English learners (ELs) constitute a large--and growing--share of the student body in the United States. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that nearly one-quarter of U.S. children speak a language other than English at home. Furthermore, one-third of children under age 8 have at least one parent who speaks a non-English language--these…

Traditionally, the most commonly used methods of forecasting school enrollments have been those that looked to the past for a picture of the future. In restricting the forecaster to projections of past trends, the "percentage survival" technique ignores a host of current trends implicit in a changing society. A second problem with most…