How many language-minority children in the United States are limited-English-proficient? How adequate a job are the schools doing in serving these students’ special needs?
As with most issues in bilingual education, considerable controversy swirls around these questions.
Last year, in his report to the Congress on ‘The Condition of Bilingual Education in the United States,” Secretary of Education William J. Bennett estimated that there were 1.2 million to 1.7 million LEP children of school age, based on an analysis of 1980 Census figures.
Ninety-four percent of the students who needed special language services were receiving them, he added.
Mr. Bennett’s figures represented a significant reduction in the department’s previous estimate of 2.4 million to 3.6 million LEP children, ages 5 to 14, based on 1978 data. It also reflected a narrower definition of limited-English proficiency—one which, according to the Secretary, gave a truer picture of the number of students who really need help.
Bilingual-education advocates criticized the department for arbitrarily excluding from its count many children who would be eligible for Title VII services under the law.
The Congress deliberately left the definition broad—not requiring native-language proficiency for students classified as limited in English—argued Daniel M. Ulibarri, former director of the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. “What is relevant,” he said, “is whether a child is likely to [have], or is having, academic difficulties that are language-background related.”
Dorothy Waggoner, a consultant who specializes in language-minority statistics, charged that the department’s figures “underestimate needs and overstate the extent of services” to LEP children.
Ms. Waggoner said that a more accurate estimate, based on the 1980 data, is 3.5 million to 5.3 million such students, representing the range of language-minority children who scored, respectively, below the 20th percentile and below the 40th percentile in English proficiency.
Using the same Census data, the department pared its estimate of LEP students by excluding children above the 19th percentile and by applying a series of external criteria. Such factors, which were not mentioned in the Bilingual Education Act, included the language the child spoke at home and with peers, the language of the head of household, and whether a child was foreign-born.
Mr. Bennett’s estimate that 94 percent of LEP children were being served—in bilingual classrooms or in English-as-a-second language programs, among other ways—was derived from a survey of school districts conducted in 1983-84 by Development Associates under contract with the department The study noted, however, that “districts may tend to define and report LEP students in terms of services provided rather than in terms of external criteria of need.”
A New York City study conducted by the Educational Priorities Panel, a citizens’ advocacy group, concluded that 44,000 of the city’s 110,000 LEP students were not receiving language services.
According to the Education Department’s previous figures of 2.4 million to 3.6 million LEP students, the Development Associates’ estimate of 790,OOO students served would indicate that only 22 percent to 33 percent of LEP children are getting help, Ms. Waggoner contended.
Using the same assumptions, calculations indicate that federal Title VII grants support programs for 5 percent to 8 percent of the LEP population.
Critics of the department’s new figures also argue that the data omit large numbers of LEP children who have immigrated to the United States since 1980. In California, for instance, the state estimates that the number of LEP children jumped from 326,000 in 1980 to 567,000 in 1986—a 73 percent increase.
