Letter to Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education and Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services - Consideration of English Language Learning When Awarding Educational Grants

Letter

Dear Secretary Duncan and Secretary Sebelius:

On behalf of our country's over 5 million English language learning (ELL) students, we write to urge you to consider English language acquisition when designing the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge.

We all know that English language acquisition and literacy is key to the success of all students in the United States. In addition, studies have shown that language acquisition is most successful early in life.

The Early Learning Challenge presents an ideal opportunity to increase English language acquisition for early learners, and we urge you to ensure that the needs of ELL students are acknowledged and addressed in this vital program.

As nationally recognized economists note, investments in high-quality early childhood education are vital to improving the long-term educational and economic health of our country. With ELL students comprising over one-tenth of our K-12 student population, failure to equip our young ELLs with language skills is something our country cannot afford.

By 2018, our workforce need will need 22 million more workers with college degrees. In order to meet this need for educated workers we must ensure that more ELL students successfully learn English so they can attain high school diplomas and matriculate to college.

Ensuring that all students start school ready to learn is essential to ensuring that we meet our goal of having the best-educated workforce and the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.