Program Information
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and a team of experts at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, are working together to develop a modular online training program for people who would like to be designated as "qualified IEP interpreters". This program is a blend of synchronous and asynchronous online training and testing sessions, consisting of these three (3) modules:
- Language Proficiency Testing (in English and the target language)
- Special Education Terminology and Practices Training and Testing (6 hours)
- Interpreting Training and Testing (at least 9 hours)
Read more about ISBE's requirements for trainees and the training program requirements.
Languages
There are approximately 166 languages other than English spoken by children (and their parents) in Illinois school districts. ISBE has tasked our team to begin with the five most-commonly spoken languages other than English: Spanish, Polish, Arabic, Urdu and Russian. All five of these languages are available as part of the training program. It is our hope that after these first five years, we will be able to add more languages at a faster pace, provided that funding from the state continues to be available.
We are a team of linguists and language professionals, and we recognize that there are numerous and sometimes significant differences between language varieties (“dialects”) and accents. It is logistically impossible to accommodate all language varieties, however. For that reason, our materials feature varieties that are accessible to most speakers of the language.
Cost of Training
Participation in the TQII Program is free of charge. The only requirement on the part of trainees is that they will need a reliable high-speed internet connection.
Demonstration of Language Proficiency
Please refer to the "Demonstration of Language Proficiency" tab.