Embedded Files
Purpose
Purpose
The Seal of Biliteracy recognizes students who have achieved proficiency in English and at least one other language by graduation.
Adopted first by California in 2011, the Seal of Biliteracy is now recognized in all 50 states and Washington D.C. According to the official website, “The Seal of Biliteracy encourages students to pursue biliteracy, honors the skills our students attain, and can be evidence of skills that are attractive to future employers and college admissions offices.”
Since the 2017 pilot year in Arkansas, a total of 7,246 students from 120 high schools around the state have attained this certification across forty-three languages other than English (American Sign Language, Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hakha Chin, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Marathi, Malayalam, Marshallese, Nepali, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, and Vietnamese).
The Arkansas Seal of Biliteracy is awarded each spring and fall to students in grades 9 through 12 and is sponsored by the Arkansas Foreign Language Teachers Association (AFLTA) and the Arkansas Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ARKTESOL). The Arkansas Department of Education officially endorsed the Seal in June 2018.
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