Guided by Critical Language Policy (Tollefson, 2006) and Ethnography of Language Policy (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007), this comparative case study (Barlet & Vavrus, 2017) explored Ohio’s Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) implementation in urban, suburban, and rural district typologies. In each district typology this study aimed to answer the research questions on a) discourses in SoBL policy and promotional texts, b) the current state of SoBL implementation in Ohio, c) district-level implementation of the SoBL, d) student perspectives, e) successes and challenges in the SoBL implementation, and f) stakeholders’ recommendations to ensure equity and accessibility of the SoBL implementation. To answer the research questions, thirty-five stakeholders, including the state SoBL representative, world language teachers, ESL instructors, school counselors, principals, and former SoBL recipients were recruited in two urban, two suburban, and one rural school district in Ohio. The findings revealed that the Globalized Human Capital (GHC) discourses (Valdez et al., 2016) based on neoliberal language ideologies took precedence in the SoBL legislation, promotional texts, and interviews in addressing the value and benefits of SoBL. Findings also revealed that the SoBL promotion, outreach, accessibility, and policy implementation challenges varied in each district typology.
While there were unique challenges in each district typology such as student identification, lack of reliable internet access, world language teacher shortage, lack of staffing, and the timing and planning of language assessments were the recurring SoBL implementation challenges across the cases. Concurring with other SoBL participant states, this study found that Ohio’s SoBL favored English-dominant students who studied world languages in formal classroom settings. While the SoBL was perceived as a potential equalizer for the linguistically minoritized students in the urban districts, the high English proficiency requirement of SoBL, and lack of heritage (HL) language course offerings, put ELs and HL speakers at a disadvantage across the districts. While some of the recurrent policy recommendations by the policy agents were better promotion and outreach, interdepartmental collaboration, and alternative assessments such as portfolios, students recommended earlier language instruction, better support for language departments, funding for low-income school districts, and broader recognition of SoBL by universities and colleges. The findings of this study have implications for the policymakers and policy agents in both SoBL participant and non-participant school districts in Ohio. The findings in different district typologies and the recommendations in this study, also have implications for stakeholders in other SoBL participant districts across the U.S. to ensure equitable and accessible policy implementation.