CALIFORNIA PARLIAMENT PRESENTS DRAFT ON INVOLVING ARMENIAN LANGUAGE IN
EXAMS TO GET TEACHING CREDENTIAL

GLENDALE, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. Saro Nazarian
(Glendale), a representative of the Armenian community of California
gave Noyan Tapan additional information concerning the draft law
presented by Dario Frommer, the California State Assembly Majority
Leader. We informed about the draft on May 2 as well. Saro Nazarian,
whose efforts greatly supported presentation of the draft, explains
that Frommer’s draft relates not to teaching the Armenian langauge at
state schools of California (Armenia is already tought in some state
schools of California cities populated with many Armenians), but to
the issue that this draft affirms involvement of the Armenian language
in the state exams called CSET held for getting a Teaching
Credential. The above-mentioned credential, that the California
Commission on Teacher Credentialing confirs, is needed for occupying a
teacher’s post at state schools of California. Without it,
educational regions may not give a job even to experienced teachers.

And one of the most important demands for getting that credential is
passing of two state exams called CBEST and CSET. The level of an
entrant’s knowlegde of English and Mathimatics is estimated by the
CBEST, and by the CSET exam, an entrant factually gets a possibility
to teach different subjects at state schools. And one of those
subjects is language. According to the CSET, the Spanish, French,
German, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian and Vietnamian languages
are considered foreign languages in the sense of the state. As Saro
Nazarian emphasized in one of his articles and in letters addressed to
Sacramento officials on educational and legislative issues, the
Armenian language is not officially involved in the CSET foreign
languages’ list, while California is one of the places of the world
populated with too many Armenians, in state schools of one of biggest
educational regions of which, Los Angeles, many thousands of Armenian
pupils study. The Armenian community representative asked to do works
in the direction of involving the Armenian language in the CSET.

As a result, Deputy Dario Frommer presented the State Parliament draft
No2913 by which the Armenian language is involved in the CSET foreign
languages’ list. “By involvement of the Armenian language in the CSET
foreign languages’ list, our Claifornian Armenian young people,
particularly those pupils of Los Angeles Armenian secondary schools,
who intend to devote themselves to the teaching sphere in future, are
able from now on to seriously think about getting their Teaching
Credential with the Armenian language and becoming a teacher of the
Armenian language,” Saro Nazarian emphasized.