From Classroom to Career: Meeting Perkins V Outcomes with Language Proficiency and ACTFL Credentials

What is Perkins V? 

Perkins V (officially Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act) provides federal funding to states and local school districts to strengthen career and technical education (CTE). The legislation emphasizes raising both academic and technical outcomes for CTE students, improving alignment between secondary and postsecondary education, and increasing accountability. Through Perkins V, states and communities can advance their own CTE priorities, such as supporting students from early career exploration through career preparation, while responding to evolving workforce and economic demands. 

Perkins V is meant to answer one big question: 

Are students leaving school with skills they can actually use for jobs or further training? 

Perkins V is not for general education alone. It also prioritizes : 

  • Career pathways 
  • Workforce preparation 
  • Skills that employers value 
  • Meaningful credentials for career success 

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State-by-State Requirements for the Seal of Biliteracy

all humans qualify for attaining a seal of biliteracy

It is essential for school administrators and educators to provide learners with the best educational opportunities. Understanding your state’s unique guidelines and eligibility criteria ensures students take the right assessments to complete the requirements for the Seal of Biliteracy.

For high school students who have achieved proficiency in English and at least one other language upon graduation, the Seal of Biliteracy is an award that can support them in obtaining scholarships, studying abroad, and pursuing more career options.

This guide explores the state-by-state requirements for the Seal of Biliteracy and how implementing the program at your school can provide students with valuable opportunities.Continue reading

From Uncertainty to Confidence: Building Clearer Pathways in World Language Learning

Across secondary and postsecondary education, world language programs are grappling with a familiar challenge: helping students understand what they can actually do with the language they are learning, and why it matters.

Student feedback across a range of standardized assessments has surfaced recurring themes. Learners have signaled uncertainty about expectations, uneven confidence in their skills, and difficulty connecting classroom learning to real-world outcomes. These signals point to a broader opportunity for world language programs: to make language development more transparent, more intentional, and more meaningful for students.

One powerful way to address this challenge is through the strategic use of ACTFL® assessments and credentials as part of a comprehensive assessment system.Continue reading

Hiring Bilingual Clinicians: What HR Gets Wrong About Assessing Language Proficiency in Healthcare

Healthcare organizations across the United States are facing an urgent challenge: delivering safe, high-quality care to an increasingly linguistically diverse patient population. Today, more than 67 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home, and over 25 million are considered limited English proficient (LEP).

For hospitals and healthcare systems, this reality makes bilingual clinicians a valuable workforce asset. Yet despite the growing demand for bilingual staff, many healthcare organizations still make a critical mistake during hiring:

They assume language proficiency rather than verifying it.

For HR and Talent Acquisition leaders, this oversight can lead to patient safety risks, compliance challenges, and reduced quality of care. Understanding how to properly assess language proficiency in healthcare hiring is becoming essential for modern healthcare workforce strategy.

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13 Language Proficiency and Assessments Myths Debunked

When it comes to language proficiency, misconceptions are everywhere. From how proficiency is defined and developed to how it’s assessed, common myths can lead to inaccurate assumptions, flawed decisions, and missed opportunities. In a crowded landscape of tests, tools, and claims, not all approaches to measuring and understanding proficiency are created equal.

Let’s separate myth from fact. Continue reading

The Case for Standardized Language Testing in Public Safety Hiring

In public safety, communication is not optional—it is operational.

Every 911 call, traffic stop, fire response, or medical emergency depends on clear, accurate, and timely communication. Yet across the United States, agencies increasingly serve communities where English is not the primary language.

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The Human Side of the Gold Standard: An Interview with an AAPPL Rater

Among many things that make AAPPL the Gold Standard for measuring performance toward proficiency is how it’s scored: student spoken and written submissions are evaluated by ACTFL-certified raters using rigorous protocols, so educators can trust the results and use them with confidence. Below, an AAPPL rater shares what it’s like to earn certification, stay calibrated, and score with a “what students can do” mindset. 

Read more: Are You Truly Assessing Proficiency? Revised ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. Continue reading

Language Proficiency Assessments: Why Only the Gold Standard Counts

When it comes to measuring language proficiency, not all tests are created equally. Only ACTFL® assessments, delivered exclusively through Language Testing International® (LTI), produce ACTFL scores and certificates, credentials recognized globally by K-12 programs, universities, employers, and government agencies. Any ACTFL rating provided by a non-ACTFL assessment is not recognized by ACTFL.  In other words, no one else can issue ACTFL scores.

Is “ACTFL-aligned” Enough?

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So… What Actually Happens When a School Tries the Seal of Biliteracy?

A Conversation with a Seal Practitioner  

Any time the phrase new initiative enters a department meeting, language teachers start running diagnostics in their heads. Time. Testing. Curriculum creep. Paperwork. ….meetings…. 

So rather than speculate about what the Seal of Biliteracy should do, I wanted to hear from someone who’s lived it. Andrea Hartle has taught Spanish in New Jersey public schools for more than twenty years and has worked to implement the Seal of Biliteracy at two different high schools. I asked her the questions teachers actually ask—what changed, what didn’t, what surprised her, and whether it was worth the effort. 

Breaking the Seal 

I started by asking Andrea about her first encounter with the Seal of Biliteracy. Continue reading

Educator’s Perspective: Walk, Then Run

Building an Ecosystem of Proficiency Across Multiple Language Programs

As the recently promoted chair of our school’s World Languages department, I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of culture I want to engender in our 13 teacher “found family.” Teachers are a weird bunch to manage, since most of our work time is spent in a classroom with at most one other adult. Our craft is entirely practiced in secrecy, and often experienced by the unappreciative! Plus, aside from the lack of visibility of and by our colleagues, there are also questions of popularity amongst students, rumored differences in individual instructors’ ‘difficulty,’ and varied levels of experience among colleagues. And finally, depending on the popularity (or perceived utility) of your language program, teachers might also be fighting for their position by ensuring their idiomatic program appeals to and draws students enough to continue filling classrooms. So it’s quite hard to establish a through line that both honestly includes these perceptions while also establishing a belonging spirit of “we’re all on the same team here.” Continue reading