Seal of Biliteracy

Will you qualify to earn the prestigious Seal of Biliteracy?

Western Tech has such a diverse population of students; dozens of languages are represented here.  Students who earn a 4 or 5 on the AP French and Spanish test can earn the prestigious Seal of Biliteracy at graduation – a seal on your diploma and a handsome medal to wear. 

However, if you can not take AP because of your schedule, you can still earn the Seal of Biliteracy by taking the AAPPL Test!  (Remember, that is the test that you took in 7th grade.)  Students usually do so in the spring of the year; seniors should take it by April 1 in order for the company to have enough time to grade it and for BCPS OWL to have enough time to distribute the Seal by graduation in May/June.  Maryland accepts the test in any grade level after 8th grade; this means that if you take a test in 10th grade, your score will still be good until the end of 12th grade for you to earn the Seal.  The test costs $209, but BCPS has a deal for $20!

If you know another language at home and pass a certain test, you can earn the Seal of Biliteracy, too!  There are almost a hundred languages with qualifying tests. 

The company LTI offers AAPPL Tests for:  Arabic, (Mandarin) Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.  LTI also offers SoB AAPPL tests for less common languages:  Albanian, Bangla, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Croatian, Dari, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Malayalam, Pashto, Polish, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Yoruba.  The test costs $209, but BCPS has a deal for $55!

The company ALTA offers tests for:  Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Bulgarian, Chin (Hakha), (Cantonese & Mandarin) Chinese, Czech, (Persian) Farsi, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Ilocano, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, (American) Sign Language, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Yup’ik.  The test costs $132.

These are only some of the languages that qualify for the Seal of Biliteracy.  Summer is a perfect time for you to work on taking the test for your language.  Click here for more information on tests for the Maryland “Seal of Biliteracy”.

When you are ready to pay for the proficiency test, let Profesor Ruth know ([email protected]) so that you can arrange a mutually convenient 90-min. appointment with him as your proctor for your 30-min. listening an dspeaking test (by phone with a native speaker) and the 60-min. reading and writing test (under Profe's supervision in his classroom).  Your parents can click here to go to the Online School Payment Portal to pay for the test; after going to "High" School and "Western School of Tech HS," look for "Seal of Biliteracy" and select the company that you want.