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 12th 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.