The U.S. government encourages the study of critical languages spoken in geographic areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security and the global economy through a variety of discretionary grants and scholarship programs. U.S. students are traditionally underrepresented in the study of these languages; however, many of the nation's K-12…

Data from the Survey of Income and Education, conducted nationwide by the Bureau of the Census and the National Center for Education Statistics, provided information on the birthplace and language characteristics of persons of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pilipino, and Vietnamese origin in the spring of 1976. The largest single group within this…