Great news about ATASC-San Diego Turkish Children’s School!
The ATASC-San Diego Turkish Children’s School “High School Credit/School Accreditation” application has been approved by the San Diego Unified School District in January 2009.
The Turkish School has qualified to the Accreditation Standards of the San Diego Unified School District. The committee also approved the request to make this accreditation retroactive to the beginning of the school year in September 2009. Thus, all the class credits/hours obtained by the students for this year can be applied towards the 140 hours required by the language accreditation program.
ATASC-SD would like to thank Mr. Alan Svidal, Dr. Norman Leonard, Dr. Yasemin Turan Quian and all the Turkish School Committee Members for their tremendous efforts in making this come true. The Turkish School Board has applied to the San Diego Unified School District in December 2008, for students to be able to get a language credit for Turkish in their high schools. The Turkish School Board is currently working on the application to be submitted to the Poway School District.
And I had a chance to talk with the president of ATASC-SD Turkish School Murat Ertas about educational accreditation and more for Turkish Journal…
“San Diego Unified School District approved our application to get accredited with our language education. ATASC-SD Turkish School now can issue credits to their students towards their high school education to show that they know a foreign language (Turkish) with the hours spent in Turkish School” Ertas says.
This way, ATASC-SD Turkish School students will not only improve their Turkish, they will now also be able to use those hours as credits in their high school education.
And I guess another factor in this is all high school students in US need to learn a foreign language in high school. Is that right?
Yes it is, but since there is no Turkish offered here in regular high schools, all students of Turkish speaking parents were not able to use their advantage to get easily credit with their Turkish even if they can understand and speak it.
Another question I have is what are the options?
All Turkish School students now can get their Turkish knowledge to their advantage in their high school education and choose one of the two options in front of them:
1) They can choose not to take another language class in high school (Spanish, French etc.) and use those hours to take more advanced classes in other subjects to their advantage in college applications.
2) They can still choose to take another language in high school but with Turkish School credits they will be able to show that they speak two foreign languages (Turkish and other language they took in high school) which will be again to their advantage in their college applications.
Lastly, Ertas wants to tell: “ATASC-SD Turkish School is very excited to be able to provide this advantage to their students in addition to learning their native language and the basic knowledge about their motherland.”
If you would like your children to get a language credit for Turkish as these 35 families enrolled in the program, please contact the Turkish School Board at [email protected]. Registration is still available.
(Turkish Journal)
