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Language courses in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools are opportunities for English-speaking students to acquire the foundation on which advanced study and true fluency in another language is built. The most recent data reveal a downward trend in the share of schools offering courses in languages other than English (LOTE) but an increase in the share of secondary students pursuing such learning opportunities.1

Endnotes

  • 1 The formal education system, the focus of these indicators, is not the only setting in which students can and do develop multilingualism, and thus the levels given here are a conservative estimate of the number of young people engaged in language study. As is noted by the authors of one of the studies on which these indicators are based:

    “Limits of time and resources have made it impossible to survey existing networks of heritage, community-based, afterschool and weekend and summer school programs, which provide significant amounts of training and cultural education for languages such as Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean, and Russian. Well-established summer intensive language programs and language camps, such as Concordia Summer Language Camp, National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), STARTALK, and teacher-led school programs and exchanges have also not been included in the present study, although the aggregate numbers of U.S. school-level participants in the above studies is most certainly relevant to any assessment of overall U.S. language training activity.” (American Councils for International Education, American Council on the Teaching for Foreign Languages, Center for Applied Linguistics, and Modern Language Association, The National K–16 Foreign Language Enrollment Report 2014–15 [Washington, DC: American Councils for International Education, 2016], https://www.americancouncils.org/news/announcements/new-report-world-language-study-us-k-12-schools.)
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Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Assessment of Educational Progress, High School Transcript Study. These estimates were prepared by Brian Cramer (NCES) and Rob Perkins (Westat) at the request of the Humanities Indicators (HI). The HI thanks them for their generous assistance. Data presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

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* Data for this type of course were not collected in 1990.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Assessment of Educational Progress, High School Transcript Study. These estimates were prepared by Brian Cramer (NCES) and Rob Perkins (Westat) at the request of the Humanities Indicators (HI). The HI thanks them for their generous assistance. Data presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

I-11c: Share of K–12 Students Enrolled in LOTE* Courses, by State, Academic Year 2014–2015

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* “LOTE” stands for languages other than English.

Source: American Councils for International Education, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Center for Applied Linguistics, and Modern Language Association, The National K–16 Foreign Language Enrollment Report 2014–15 (Washington, DC: American Councils for International Education, 2016), https://www.americancouncils.org/sites/default/files/FLE-report.pdf. Data presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

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* “LOTE” stands for languages other than English.

Source: American Councils for International Education, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Center for Applied Linguistics, and Modern Language Association, The National K–16 Foreign Language Enrollment Report 2014–15 (Washington, DC: American Councils for International Education, 2016), https://www.americancouncils.org/sites/default/files/FLE-report.pdf. Data presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

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* Change from academic year 1996–1997 is statistically significant at the 5% level.

Source: Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), Foreign Language Teaching in U.S. Schools: Results of a National Survey (Washington, DC: CAL, 2010), 22 fig. 1. Data presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

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* Change from academic year 1996–1997 is statistically significant at the 5% level.

Source: Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), Foreign Language Teaching in U.S. Schools: Results of a National Survey (Washington, DC: CAL, 2010), 23 fig. 2. Data presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

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