State World Languages Advisory Council Update

(This article was originally published in CCFLT Newsletter October 2004 Issue, Page 21)

By Dagmar Haney

Last spring, at the April 8 meeting of the Colorado State Board of Education, SWLAC Chair Dagmar Haney and member Martie Semmer spoke during the public comment

portion of the meeting and addressed reviewing and adopting the proposed revised Foreign Language Student Content Model Standards. Dagmar and Martie had asked SWLAC

members to contact their respective district board member beforehand and had also prepared a packet for each member consisting of pertinent foreign language information -need, heritage learner, etc. - and a copy of the proposed standards. The SBE Chair said that at this time there is no consideration for standards’ reviews and that math standards

would be reviewed first, with “core” subjects to follow. In Colorado, foreign languages are not yet considered in the core subject area.

This would mean that revised standards in Foreign Languages would be considered down the road, in about 6 to 8 years. 24 members, and in some years reached around 50. But this year, we have only 33. How we can provide outreach to potential members is an important issue.

Fortunately two SBE members were speakers at the FLAC meeting on April 16, 2004, and when asked about the proposed standards, gave attendees the same information that Dagmar and Martie had received at the State Board meeting and said that “if school districts would simply adopt the standards it would make the work for SBE much simpler.”

In view of this comment, it appears that SWLAC needs to gather more feedback for the proposed standards for review and possible adjustment. The feedback forms received so far have been overwhelmingly in favor of the proposed standards. It should be noted that the proposed student standards are directly aligned with the already adopted teacher standards/rules. The committee purposely designed these two documents to complement each other.