Home › Education › World Languages › In American Schools

Language Funding in Jeopardy

Share

(DNY59/istockphoto)
enlarge image

(DNY59/istockphoto)

Foreign Language Assistance Program Cuts


In an effort to prevent government shut down, the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a proposal, HR 1, which contains $100 billion in cuts from the President’s FY 2011 budget request. To reach that number the House cut billions through eliminations, reductions, and rescissions, including the elimination of the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) within the Department of Education.

FLAP is the only source of federal education funding for K-12 foreign language innovation and best practices. The $26.9 million in funding are being used to develop programs in critical languages to help support our economic and national security interests and prepare our graduates to compete in the 21st century. The US Department of Education awards, on average, between 25-35 FLAP grants each year to local education agencies and state education agencies.

Last Friday, March 4th, the Senate Democratic Leadership introduced their version of a seven-month Continuing Resolution which would maintain FLAP funding at the current levels. In contrast, the House-passed CR would cut $51 billion more than the Senate measure, with the vast majority of House cuts coming from non-defense spending. The Senate will vote on HR 1—the House proposal and the Democratic alternative, on Tuesday March 8th. Although neither is expected to get the 60 votes needed to advance, the votes will set the parameters for the upcoming budget negotiations and determine the final level for FLAP funding this year.

Need for Increased World Language Programs

Only 25 percent of elementary schools in the United States offered any world languages in 2008, down from 31 percent in 1997. American secondary schools offer more opportunities yet involvement is still low; currently, only half of all American high school students take even one year of a world language. Like many other academic advantages, language-learning opportunities are less available in urban schools than in suburban or private schools. For the past fifty years, school language choices have remained for the most part the same commonly taught European languages. Many FLAP grants aim to change this, focusing on programs that provide students the opportunity to learn a critical need foreign language such as Mandarin or Arabic.

The American language-education offerings contrast markedly with those of other countries where learning a second language is a higher priority. Twenty out of twenty-five industrialized countries start teaching world languages in grades K-5 and twenty-one of the thirty-one countries in the European Union require nine years of language study. It is not surprising that a 2007 report from the National Academy of Sciences warned, “The pervasive lack of knowledge of foreign cultures and languages threatens the security of the United States as well as its ability to compete in the global marketplace and produce an informed citizenry.”

To find out more about FLAP grants and where they have been awarded, please see: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oela/funding.html 

Notes

Presentation by Shuhan Wang, Finding Solutions: Reforming World Language Teacher Supply System. STARTALK 2009 Teacher Certification Summit. December 2009. Accessed: http://startalk.umd.edu/2009/meetings/certification/

National Academy of Sciences, Rising above the gathering storm: Energizing and employing America for a brighter economic future. (2007) Available: http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309100399/html

Discussion Question

What can we do to help save the FLAP program?

 

kate | 03:15:11 03:31pm
I have seen in the school district that my mom works for the administration don't care about global competiveness at all. That was seen by its move of axing both the French program and its 6th grade program during her term as a teacher there and its Japanese and German teachers not having job security - they are living from semester to semester. Those two programs are always at risk of being axed. If these administrators of this school district were really concerned about global competiveness then they would have axed those things and both the German and Japanese teachers would have had job security. And of course they would have expanded the number of languages offered or extended it to the 4th and/or 5th graders. That goes the same for the govenor of Wisconsin, home state, Scott Walker.
Stephen Elliott | 03:14:11 11:08am
This is very disturbing, especially with an Asia that now has both the world's second and third largest economies. As someone who received Federal support (A FLAS Scholarship) to study Japanese as an adult over 20 years ago, who then lived in Tokyo for nearly a decade and was involved with Japan far longer, I know how very hard it is to learn a language like Japanese to the point that one is able to function professionally. Clearly, one ought to start as a child, as my sons did, but not all people are able to arrange where their parents take them to live as children! Nor can we assume an adequate supply of such "accidents" for our economy and society. And even if we do, how can those languages be systematically maintained once a child returns to the US? We do not need to start with the hardest languages at a young age, but at the very least we need some foreign language exposure early just to give school children the confidence that some degree of mastery is possible (and to stimulate an interest in foreign languages) before they take on far harder languages.

Post new comment

Your comments are welcome, please adhere to our guidelines

Be respectful. Personal attacks will not be tolerated; nor will profane, abusive or threatening posts.

Keep it short (150 words or less), Stay on topic.

Asia Society reserves the right to moderate all comments and remove or edit for guideline violations. Thank you.

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Type the characters you see in this picture. (verify using audio)
Type the characters you see in the picture above; if you can't read them, submit the form and a new image will be generated. Not case sensitive.