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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 1, 2022 04:46 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Katie J. Muth |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | American Sign Language (ASL) Teacher Certification and Classroom Instruction Grant Programs |
| I will be reintroducing legislation in the near future that would establish grant programs to provide funding to Pennsylvania postsecondary schools to offer teacher certification programs for American Sign Language (ASL) and for K-12 schools to offer ASL instruction to students. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) considers ASL a completely separate and distinct language from English, and the Pennsylvania Public School Code currently recognizes ASL as a subject that students may take to satisfy their foreign language requirement. However, only one institution, Wilson College in Chambersburg, currently offers a teacher certification program for ASL and that program only began in 2022. According to Wilson College, when Bethlehem Area School District decided to offer ASL instruction to its high school students, ASL interpreters were recruited to teach the classes. However, the interpreters could not earn the state-required professional certification to teach because no ASL teacher certification program existed in Pennsylvania at the time. The state Department of Education then asked Wilson to develop such a program, and they enrolled their first four students in the fall of 2022. The grant programs established by this legislation will provide the necessary funding to encourage Pennsylvania colleges and universities to offer ASL teacher certification programs and for K-12 schools to offer ASL instruction to their students. There is a clear and increasing desire among American students to learn ASL. The most recent survey from the Modern Languages Association showed that in 2013, ASL displaced German as U.S. undergraduate students’ third most studied foreign language after Spanish and French. Moreover, from 2013-2016, despite overall enrollment in foreign languages dropping by more than 9 percent, enrollment in ASL classes increased by nearly 54 percent. Meeting the rising demand for ASL education will benefit the Commonwealth at large. Nine of every ten children born with hearing loss are born to parents who hear, and 50 percent of American adults older than 75 years of age have disabling hearing loss. Equipping more individuals with the ability to use ASL increases Pennsylvania’s inclusion and access for people with hearing loss. Join me in cosponsoring this legislation to increase the availability of ASL education in Pennsylvania. |
Memo Updated: December 1, 2022 04:47 PM