Jeff Bingaman: “A substantial increase for bilingual education is particularly important for my home State and your willingness to…”

“A substantial increase for bilingual education is particularly important for my home State and your willingness to continue to work on increasing funds for this program is appreciated. In New Mexico, there are almost 70,000 LEP students--over 20 percent of our total student population the national average is 7.8 percent and only California has a larger percentage of LEP students--24 percent. I should note that this program also is essential to our Native American population. For many Native Americans, English is a second language. These students need educational programs that help preserve their native language while helping them to gain greater proficiency in English and to achieve in core academic subjects. I also am pleased that we will be able to triple funding for the dropout prevention program that I sponsored in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In my home State, the annual Hispanic dropout rate was more than twice that of non-Hispanic whites in 1999. This program will provide funds to implement proven, research-based dropout prevention strategies and will help provide greater national coordination in our dropout prevention efforts.”