Bigger Ed. Dept. Role Seen in Bush Foreign-Language Plan

Foreign-language experts are praising the Department of Education for taking a larger role in promoting the teaching of other languages as part of a proposed Bush administration initiative to bolster national security and the economy.

The departments of Defense and State have headed up efforts to increase the teaching of much-needed foreign languages, focusing on the university level, while the Education Department has done little to promote language development at the K-12 level, the experts say. The federal government’s list of critical-need languages includes Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Russian.

For at least a decade, the Education Department has supported the teaching of foreign languages, primarily through the Foreign Language Assistance Program. That small grant program gave out $18 million in fiscal 2005 and is budgeted at $22 million in fiscal 2006, with far less than half the money going to the...