The Seal of Biliteracy: Adding students’ voices to the conversation

ABSTRACT

The Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) is a policy that recognizes biliterate high school graduates with an emblem placed on their diploma or transcript signifying proficiency in two or more languages. The present study focused on 12th grade students’ perceptions of the SoBL to investigate the questions: How do students perceive bilingualism and biliteracy? What do students perceive as benefits of the SoBL? What do students perceive as barriers to greater attainment of the SoBL? Implications focus on how to expand access to the SoBL to both English-dominant and linguistically diverse students.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Cornelia Okraski, Amy Bedford, and Ali Kushki for their assistance in data coding. We would also like to thank Arthur Chou at the Seal of Biliteracy organization for his continued support of our work.

Notes

1. The response rate was calculated using the number of students who received the paper survey at School A and the total number of seniors at Schools B and C.

2. Not all respondents answered all questions on the survey. Only 77 of the 91 linguistically diverse and 115 of the 124 English-dominant students completed this question.