PARIS — The Maine Department of Education has increased its world language proficiency requirement for a high school diploma.

Two weeks after some SAD 17 board members expressed concern about the requirement that every student be able to nominally speak a language in addition to English, the Department of Education increased the proficiency requirement.

The proficiency for a high school diploma will now be based on the ability of a student to be an “intermediate mid speaker,” which is considered having conversational linguistic skills.

“They have upped the ante,” School Superintendent Rick Colpitts told the Board of Directors at its meeting Monday night.

Under the new guidelines, a student must demonstrate that they can perform in a second language and “handle a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations.”

Colpitts described the previous requirement to the directors as simply, “If you’re able to get around in a country that’s friendly to Americans — a sympathetic listener, I think is the way they defined it — then you’re OK.”

Proficiency-based education requires students to demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills they are expected to learn, including a world language, before they progress to the next lesson, get promoted to the next grade level or receive a diploma, according to the state statute. It also removes the traditional A-F grading system.

School officials across the state are in the process of determining the best way to implement the new proficiency-based education requirements with what some say is a changing dynamic.

“World language and special education, not to mention career and technical, are areas where I think the state will need to define and redefine as proficiency is implemented,” Colpitts said Tuesday. “They are fairly gray now.”

It will be a challenge to make sure every student is proficient in a second world language, school officials said.

An initial review of foreign language participation in SAD 17 last month showed that of the 1,078 students at the high school, 474 are taking a foreign language. Of that number, 144 students are taking Latin I, II, III, IV or AP Latin, 134 students are enrolled in French I, II, III or IV; 177 are studying Spanish I, II, III or IV, and 19 students are taking Mandarin I or II.

At the middle school, all 479 students receive one trimester of Spanish in seventh and eighth grade.

Colpitts said that six years ago, the district offered an introduction to foreign language at the elementary level, but that offering was cut from the budget around 2009.

Because of the wide-ranging changes in the proficiency-based diploma requirements and the desire to have a plan in place that provides the best opportunities for SAD 17 students, the Board of Directors voted Oct. 6 to approve the district’s proficiency-based diploma extension application.

The district is one of many that applied by the Oct. 18 deadline for more time.

The diploma requirement starts in 2018, unless an extension is granted. If the waiver is approved, SAD 17 will have until 2019 to enact the plan.

[email protected]