Language Immersion

The Minnesota legislature passed Statute 120B.022 subd. 1b, which states that school districts in Minnesota may award bilingual or multilingual seals and world language proficiency certificates to graduating high school students who demonstrate certain levels of proficiency in reading, writing, speaking and listening in a language other than English as measured by an approved language proficiency assessment.

• Recognition

You have worked hard to develop a high level of proficiency in another language. This is your opportunity to highlight that accomplishment on your high school transcript. Earning a World Language Proficiency Certificate or adding a Bilingual/Multilingual Seal to your transcript shows colleges/universities and employers that you are proficient in a language (or languages) in addition to English. Because the assessments used to measure proficiency are based on the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning, the scores can be interpreted in a uniform way across institutions.

• Earn college/university credits

You can earn free college credits from 30 colleges and 7 universities in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system by taking an approved proficiency assessment during grades 10-12 and demonstrating proficiency in a language other than English. You must request credits within three academic years of high school graduation and upon enrollment in a Minnesota State college or university. Credits are awarded as follows:

World Language Proficiency Certificate: 2 semesters of college language credit per language
Gold Bilingual or Multilingual Seal: 3 semesters of college language credit per language
Platinum Bilingual or Multilingual Seal: 4 semesters of college language credit per language

Colleges outside of the Minnesota State College and Universities system (e.g., the University of Minnesota, private colleges, and institutions in other States) will use their own institution’s criteria for awarding credits for language proficiency seals.

You will need to complete one of the qualifying assessments and receive a score that meets the criteria for a certificate or a seal, as shown in the chart below.

Students must also successfully complete all English Language Arts credits required for high school graduation and demonstrate mastery of Minnesota’s English language proficiency standards.

Hopkins offers the Advanced Placement (AP) exam in Chinese, Spanish, French and German. Students in the Juntos Spanish Immersion program or the XinXing Chinese Immersion program take the AP language exam in grade 9.

We can assess students using the STAMP 4S for the following languages: Arabic, Cantonese, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Spanish. Students may register to take the STAMP 4S in the spring of their senior year. The assessment is offered in April during the school day.

We can assess students for Czech, Hmong, Somali, Tamil, and Vietnamese using the STAMP World Speak Assessment for speaking and writing combined with a listening and reading assessment developed by the Minnesota Department of Education.

For all languages, students must demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, listening and speaking in order to be eligible to receive a world language proficiency certificate or a bilingual/multilingual seal.

Take a look at the STAMP 4S Benchmark and Rubric Guide to see what you need to be able to do at each level of language proficiency. The first section of the page describes benchmarks for reading and listening. The second section describes benchmarks for writing and speaking.

AP is offered every Spring. Students may register here to take the STAMP 4S in the spring of their senior year. The assessment is offered during the school day.

This year's STAMP 4S assessments will take place on April 8 from 7:50-10:50 a.m. at Hopkins High School.