students need and that the world needs. And so I think that the district really just recognizes this is an asset for our students and for our community,” she said.
Research conducted in other states has found that bilingualism is a desirable trait in every industry and that employers in professional, scientific and technical services are more likely to hire a bilingual candidate over a monolingual one, per the Seal of Biliteracy website.
Additionally, recognizing the value of a second language helps maintain and celebrate diversity in communities, Schilling said. “It's such a great example … (of) how important it is to bridge together community members and also generations of families.”
According to Census data, close to 20% of the SVVSD population speaks a language other than English.
“What's kind of amazing is that those 121 students that qualified last year were already in the running to be qualified. They were already ready. They had what they needed,” Schilling said. “What we took from that was that we have this really incredible group of students that's already here, and that needs to be celebrated … and we can use those sort of student examples to show what incredible things that can happen.”
The district is working on creating pathways to encourage students at the elementary and middle school levels to retain, celebrate and learn other languages, so it can be “part of (their) whole educational experiences,” Schilling said.
The effort is part of the larger push the district has undertaken toward equity, according to Lourdes Buck, coordinator of equity and community engagement at SVVSD.
“It's not just bilingualism, because bilingualism is just about speaking, but biliteracy says I can speak. I can listen. I can read. I can do all of the four quadrants of language at a level of bilingualism, which is just so big,” she said, adding that the seal on their diplomas gives students an edge with potential employers.
Buck, who served as the Seal of Biliteracy coordinator at the state level in its early stages, said it is one of the best initiatives that has happened nationwide and it has had a big impact locally as well.
“To have such a successful graduating class and to represent that many languages in their first year it's just so successful,” she said.
The Seal of Biliteracy application for the 2020-21 school year is now open. To learn more about the local program, click here. For more information about the nationwide initiative and what other states are doing, click here.
