Language Spoken at Home and Difficulty Speaking English

Children who speak languages other than English at home and who also have difficulty speaking English17 may face greater challenges progressing in both school and the labor market. Once it is determined that a student speaks another language, school officials must, by law, evaluate the child's facility with English and provide services such as special instruction to improve the child's English, if needed. A limited-English-speaking household is a household in which no one age 14 or over speaks only English at home, and no one age 14 or over speaks a language other than English at home and speaks English "very well."

Indicator FAM5: Percentage of children ages 5–17 who speak a language other than English at home and who have difficulty speaking English or live in a limited-English-speaking household, 2010–2019
Indicator FAM5: Percentage of children ages 5–17 who speak a language other than English at home and who have difficulty speaking English or live in a limited-English-speaking household, 2010–2019

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey.

  • In 2019, about 23% of school-age children spoke a language other than English at home, and 4% of school-age children both spoke a language other than English at home and had difficulty speaking English.
  • The percentage of school-age children who spoke a language other than English at home increased by 1 percentage point from 2010 to 2019, from about 22% to about 23%.
  • At the same time, the number of school-age children who spoke a language other than English at home and had difficulty speaking English decreased from about 5% in 2010 to about 4% in 2019.
  • In 2010, about 6% of school-age children spoke a language other than English at home and lived in limited-English-speaking households. This percentage declined to about 5% in 2015 and remained at about 5% in 2019.
  • The percentage of school-age children who spoke a language other than English at home varied by region of the country in 2019, from a low of 13% in the Midwest to a high of 32% in the West.
  • In 2019, the percentage of school-age children who had difficulty speaking English also varied by region, from a low of 3% in the Midwest to a high of 5% in the West.
  • Approximately 55% of school-age Asian-alone children and 60% of school-age Hispanic children spoke a language other than English at home in 2019 compared with 6% of White-alone, non-Hispanic and 8% of Black-alone, non-Hispanic school-age children.18
  • In 2019, approximately 12% of school-age Asian-alone and 11% of school-age Hispanic children spoke another language at home and had difficulty speaking English compared with about 1% of White-alone, non-Hispanic and 1% of Black-alone, non-Hispanic school-age children.19

table icon FAM5 HTML Table

17 Adult respondents were asked if the children in the household spoke a language other than English at home and how well they could speak English. Categories used for reporting how well children could speak English were "Very well," "Well," "Not well," and "Not at all." All those who were reported to speak English less than "Very well" were considered to have difficulty speaking English based on an evaluation of the English-speaking ability of a sample of children in the 1980s.

18 Federal surveys now give respondents the option of reporting more than one race. Therefore, two basic ways of defining a race group are possible. A group such as Black may be defined as those who reported Black and no other race (the race-alone or single-race concept) or those who reported Black regardless of whether they also reported another race (the race-alone or- in-combination concept). This indicator shows data using the first approach (race-alone). Use of the single-race population does not imply that it is the preferred method of presenting or analyzing data. The U.S. Census Bureau uses a variety of approaches. Data on race and Hispanic origin are collected separately. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race. The percentages of Asian-alone, non-Hispanic; White-alone, non-Hispanic; and Black-alone, non-Hispanic school children who spoke a language other than English at home were statistically different from each other.

19 The percentages of Asian-alone, non-Hispanic; White-alone, non-Hispanic; and Black-alone, non-Hispanic children ages 5–17 who spoke English less than "Very well" were statistically different from each other.

Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics

Explore

More Information

Contact