Over one-half of Hispanic students speak mostly English at home, and almost three-quarters of these students have a mother who was born in the United States.

One of the challenges currently facing schools is providing equal educational opportunities to students from various cultural backgrounds, some of whom are not proficient in English. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1999, of the 71 percent of Hispanic children ages 5 to 17 who spoke another language at home, 23 percent had difficulty speaking English.¹²

In 1999, over one-half (57 percent) of Hispanic students in kindergarten through 12th grade spoke mostly English at home, onefourth (25 percent) spoke mostly Spanish, and 17 percent spoke English and Spanish equally (supplemental table 5.3). Almost onehalf (47 percent) of Hispanic students had mothers who were born in the United States (supplemental table 5.3a).¹³

Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of the students who spoke mostly English at home had a mother who was born in the United States. Ninety-two percent of Hispanic students who spoke mostly Spanish at home had a mother who was born outside the United States (supplemental table 5.3b).

Household language and parental education attainment are related. Hispanic students who speak mostly Spanish at home are less likely than those who speak mostly English at home to have parents who had at least graduated from high school. For example, in 1999, 49 percent of Hispanic students who spoke mostly Spanish at home had parents with a high school education or higher, compared to 83 percent of those who spoke mostly English at home.¹⁴

12  Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2002 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office).
13  U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education, 2000 (NCES 2000-062).
14  Ibid.