A first-of-its-kind national survey sought to examine the state of foreign language education in primary and secondary schools, but found a striking "lack of knowledge about foreign language teaching and learning."

The National K-12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey sought out data on foreign language course enrollment by state and the number of programs by state. The survey also explored the range of languages that are taught in schools and where. The survey was sponsored by the Language Flagship at the Defense Language and National Security Education Office, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Coming on the heels of an American Academy of Arts & Sciences report that concluded that the United States —with its mostly monolingual residents —could face social and economic disadvantages in an increasingly multilingual, global society, the surveyors were only able to collect data from 44 percent of the nation's high school and 38 percent of K-8 schools.

That lack of comprehensive enrollment data on foreign language education in the United States "seriously complicates the analysis of local or national trends, particularly at a time of significant demographic shifts in the U.S. population and a resurgence of interest in foreign language instruction in many school districts around the country," the report authors argue.

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