Valley, in an area ranging from Fresno to Marysville. Fresno County and Sacramento County combined have almost 12,000 Hmong students. As of 2002, of the Hmong students who took the California English Language Development Test, which measures English fluency in students who are learning English, 15% of Hmong scores at the "advanced" or "early advanced" classifications, while 30% of Vietnamese English learning students and 21% of all of California's over 1.5 million English learning students scored at those levels. Suanna Gilman-Ponce, the multilingual education department head of Sacramento City Unified, said that the Hmong students have lower rates due to having parents who speak little English; therefore they enter American schools with few English skills. In addition, their culture was not literate, so Hmong history was not written down and history books did not discuss Hmong history. In 2011, Susan B. Anthony Elementary School in Sacramento established a Hmong-language immersion program. In 2019, Fresno Unified School district began offering dual immersion as well as Elective course offerings for high school students to learn the Hmong language. In the Fresno Unified School District, over 10,000 signatures of support were collected for the naming of a new elementary school for General Vang Pao, a well known leader from the Secret Wars in Laos and the Hmong American diaspora. Colorado Colorado is home to approximately 5,000 Hmong who first settled in the state in the late 1976 to early 1980s. Today, most of the Hmong live in the north metro Denver area including Arvada, Brighton, Broomfield, Federal Heights, Lafayette, Northglenn, Thornton and Westminster. In 1995, Golden, Colorado became the first city in the United States to designate a Lao-Hmong Recognition Day. Since then, other areas in the country followed suit, declaring July 22 “Lao-Hmong Recognition Day”. The establishment of this day recognizes the bravery, sacrifice, and loyalty to the United States exhibited by the Lao-Hmong. The Lao-Hmong Recognition Day was held in recognition and to honor of the Lao-Hmong Special Guerrilla Units (SGU) Veterans, "America’s Secret Army and Most Loyal Allies." The SGUs were composed of indigenous Laotians, especially the Hmong, Lao, Mien, Lue, Khmu and Thaidam tribes, and were known for their patriotism, valiant service, personal sacrifice and loyal support of the United States Armed Forces in Laos during the Vietnam War. "Historically, the Lao-Hmong people were one of our country’s most loyal allies. During the Vietnam War, they fought bravely alongside