Select a subgroup characteristic from the drop-down menu below to view relevant text and figures.
NOTE: U.S. average is for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Excludes EL students who are enrolled in prekindergarten. Categorizations are based on unrounded percentages.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, EDFacts file 141, Data Group 678, extracted March 31, 2021; and Common Core of Data (CCD), “Local Education Agency Universe Survey,” 2020–21. See Digest of Education Statistics 2022, table 204.20.
NOTE: Data in this figure represent the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Data are based on locales of school districts. Excludes EL students who are enrolled in prekindergarten.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, EDFacts file 141, Data Group 678, extracted December 10, 2021; and Common Core of Data (CCD), “Local Education Agency Universe Survey,” 2020–21. See Digest of Education Statistics 2022, table 214.40.
1 Ungraded students can include elementary/secondary school students of any age. Also includes students reported as being enrolled in grade 13.
NOTE: Data in this figure represent the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, EDFacts file 141, Data Group 678, extracted October 10, 2022; and Common Core of Data (CCD), “State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education,” 2020–21. See Digest of Education Statistics 2022, table 204.27.
Home language | Number of EL students | Percentage distribution of EL students1 | Number of EL students as a percent of total enrollment |
---|---|---|---|
Spanish, Castilian | 3,745,460 | 75.5 | 7.8 |
Arabic | 128,641 | 2.6 | 0.3 |
English2 | 124,917 | 2.5 | 0.3 |
Chinese | 93,339 | 1.9 | 0.2 |
Vietnamese | 73,075 | 1.5 | 0.2 |
Portuguese | 43,426 | 0.9 | 0.1 |
Russian | 37,159 | 0.7 | 0.1 |
Haitian, Haitian Creole | 30,063 | 0.6 | 0.1 |
Hmong | 28,719 | 0.6 | 0.1 |
Urdu | 25,192 | 0.5 | 0.1 |
1 Detail does not sum to 100 percent because not all home language categories are shown.
2 Examples of situations in which English might be reported as an English learner's home language include students who live in multilingual households and students adopted from other countries who were raised speaking another language but currently live in households where English is spoken.
NOTE: Data in this table represent the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Excludes EL students who are enrolled in prekindergarten.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, EDFacts file 141, Data Group 678, extracted October 10, 2022; and Common Core of Data (CCD), “State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education,” 2020–21. See Digest of Education Statistics 2022, table 204.27.
1 Total public school enrollment also decreased during the first school year of the coronavirus pandemic. For more information, see Public School Enrollment.
2 Categorizations are based on unrounded percentages.
3 Saunders, W. M., and Marcelletti, D. J. (2013). The Gap That Can’t Go Away: The Catch-22 of Reclassification in Monitoring the Progress of English Learners. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35(2): 139–156. Retrieved November 25, 2022, from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0162373712461849.
4 School year 2009–10 data include all ELs enrolled at any time during the 2009–10 school year, except data for California, which reflect ELs enrolled on a single date. All other data in this indicator include only ELs enrolled on October 1 of the corresponding year.
5 The number of Hispanic ELs is larger than the number of ELs whose reported home language is Spanish. Some Hispanic ELs speak a language other than Spanish at home (such as a language that is indigenous to Latin America). In addition, home language data may be missing for some Hispanic ELs.