The Kent School District has begun implementing a language accreditation program in an effort to recognize its multilingual students’ innate talents.
The program will acknowledge proficiency by testing students in a particular language. Students who demonstrate proficiency can earn one to four high school language credits. Washington state colleges require two credits for admission.
The program “allows us to recognize proficiencies that multilingual speakers bring” to the district, said Vicki Bates, KSD’s director of Standards Based Education. Earning the credits has made a large difference for kids who have been short of credits or have had to take (English as a Second Language) ESL classes.
“For at least a couple of the kids, that was the difference between them graduating on time and having to take summer school.”
According to Bates, some KSD students speak as many as four different languages. In the first year, KSD focused on the more common languages with the easiest tests to administer: Arabic, French, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Italian. According to school district officials, more than 138 languages are spoken in the district.
Cynthia Huber, who coordinates the district’s Fine Arts and World Languages programs, hopes to add Russian, Punjabi, Somali and Vietnamese this coming school year, depending on the availability of testers.
While tests such as Arabic or Chinese can be administered through computers, languages such as Somali require an expert speaker present to proctor.
“Somali is an example of where we would be working with professionals regionally,” Huber said.
The project grew out of regional collaboration with support from the superintendent’s office. This is its first year of implementation. The district completed its first round of testing during the spring, and all testers passed. Thirty-five students received four credits, 23 received three credits and 16 received two credits.
Huber said that the tests have been useful to certify students, but the district is still working to iron out the kinks. One problem she notes is that some of the tests are administered in English, which can make it hard for student to understand the questions.
“A lot of tests are in English, so students have to have intermediate English ability to communicate,” Huber said.
She said that several students didn’t feel completely confident because of this. To a certain degree, this frustrates Huber to see that the tests view the languages as foreign instead of native.
Also, technical issues with equipment have prevented the district from fully adopting the program. Things like Chinese and Japanese keyboards will help.
“You’re learning as you go, and you don’t know even what questions the student might have,” Huber said.
Still, Huber is happy to have the program operational, even if it’s not completely functional yet.
“It’s kinda neat to be in an assessment room and hear four or five different languages at once,” she said.
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