​The San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) is helping to standardize biliteracy education throughout the state with its work on the Common Core en Español website and new Spanish language arts standards.

Produced with support from the California Department of Education, Common Core en Español is an incredible resource for bilingual and dual-immersion schools that are empowering students to become literate in Spanish and English.

In addition to the work on building and maintaining the website, SDCOE employees have also drafted, revised, and published the Common Core language arts and mathematics standards in Spanish for bilingual classrooms for all of California.

SDCOE employees worked with many teachers and administrators throughout the county to develop the standards over a period of several months. This was after local school districts asked for help promoting embedding the new state standards among their alternative language programs.

These critical resources ensure that all classrooms teaching in Spanish are using the same rigorous expectations to propel student success as those only teaching in English.

"SDCOE's work in ensuring Spanish language arts and math standards offers biliteracy classrooms equal footing and valuable tools for planning powerful instruction and measuring our students' true abilities," a San Diego County teacher said.

Now SDCOE is moving one step further. Tapping the revised and updated state English language development standards, SDCOE is producing Spanish language development standards to be released and disseminated statewide before the end of this school year.

Once more, SDCOE is working in concert with the CDE and our local schools to produce standards that provide parity and depth of learning. In early February, about 25 teachers and administrators from districts across the county gathered at SDCOE to edit the first drafts of the standards for kindergarten through 12^th grade.

The Spanish-language standards will provide the same support to ensure students master academic Spanish as the English-language standards do for English.

“Whether they are native Spanish speakers without strong literacy skills in Spanish or native English speakers who are working to master Spanish in an enrichment program, students who are considered Spanish learners need the same type of differentiation and support,” said Jorge Cuevas-Antillón, SDCOE's coordinator of language acquisition and biliteracy.

SDCOE's Spanish language development standards are expected to be reviewed two more times formally before publication this summer. The standards are expected to be used for years by SDCOE and county school districts for professional learning, assessment refinement, and evaluating or producing curricular resources.