Thread: Limited English Proficiency

Limited English Proficiency

Enrollment and Rapidly Rising Costs

Introduction

The number of students in special English classes is rapidly rising during a period when overall public school enrollment in kindergarten through high school education is slightly declining.

Over the ten-year period up to 2005, the number of students registered in Limited English Proficiency (LEP) programs increased by more than 1.2 million students. That was an increase of more than 38 percent and took the total number of students in these programs to nearly 4.5 million persons. Over the same period, total enrollment nationwide dropped by
nearly half a million students — a one percent decline.

These programs to assist non-English speakers adapt to the educational environment in public schools are costly to local taxpayers and an added fiscal burden at the national level. In addition, expenditures on these remedial programs may absorb resources that otherwise would be
available for native-English speaking students.

The upward trend in LEP enrollment parallels the upward trend in the illegal immigrant population. We estimate that there are more than 3.5 million children of illegal immigrants in K-12 public school classes. While public schooling may not be denied to the children of illegal immigrants under the Plyler v. Doe ruling of the Supreme Court in 1982 —based on an interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—the additional costs of providing English language instruction was not addressed by that ruling. As such,
it remains an open issue as to whether a school system has discretion to restrict LEP enrollment to only students who are U.S. citizens and legal residents.

Costs of LEP Instruction

The cost to the taxpayer of English language instruction programs in public schools is considerable. Most of the expenditures are at the state level, but there is also federal support in Title III of the No Child Left Behind legislation which provides grants to schools and/or school districts
with 150 or more LEP students. Expenditures and enrollment in the state programs vary widely among the states including some as recently as 2000 that had no LEP program, which makes an estimate of total expenditures on these programs difficult. In addition, funding
comes from different sources; federal, state and local. Published data suggest that state expenditures may range from $290 per student (Idaho — 2007) to $711 per student (Tennessee — 2007).1 A similar higher level of $674 per student is reported for Minnesota (2006). In the case of Tennessee, the reported local share of the funding program amounts to an additional expenditure of $487 per LEP enrollee. The state
also has adopted a grant for the 2007-08 school year of $14.9 million to increase the number of teachers and translators working in the program.

The combination of the state and local expenditures amount to about $1,200 per student without including the supplemental appropriation.
Using an arbitrary estimate of $1,000 per student, would suggest that state and local expenditures nationwide may be greater than $4 billion per year for the nearly 4.5 million students in these programs.

Federal outlays in the Title III program amount to another $90 per student, adding an additional $400 million to the cost to the taxpayer. In addition, there are other federal grant programs that add further to the cost of remedial English instruction.

Not all of the students enrolled in these programs are immigrants or children of immigrants, although most likely are. In some areas where there are large Native American populations, some students in
LEP programs come from that population. For example, in Idaho, the second largest language category in that state’s program is Shoshone. However, the native language of more than 74 percent of the students in LEP programs in the state is Spanish. It is also probable that some of the students in these programs will be the children of legal immigrants
or persons on extended nonimmigrant visas. Nevertheless, there is no other change in the flow of foreigners into the country other than the flow of illegal immigrants that would explain this surge in LEP enrollment. Thus, a large majority of the expenditures on LEP students is likely a cost that can be attributed to the children of illegal immigrants, whether or not these children were born abroad or in the United States.