Of county residents, 36 percent speak a language other than English at home.

The number of Montgomery County’s public elementary school students with limited English proficiency has risen 43 percent over the past six years, to more than 13,000.

That statistic indicates a growing need for adult English education as well, according to the Montgomery Coalition for Adult English Literacy.

Every limited proficiency student has at least one parent who is not literate in English, the coalition states; in Montgomery, more than half of surveyed adults in English literacy classes are parents.

The most recent data on adult English literacy in Montgomery come from a coalition report presented to the Montgomery County Council’s Education Committee in November. The nonprofit coalition was created by the council and Montgomery College in 2006 to promote teaching English to adults who speak another native language.

Among the report’s findings:

• About 40 percent of adult literacy classes are free, while 38 percent cost less than $50 per session.
• There are 52 ESOL programs that offer classes for beginners, while 47 are for intermediate learners and 22 are for advanced students.
• An estimated 347,900 people, or about 36 percent of the population age 5 and older, speak a language other than English at home.
• Among coalition-funded programs, 78 percent of the students come from South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
• Among the coalition’s grantees, 42 percent of the students are from Silver Spring, while 20 percent are from upcounty and 17 percent are from Rockville.
• Those who say they learn English for economic reasons account for 47 percent of students in programs offered by coalition grantees, while those who plan to use it for “daily living” account for 17 percent.

“They’re largely under-the-radar, grass-roots organizations,” Aryani Ong, president of the coalition’s board of directors, said of the groups teaching the classes. “They’re bearing the burden of educating a future work force.”

The coalition, as part of a $680,000 budget in fiscal 2012, distributes grants for literacy classes to 15 groups, including Casa of Maryland and Boat People SOS, and collects data on all adult literacy programs in the county administered by the college, private employers, private schools and others.

Using data from the past two years, coalition members — including those who do not get direct funding from the coalition — serve about 27,600 people.

“People react with surprise when we tell them that Montgomery County is 40 percent of the state of Maryland’s immigrant population, or 15 percent of the county’s population are limited English-proficient,” Ong said.

A report from the coalition last year noted that 80,000 adults in the county lack enough basic English skills to complete a job application.

Silver Spring has the greatest increase of young learners not proficient in English since 2006, followed by Gaithersburg and Germantown.

In Silver Spring, the number increased by 1,865 such students; in Germantown, the increase was about 550 students; in Gaithersburg, the increase was 840 students.

Despite those statistics, out of the 82 adult literacy programs offered, the greatest number (22) are based in the upcounty, while there are 20 in Silver Spring and 14 in Rockville.

County Councilman Craig L. Rice, a member of the Education Committee, stressed that increased literacy efforts were key to closing achievement gaps in schools, since parents literate in English could provide more help with their children’s schoolwork.

“The school is not there to bring the family into English speaking. I think that’s something that we have to remember,” said Rice (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown.

Read the original story here.

Gazette.net   12/21/2011

by Andrew Ujifusa, Staff Writer