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Statement by
Delia Pompa
Director
Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs
Before the House Appropriations Subcommittee
on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education
on the
Fiscal Year 1999 Budget Request
for Bilingual and Immigrant Education
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am pleased to appear before the Committee today to testify on the fiscal year 1999 budget request for Bilingual and Immigrant Education.
Because there has been so much confusion recently in the press about bilingual education and what bilingual educators believe, I would like to begin by clarifying several issues. First and most important, all bilingual educators believe that limited English proficient (LEP) children must learn English and achieve to the same high standards as all other students. LEP students participating in bilingual programs are learning English. They are being taught through a variety of strategies that work for different students in different situations, but strengthening students' facility in English is the goal of each of these strategies.
Most LEP students come from low-income families with parents who have limited formal education. In addition, they must struggle to learn a new language while progressing in other academic subjects. Consequently, it is not surprising that these students, particularly Hispanics, drop out of school at rates far higher than other students.
LEP students do not all come to our schools with the same needs. They come to our schools with different levels of proficiency in English, at different ages, and with different levels of educational achievement. One instructional model will not address the needs of all children. The current Bilingual Education Act is well designed to provide the flexibility that school districts need to implement the instructional program that best meets the needs of their students. Federal support for the bilingual education program is essential, especially as the number of LEP children continues to increase and many school districts with no prior experience in serving these students must meet the challenge of providing a high-quality education for these students.
In order for LEP students to learn English quickly and to achieve to high standards, they must be taught by well-trained teachers in programs that use specially designed English instruction and, where possible, native language instruction that supports language and content learning. These students must have access to a quality curriculum that is linked to State and national standards. Their progress in language and content learning must be periodically assessed and the results used to modify instruction. Finally, the overall instructional program must be evaluated on an ongoing basis to determine its effectiveness.
The fiscal year 1999 budget request for Bilingual and Immigrant Education strongly supports our policy of helping school districts build their capacity to teach English to LEP students and to help these students achieve to the same high standards as all other students.
Census data suggest that instructional programs for LEP students, including the programs we fund, are effective in teaching English. While the number of children who speak a language other than English at home grew by 1.8 million during the past decade, 71 percent of that increase was among those children who speak English very well. The data thus indicate that language minority students in 1990 were significantly more proficient in English than language minority students in 1980.
In addition to the Bilingual Education program, there are also two other programs in this account. The Foreign Language Assistance program assists States and local educational agencies in implementing high-quality foreign language instructional programs, particularly at the elementary level.
The Immigrant Education program helps school districts that serve large numbers of recently arrived immigrant students. School districts typically use these funds to provide instructional services to new immigrants and other limited English proficient students.
For Instructional Services, our request is $168 million, $8 million more than the 1998 appropriation. This increase would serve an estimated 104,000 more students than in 1998. This increase will help keep pace with the rapid growth in the number of limited English proficient students. More than 70 percent of all limited English proficient students are Spanish speakers. By promoting the educational success of LEP students, bilingual programs supported under Instructional Services directly address the high dropout rate for Hispanic students.
For Support Services, our request is $14 million, the same as the 1998 amount. The request provides funding needed to make continuation grants to 49 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the territories to enable them to work with schools to improve the quality of instructional programs for LEP students. We are also requesting funds for the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education to make data available to practitioners on effective instructional services and for 14 Academic Excellence grants to disseminate information on instructional and professional development models that are validated by a State review process. Finally, we are requesting funds for studies and evaluations needed to chart progress towards the performance goals we have established for this program pursuant to Government Performance and Results Act.
As part of the Administration's Hispanic Initiative, the Department requests $50 million for Professional Development, double the amount appropriated in 1998. This amount would fund 227 pre-service and in-service projects at colleges and universities and 500 fellowship awards. Several recent studies have documented that schools have great difficulty in finding trained bilingual and English as a second language teachers. Moreover, a 1992 evaluation of bilingual professional development projects found that our program is extremely effective in preparing teachers to teach LEP students; this study found that 77 percent of the participants in the program subsequently obtained employment teaching LEP students.
My colleagues and I will be happy to respond to any questions you have regarding the 1999 budget request for Bilingual and Immigrant Education.
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