North Allegheny School District 1 of only 20 in state offering Seal of Biliteracy

North Allegheny School District is one of two local school districts that offered the Pennsylvania Seal of Biliteracy program in the Pittsburgh region last school year, honoring its students who attain an intermediate to high proficiency in English and one other world language.

North Allegheny and Hampton Township school districts offered the PA Seal of Biliteracy for the 2022-2023 school year, two of only 20 throughout the state.

Having the seal is an advantage to a person’s resume, said Kylene Butler, a French teacher at North Allegheny who helps students navigate the program.

“To obtain a high level of proficiency in a language shows they have a general interest in being a global citizen, a highly valuable skill,” Butler said.

The PA Seal of Biliteracy was recognized by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in March 2022. However, school districts could independently offer a seal of biliteracy prior to that time, said Cherie Garrett, advocacy chair for the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association.

“The only problem with school districts offering a seal is that the level of proficiency was set by each school district. Therefore, some schools were awarding it for intermediate-mid proficiency while others required intermediate-high proficiency,” said Garrett, who is a teacher at Dalllastown School District in Dallastown, Pa.

There were only five participating school districts for the 2021-2022 school year, Garrett said.

North Allegheny requires an intermediate to high level of proficiency in English and a high or greater proficiency in another language, to be able to hold advanced conversations and be knowledgeable of the culture of the second language, according to Butler.

North Allegheny offers the seal in Chinese, French or Spanish.

The students who received the seal graduated in May 2023 include Victoria Chen for French; Daniel Guo, Samuel Horton, Rohan Reddy and Anshul Shah for Spanish; and Ada Sun and Yi-Fei Zhao for Chinese.

Students can also have learned the language independently, such as a heritage learner, as long as they make the requirements.

“Our students have the opportunity to grow to this proficiency level as they participate in our robust honors language courses and culminate with advanced placement world language studies. We are also excited to celebrate the linguistic and cultural diversity of our community by helping students to demonstrate the same level of proficiency in heritage languages or languages and cultures that they study independently of our program,” Butler said.

Exploratory language courses begin in seventh grade at North Allegheny, where students take a semester-long course in French, German, Spanish and Latin. They can then choose one to study in eighth grade for a full school year.

Students can further pursue world languages at regular or more academic levels in high school, such as honors and advanced placement courses.

Butler said students who pursue the biliteracy program may study a language throughout their high school career, and sometimes “double-up” with another language.

Butler, who graduated from North Allegheny in 2010, said studying a second language and its culture gets students “out of the bubble.”

”We’re a very small part of a very big world,” she said.