LITTLE ROCK — Some lawmakers want to change what they described in a meeting Friday as a “mistake” of removing the requirement that high school students study a foreign language to receive an Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship.
A House of Representatives committee is studying a proposal to require high school credit for two years of foreign language in order to receive the scholarship, largely funded by the state lottery.
Two years of study in a foreign language was a requirement for the scholarship until the Legislature transformed it into a lottery-funded award intended to be available to more students, including the less academically successful ones.The changes, which include a lowered minimum ACT score and the grade-point average requirements that must be met to be eligible for the scholarship, were enacted in 2009 for awards made in 2010 and after.
Rep. Johnnie Roebuck, DArkadelphia, said removingthe language requirement was a mistake that had the “unintended consequence” of reducing enrollment in foreign language classes. “We’ve sentthe message to our young people that foreign language is not important. That was never, never the message we should have sent. It’s just one of those unintended consequences.”
In the 2009-10 school year, 49,216 school students in Arkansas took a foreign language. The next year, the number fell to 44,263, according to Department of Education figures. Department spokesman Seth Blomeley said the department doesn’t know whether the scholarship-requirement change led to the dip.
In the 2009-10 school year, 5,735 of the students who applied for the scholarship had completed two-years of foreign language in high school.Since it’s no longer an eligibility requirement, the department doesn’t track how many applicants studied a foreign language. The department also did not know how many of the 31,109 students who received scholarships this year took two years of foreign language.
Every school district in Arkansas is required to offer two “units” of a foreign language, but students are not generally required to take them, though some districts require foreign language study for “honors” degrees or other programs.
Rep. Randy Stewart, D-Kirby, who sponsored the study proposal, said it’s important togive students an incentive to take foreign language classes. Otherwise, they won’t do it, he said.
He is open to “any way to do it, to make our studentsimprove their scores, increase [college] retention rate, and go out and compete in the world,” he said. Studying foreign languages in high school will help in all that, he said.
Roebuck said it might be most expedient for foreign-language study to be incorporated into the “smart core curriculum” and for school districts to consider requiring it for honors degrees or similar programs.
Starting in the 2013-14 school year, students will have to complete the “smart core” to be eligible for scholarships. Until then, if they did not complete the curriculum, they must test at proficient levels in algebra I, geometry and biology.
Foreign-language teachers told lawmakers Friday that the state should do whatever it can to get more students to take their classes.
Horst Lange, chairman of the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Central Arkansas, said students who take foreign languages in high school have an advantage in college, where many degrees require foreignlanguage study.
John Miller, a training and education liaison at Dassault Falcon Jet of Little Rock, told lawmakers that the advantage extends into the business world, where knowing a foreign language is an asset.
Rep. Garry Smith, D-Camden, said the state has an interest in exposing students to foreign language. “People say, well I don’t want the government to tell me what my kids have to take, but we didn’t ask that question when it was reading, writing and arithmetic,” Smith said. “I think that’s what government is supposed to be, helping people see down the road.”
But a member of the Lottery Commission Legislative Oversight Committee, Rep.Barry Hyde, D-North Little Rock, said later in a telephone interview that it seemed that members of the education committee were trying to require courses that the state has decided should not be mandatory. Requiring students to go beyond state requirements is contrary to the lottery’s mission, Hyde said.
“What we promised the people of Arkansas when we asked them to support a lottery and a lottery scholarship program, we said it would be the average Arkansas kid that would be eligible for those scholarships. And the average Arkansas kid graduates with the core curriculum,” he said.
Blomeley, the department spokesman, said that while the department has determined it is necessary for students to have the option of taking a foreign language, it has not determined that they should be required to take it.
In Arkansas, 850 teachers are licensed to teach Spanish, 281 to teach French, 73 to teach German, 30 to teach Mandarin Chinese, 12 to teach Latin, and three to teach Russian.
Blomeley said the department doesn’t know whether more foreign-language teachers would be needed if the scholarship criteria change, “But if there are a lot more students that want to take foreign language, that would require more teachers, and teachers cost money.”
Front Section, Pages 8 on 10/29/2011