1. Short title This Act may be cited as the World Language Advancement and Readiness Act of 2017 . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) The national security of the United States continues to depend on language readiness, in particular among the seventeen agencies of the Intelligence Community. (2) The levels of language proficiency required for national security necessitate long sequences of language training for personnel in the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense. (3) The future national security and economic well-being of the United States will depend substantially on the ability of its citizens to communicate and compete by knowing the languages and cultures of other countries. (4) The Federal Government has an interest in ensuring that the employees of its departments and agencies with national security responsibilities are prepared to meet the challenges of this changing international environment. (5) The Federal Government also has an interest in taking actions to alleviate the problem of American students being inadequately prepared to meet the challenges posed by increasing global interaction among nations. (6) American elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges, and universities must place a new emphasis on improving the teaching of foreign languages, area studies, counterproliferation studies, and other international fields to help meet those challenges. 3. World language advancement and readiness grants (a) Program authority The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Education, shall carry out a program under which the Secretary of Defense makes grants, on a competitive basis, to State educational agencies and local educational agencies to pay the Federal share of the cost of innovative model programs providing for the establishment, improvement, or expansion of world language study for elementary school and secondary school students. (b) Duration Each grant under this Act shall be awarded for a period of 3