February 02, 2007
ACTFL President Testifies in U.S. Senate
ACTFL President Rita Oleksak testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management. Rita’s testimony focused on ten recommendations for expanding and strengthening foreign language education in the U.S. and the need to focus federal funding on this effort.
The hearing was entitled “Lost in Translation: A Review of the Federal Government’s Efforts to Develop a Foreign Language Strategy” and was chaired by Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) with Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) as Ranking Minority Member. Rita appeared on a panel with Mr. Michael Petro of the Committee for Economic Development and Diane Birckbichler, Director of the Foreign Language Center at Ohio State University, (and also a past president of ACTFL). The Departments of Defense and Education, as well as the FBI testified on another panel.
The full text of the ACTL testimony will be up on the ACTFL website shortly. Also, we are planning to cover these topics in the April issue of The Language Educator. There was great interest on the part of the Subcommittee Chairman and Ranking Minority Member to move forward with legislation to provide much needed support to language education. This week, Chairman Akaka re-introduced his legislation to establish a national coordinating council. I have included a link to his statement announcing this legislation below. Another bill was just introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Baird (D-WA), to establish similar coordination of foreign language strategies. A link to his bill is also included below.
Congress will most certainly introduce many more bills that relate to foreign language education and we will keep you informed of these developments, as well as ACTFL actions to advocate for language education. February is Discover Languages Month, so I urge all ACTFL members – organizations and individuals – to get involved in advocacy efforts locally. You can get more information about how to get involved at www.DiscoverLanguages.org.