Language Access
Recent Activity
The enactment of President Clinton’s Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Executive Order, issued in 2000, triggered a proliferation of efforts to provide services to individuals who cannot speak, understand, read, or write English fluently. With increased service provision, state and local government agencies have expressed a strong and growing interest in assuring the quality and cost-effectiveness of language access services. This paper attempts to catalog and describe some of those tools and practices.
This report examines the funding formula used to distribute Workforce Investment Act Title II federal funds for adult education, literacy, and English as a Second Language instruction, and argues that the formula fails to account for the size and needs of adults with limited English proficiency.
This report seeks to capture the extent of the existing need for adult English language instruction services by analyzing the number and characteristics of lawful permanent residents and unauthorized immigrants, and translating these numbers into estimates of service hours and financial costs necessary to advance the language and literacy skills of these immigrants.
A decade-long panel survey conducted in San Diego, California, and Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, reveals different outcomes among members of the second generation in education, employment, acculturation, incarceration, and family formation. Rubén G. Rumbaut of the University of California, Irvine and Alejandro Portes of Princeton University provide an overview of the latest results.
Richard Alba of the Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at SUNY Albany examines English-language usage among the second and third generations.