Representatives Price (D-NC-4), Lance (R-NJ-7), Crowley (D-NY-14) and Young (R-AK-at large) have introduced the World Language Advancement Act (WLAA), a bipartisan piece of legislation that retains a vitally important, cost-effective program to ensure access to high-quality and innovative world language programming in America’s schools.

The amendment retains a vitally important, cost-effective program to ensure access to high-quality world language programming in America’s schools. The ECAA does not provide for world language programming, depriving the Federal Government of its programmatic ability to signal the importance of world languages to SEAs and LEAs.

American youth deserve to be globally competitive. Knowledge of another language, in addition to English, confers a wide range of benefits on the individual:

• improved literacy in English, as evidenced by achievement test scores;
• a greater likelihood of attending and finishing college, across all groups but especially for ELLs and lower SES groups;
• higher lifelong earnings;
• lifetime cognitive benefits, such as delaying the onset of symptoms of dementia.

Please write to your Representative asking for support for this important legislation. Your support and action are vital to our collective efforts to ensure that World Language programs remain funded by the US Department of Education. See the American Council on The Teaching of Foreign Languages website: http://capwiz.com/actfl/issues/alert/?alertid=67181626#sthash.nNWhHKbW.dpuf