Characteristics of the responding institutions

Because our survey deals with language programs, it is a little unclear how much of the information is respondent specific (i.e., the opinions of the individual actually filling out the survey) and how much is institution specific. Of the 169 responses, 109 were from public schools while 58 were from private schools. Not surprisingly, Spanish, French, and German were the three most common languages. Table 1 shows all of the languages reported and Table 2 shows the response distribution by state.

Table 1: Languages taught in various programs

Language	Programs
Spanish	120
French	90
German	70
Italian	35
Japanese	32
Russian	32
Chinese	31
Spanish for Spanish speakers	18
Portuguese	13
Hebrew	9
Arabic	8
Korean	6
Vietnamese	5
Swahili	3
Thai	3
Dutch	2
ESL	2
Filipino	2
Irish	2
ASL	1
Burmese	1
Farsi	1
Modern Greek	1
Hindi	1
Indonesian	1
Norwegian	1
Ojibwe	1
Polish	1
Swedish	1
Tagalog	1
Urdu	1

Table 2: Geographical location of programs

State	Responses
California	22
New York	14
Illinois	12
Minnesota	8
Pennsylvania	8
Iowa	7
Massachusetts	7
Michigan	7
Ohio	6
Wisconsin	6
Tennessee	5
Hawaii	4
Texas	4
Virginia	4
Connecticut	3
Florida	3
Georgia	3
Indiana	3
Kentucky	3
Louisiana	3
Missouri	3
New Jersey	3
Oregon	3
Washington, D.C.	2
Kansas	2
Nevada	2
Oklahoma	2
Rhode Island	2
Vermont	2
Arizona	1
Arkansas	1
Colorado	1
Delaware	1
Mississippi	1
New Hampshire	1
New Mexico	1
North Carolina	1
Puerto Rico	1
South Carolina	1
Washington	1

Although the surveys were initially mailed to department chairs, a cover letter instructed the chairs to pass on the questionnaire to the person in the department most involved in placement testing. The self-reported job description of the respondents can be seen in Table 3, with teacher being the most common answer.

Table 3: Self-reported job description

Position	N
Language teacher	76
Foreign language department chair	57
School foreign language coordinator	16
Language resource center director	6
Testing coordinator	4
State foreign language coordinator	1
District foreign language coordinator	1