New National K-12 Report Shows Renewed Interest in Language Learning

A new report, National K-12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey Report, provides a comprehensive update on the state of K-12 and K-16 foreign language enrollment data in the United States, where more than 21 percent of households speak a language other than English at home. The report is sponsored by the American Councils for International Education, in partnership with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, the Center for Applied Linguistics, the Modern Language Association, and the National Councils for State Supervisors for Foreign Languages.According to the report, its goal is to help school districts, state departments of education, researchers, and government agencies identify schools receptive to language program expansion and improvement. Pilot programs in the identified schools can consequently serve as a model for other schools across the nation. The lack of consistent and comprehensive data on enrollment at the K-12 level hinders these groups to properly assess the state of foreign language education in the US and thus also the policies that surround it.Survey results also show that despite the availability of new teaching approaches, such as online or hybrid, the norm is still a face-to-face language teaching method. Alternatively, due to low enrollment in language classes, schools typically try to adopt online and extracurricular options. The problem lies in the low awareness of the value of languages among parents and students despite the demand for bilingual workers having doubled from 2010-2015.  The driving force for the presence of language programs in schools is parents.The report was launched at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C on June 1, 2017. At the event, report sponsors explained that more school districts are investing in dual-language immersion programs, but do not yet know the full impact or how to defend their presence and costs to school boards. According to the report, many schools are beginning to rely on neighboring institutions to bolster language programs in danger of disappearing due to limited resources.Key highlights of the report, include:

• 44 states plus DC report there is a world language/bilingual teacher shortage.
• New Jersey and DC have the highest percentage of K-12 students enrolled in a foreign language: 51.18% and 47.17% respectively.
• Spanish is the most widely taught program across all grades and accounts for 46% of all high school language programs.
• Chinese is the most popular Flagship language (Flagship languages include Arabic, Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, and Turkish); 80% of students in a Flagship program are enrolled in Chinese.
• 84% of K-8 students in the Euro zone are enrolled in a foreign language program while only 20% of K-12 students in the US are enrolled.

To help defend the presence and value of languages in school, the report made the following recommendation:

• “An effort should be undertaken to study the feasibility of comprehensive and consistent data collection across the pre-K-12 system.”
• “A national mandate, parallel to those fore STEM, to mandate compliance with language education data collection.”
• “Documentation of language learning efforts outside the formal education system in private and public sectors, particularly focused on technology-enabled instruction and practice, and in heritage communities across the country.”