What 1.7 Million Texas and Illinois Students Stand to Lose With Elimination of Federal Program for English Learners

A person waits to serve dinner to asylum seeker families at Romemu Center in New York City on June 27, 2023. The unprecedented arrival of 80,000 asylum seekers since spring 2022 has put pressure on the capacity of the megacity, where dozens of hotels have been transformed into emergency accommodation centers. It has also presented a challenge for the New York public school system, which is the largest in the United States with one million students. Located in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the PS145 school seemed ready to deal with it, with its bilingual Anglo-Spanish and Anglo-Russian educational programs, likely to accommodate children from families fleeing the war in Ukraine. (Credit: Photo by LEONARDO MUNOZ / AFP) (Photo by LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images)

• The House Appropriations Committee voted 34–28 to advance a bill eliminating Title III entirely, filed as H.R. 9260.
• Texas has more than 1.18 million Title III-eligible students according to House Democratic staff, while the state's broader emergent bilingual population has climbed past 1.4 million — roughly one in four public-school students.
• Illinois has roughly 333,000 English learners; its Title III-specific allocation runs about $30 million — far smaller than the $240 million figure often quoted, which actually covers five combined federal grant programs.
• A stopgap funding bill passed the House September 1 and was signed into law September 2, buying Congress until December 11 to settle the fight.
• UnidosUS and 123 partner groups want Congress to fund Title III at $1 billion instead of zero.

A House committee just voted to zero out the only pot of federal money built specifically to teach English to schoolchildren, and the two states with the most students to lose are Texas and Illinois.