Many Executive Orders have been written over the past few months under the new administration.  However, these are not law, and many are being questioned in the courts as to their legality.  JNCL-NCLIS has written several statements around the Executive Orders that directly affect our multilingual learners.  Please read them below.  

Closing the Department of Education

English as our Official Language

Washington Post Article on Making English the Official Language and then Closing the Office of English Language Acquisition

Representatives Jen Kiggens (R-VA) and Jimmy Panetta (D. CA) reintroduced the World Language Education Assistance Program (LEAP) Act (H.R. 1572) to create a multi-year competitive grant program, open to all K-12 school districts, to establish, improve, and carry out world language and dual language programs.  

Focus will be given to aid in PD opportunities for teachers, stem the educator shortage, community-based heritage language schools, diversify the teacher workforce, data collection on multilingualism, etc.  

This is an exciting bill which could act as a catalyst for many expansions / improvements to world language programs around the nation.  

This bill has been introduced in the past, but usually later in the year, so it's exciting that we have reintroduced it so early. 

Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA) introduced into the US House of Representatives, the Biliteracy Education Seal and Teaching (BEST) Act (H.R. 1660).  This bill would provide funding to states to improve the Seal of Biliteracy (a.k.a. Certificate of Multilingual Proficiency (CoMP) in Indiana).

It would offer subgrants from states to school districts to enable school districts to subsidize the costs of the CoMP for low income students.

Currently the Indiana Language Roadmap offers scholarships to schools to help students pay for these tests.  But if we could fund this nationally, then the ILR could use that money to promote other initiatives in the state.  

Currently, Congress has passed a continuing resolution, to keep the government funded until the end of the fiscal year 2025 (which ends Oct. 1st) however, as we've seen, several departments are not being paid the funds allocated for them by Congress.  Many organizations are beginning to sue the government over these actions.  We'll just have to wait to see how the judicial branch pushes back against these cuts.  

Congress is beginning to discuss FY26.  While nothing has been published as of yet, we know from previous years that many programs including Title I, Title II, Title III, and Title VI, among others are on the chopping block.  We'll have to be very active to push back against any proposed cuts.  

December 2021 - Please send a Thank You letter to Sen. Braun for joining the America's Languages Caucus, as one of the first Republican Senators to join this new Caucus!!  Very excited that Indiana is represented in this important Caucus.

Side by Side Comparison of Current Diploma vs. the New Diploma

World Languages were saved from complete annihilation thanks to your hard work, but we did take a hit.  We moved from 3-4 years in the Honors Diploma, to only 2 years in the Enrollment Seal.  They can use levels 3 and 4 for their World Perspectives credits in History Classes.  IFLTA is working with the IDOE to expand the use of world languages into the other areas of the diploma.  

We nearly lost the CoMP this year!  But thanks to the work of IFLTA's advocates we were able to save it from the chopping block.  Thanks to everyone who sent emails or made phone calls!  

JNCL-NCLIS Press Release on the Saving of the CoMP

Sign your school up to offer the CoMP

This year, we lost all of the Dual Language Immersion Grant money.  While we had many people write their legislators it wasn't enough.  IFLTA will be holding webinars throughout the summer to ensure that we can start laying the groundwork for another run in 2027 when we have the next budget biennium.  

In the summer of 2023, Indiana approved two new Graduation Pathways with world languages being at the foreground of both of them.  The first one by Perry Township was entitled "Connecting English Learners to Successful Employment" with a focus on our Multilingual students' abilities to graduate from Indiana High Schools; and the second one was jointly written between Highland, IPS, and MSDLT called "Global Communication" to support students planning to go into the fields of translation, interpretation, communication, international studies, and global entrepreneurship.