U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

33–872 PDF 2007

S. Hrg. 110–84

LOST IN TRANSLATION: A REVIEW OF THE

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS TO DEVELOP

A FOREIGN LANGUAGE STRATEGY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT 

OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JANUARY 25, 2007

Available via http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL 

WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Staff Director 

JENNIFER A. HEMINGWAY, Minority Staff Director 

EMILY MARTHALER, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 1

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 3

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2007

Hon. Michael L. Dominguez, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, 

Personnel and Readiness, U.S. Department of Defense ................................... 6

Holly Kuzmich, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs for Secretary 

of Education Margaret Spellings, U.S. Department of Education ................... 7

Everette E. Jordan, Director, National Virtual Translation Center, on behalf 

of the Federal Bureau of Investigations ............................................................. 9

Rita Oleksak, President, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages ................................................................................................................... 22

Michael Petro, Vice President and Director of Business and Government 

Relations, and Chief of Staff, Committee for Economic Development ............. 24

Diane W. Birckbichler, Ph.D., Director, Foreign Language Center and Chair 

of the Department of French and Italian, Ohio State University .................... 26

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Birckbichler, Diane W., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 26

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 91

Dominguez, Hon. Michael L.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 39

Jordan, Everette E.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 68

Kuzmich, Holly: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 61

Oleksak, Rita: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 22

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 72

Petro, Michael: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 24

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 87

APPENDIX 

Letter from Bret Lovejoy, Executive Director, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, dated February 2, 2007, to Senators Akaka 

and Voinovich ....................................................................................................... 98

Background Memorandum ...................................................................................... 100

(1)

LOST IN TRANSLATION: A REVIEW OF THE 

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS TO 

DEVELOP A FOREIGN LANGUAGE STRATEGY 

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2007

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT

MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE,

AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:44 p.m., in room 

342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Akaka and Voinovich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Chairman AKAKA. I call this hearing of the Subcommittee on 

Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and 

the District of Columbia to order. 

Before we begin, I want to say how much I have enjoyed working 

with Senator Voinovich. He has been a great leader. 

I have worked very well with him, and I look forward to continue 

to work with him in a bipartisan manner and maybe I should say 

at this time even better than a bipartisan manner. We have been 

good friends and our goals are the same: To do whatever we can 

to help our country move forward. 

I look forward to our continued partnership to improve government programs and make the Federal Government an employer of 

choice. He has been working real hard on that, and we will see 

what we can do together in the next few years. 

Today’s hearing, ‘‘Lost in Translation: A Review of the Federal 

Government’s Efforts to Develop a Foreign Language Strategy,’’ 

will examine a critical issue for both our national and economic security: What is the Federal Government’s strategy for addressing 

the shortfall of Americans with foreign language proficiency? 

The Federal Workforce Subcommittee has been looking at the 

Federal Government’s ability to recruit and retain language-proficient individuals since the year 2000. For the last 6 years, I have 

tried along with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to encourage 

the Administration to address the government’s foreign language 

needs. 

2

It has become clear that while agencies can offer incentives for 

individuals with language skills to work for the Federal Government, it is increasingly more difficult to do so when there is a severe shortage of language skills in the American workforce. That 

is why today we are discussing the Federal Government’s efforts to 

address this challenge from all fronts. 

We know that proficiency in other languages is critical to ensuring our national security. The inability of law enforcement officers, 

intelligence officers, scientists, and military personnel to interpret 

information from foreign sources, as well as interact with foreign 

nationals, presents a threat to their mission and to the well-being 

of our Nation. 

I remember FBI Director Robert Mueller shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, making a plea for speakers 

of Arabic and Farsi to help the FBI and national security agencies 

translate documents that were in U.S. possession but left untranslated because there were not enough employees with the right 

language skills. 

Unfortunately, this is not surprising. The United States is well 

known for lagging far behind much of the world with respect to emphasizing foreign language education. 

According to the 2000 census, only 9.3 percent of Americans 

speak both their native language and another language fluently, 

compared with 56 percent of citizens in the European Union. What 

is alarming is that 5 years after September 11, we are still falling 

behind. 

In December, the Iraq Study Group reported that of the 1,000 

embassy employees in Baghdad, there were only 33 Arabic speakers, of which only six are fluent, and recommend that language 

proficiency and cultural training be given the highest possible priority by the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretaries of 

Defense and State. 

However, strengthening national security should not be the only 

reason for improving the country’s language proficiency. The basic 

economic and career security of many Americans is now tied to foreign language capability. 

Increased globalization allows Americans to compete for jobs in 

a marketplace that is no longer confined to the boundaries of the 

United States. One basic skill required to thrive in this new economic environment is fluency in foreign languages. 

According to the Committee for Economic Development, the lack 

of foreign language skills and international knowledge can result 

in embarrassing and costly cultural blunders for individual companies. In fact, American companies lose an estimated $2 billion a 

year due to inadequate cultural understanding. 

Although the Federal Government has worked to address language needs in the United States over the past 40 years, these efforts appear to be in reaction to international events. We do not 

have a proactive policy. 

In 1958 the National Defense Education Act was passed in response to the Soviet Union’s first space launch. We were determined to win the space race and make certain that the United 

States never come up short again in areas of math, science, technology, or foreign languages. 

3

NDEA was a great success, but in the late 1970s its language 

programs merged into larger education reform measures and lost 

their prominence. 

The results are clear. In 1979 the President’s Commission on 

Foreign Language and International Studies said that ‘‘American’s 

incompetence in foreign languages is nothing short of scandalous 

and it is becoming worse.’’ 

After September 11, Congress and the Administration once again 

took action to address language shortfalls, but I fear that these efforts will prove to be only a band-aid and not a complete cure to 

the Nation’s recurring foreign language needs. 

To me the most interesting aspect of the problem is that both the 

1979 Commission and the participants of the 2004 Department of 

Defense National Language Conference called for naming a senior 

government official to lead the government’s foreign language education effort and establishing a council or commission representing 

a broad spectrum of stakeholders to report on the Nation’s language needs and propose actions to address them. 

In fact, both groups note that all interested parties must be involved as all sectors, government, industry, and academia, have a 

need for language-proficient individuals and no one sector has all 

of the solutions. 

Despite the Administration’s efforts to implement new programs 

and policies to address our language shortfalls, I fear that without 

sustained leadership and coordinated effort among all Federal 

agencies, State and local governments, the private sector and academia, the United States will remain where we are today: Scrambling to find linguists after another major international event. 

The United States cannot afford to do this and cannot afford to 

wait. The failures of communication and understanding would have 

already done their damage. 

I am pleased that the Administration’s National Security Language Initiative is coordinating efforts among the Intelligence Director and the Departments of Defense, Education, and State to address our national security language needs. 

However, I believe we must ensure that this effort will continue 

into future administrations, bring the advice of all Federal agencies 

and stakeholders, and address our economic security needs. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on how the Administration is meeting these objectives and addressing our broader 

language needs in both the short and long term. Only through a 

coordinated plan of action and long-term leadership will we accomplish our goal. 

I now turn to my good friend, Senator Voinovich, for any opening 

statement he would like to make. Senator Voinovich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Senator Akaka. I congratulate 

you on being the Chairman of this Committee. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Senator Akaka and I worked together for 

many years, and working together I am very proud that we have 

made the most significant changes in the Title 5 of the U.S. Code 

4

since 1978, with the hope of making our Federal workforce competitive and, as Senator Akaka says, the workforce of choice. 

We are very concerned about U.S. competitiveness, and we know 

that this subject today, ‘‘Lost in Translation,’’ is a very serious 

issue and it has been kicking around for some time and we are 

going to hopefully bring it to a head and make some progress with 

it. 

I want to thank all of the witnesses for joining us today. I am 

especially pleased to welcome back Diane Birckbichler, who is joining us from Ohio State University, my law school alma mater. Dr. 

Birckbichler chairs the Department of French and Italian and is 

also Director of the OSU Foreign Language Center, which I am 

proud to note comprises one of the finest language programs in the 

country. 

The OSU Foreign Language Center includes the Chinese Flagship Program, one of only nine advanced programs in the Nation 

devoted to advanced instruction in critical languages. This program 

is funded by the Department of Defense National Security Education Program. 

In September, I was pleased to announce a Federal grant which 

will allow the Chinese Flagship Program to develop a statewide 

system in Ohio of Chinese K–16 language programs which will 

serve as the national model for State school systems. 

I was saying, Senator Akaka, to Dr. Birckbichler that I have 

seven grandchildren, and I want to know about the available language programs in Chinese because I would like them to begin 

their language instruction early on. 

The significance of foreign language skills to our national security was emphasized after the terrorists attacks of September 11. 

I must say that I was outraged when it was announced that the 

U.S. Government needed people that could speak Farsi and Arabic. 

I was the Chief Commanding Officer of the Ohio National Guard 

during Desert Storm. I would have thought that 10 years after we 

were engaged in that effort that we would have been so much farther ahead. Somebody in Washington, the State Department, or 

Defense Department, should have realized, ‘‘Hey, we better get 

some people that know Arabic and Farsi.’’

In response to that, Senator Akaka has pointed out that this 

Subcommittee held a series of hearings on the needs of our intelligence workforce, and we did pass the Intelligence Reform and 

Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. 

The legislation was aimed at improving the Federal Government’s ability to recruit and train skilled translators and linguists 

to meet our national-security needs. 

Several years later it is appropriate for Congress to take stock 

of these efforts and monitor progress. At the same time, the need 

to expand our knowledge of foreign languages, cultures and regions 

extends well beyond the critical needs of our national security 

force. 

Without an educated applicant pool of Americans proficient in 

critical foreign languages, we cannot meet the needs of our 21st 

Century workforce, nor can we maintain America’s position as a 

global leader. 

5

One of the things that I keep talking about is that we are in this 

unbelievably competitive environment and what we should be 

doing is building the infrastructure of competitiveness so that our 

children and grandchildren will be able to have the same opportunities for our high standard of living. One of those tools for competitiveness has to do with developing foreign language skills. 

According to the 2000 census—well, Senator Akaka gave you the 

statistics on that. I will not repeat them. 

Being able to share a spoken language means so much. I speak 

[In Russian], and that is about all I can say. But it is amazing to 

me when I travel abroad how flattered foreign citizens are to even 

hear a few words of their native language. It is a way of letting 

them know that you think enough of them that you have made an 

effort to study Serbo-Croatian or Russian or whatever. 

I can imagine how much richer interpersonal connections would 

be if we had more people that could speak foreign languages. Even 

a lot of our people that represent us in the State Department conduct U.S. affairs in countries and cannot speak the language. 

The need for improved language skills is not an abstract deliberation. In order to maintain our competitive business edge and 

keep our country safe, Americans must learn to be global citizens 

and communicate effectively with other peoples around the world. 

I am deeply concerned that Americans are lagging behind much 

of the world in crucial and critical foreign language, cultural 

awareness, and geographic knowledge. This lag can negatively impact our Nation in real ways, such as losing valuable business opportunities overseas, and the competition is keen; faulty intelligence from failing to properly translate critical documents; or a 

misunderstanding in diplomatic communications. 

We had a recent hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee 

and we were talking about troops operating in Baghdad, and basically one of the witnesses says, ‘‘These are cabinieri,’’ policemen in 

the neighborhoods. 

And if they are going to be good cabinieri, they should be able 

to speak the language; yet most cannot. And people get information 

and they are not sure just what they are getting and whether the 

translation is accurate and so forth. 

It pains me to consider whether we could have been more successful in winning the hearts and minds of people in Iraq, preventing an insurgency had U.S. soldiers and diplomatic personnel 

on the ground been able to communicate more effectively in Arabic 

with Arab citizens. Senator Akaka pointed out the statistics about 

how few people over in our embassy there can speak fluently. Can 

you imagine how successful we could have been if our soldiers 

could speak directly with the foreign citizens they are trying to protect and did not have to rely on translators? 

Our success in public diplomacy has also been limited. The image 

of the United States abroad is at stake and is lower than any point 

in recent history. Just look at the studies by the Pew Foundation. 

We sorely need to improve our ability to communicate and connect 

with foreign audiences and explain American identity, values, and 

ideals. 

This country needs language and cultural expertise more than 

ever before to combat the pervasive negative misconceptions about 

6

1The prepared statement of Mr. Dominguez appears in the Appendix on page 39. 

America that have been created and spread by our enemies in certain critical regions around the world. 

I think the President understands this, and I commend him for 

taking action by establishing the National Security Language Initiative. I look forward to learning more about the initiative from 

our first panel. 

Each of us are gathered in this room today because we know that 

raising the national level of foreign language proficiency is absolutely critical to ensuring American national security and economic 

vitality. 

I look forward to a productive conversation about our national 

strategy for achieving those goals, and I thank the Chairman so 

very much for holding this hearing. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich. 

At this time I want to welcome to the Subcommittee our witnesses, Michael Dominguez, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of 

Defense for Personnel Readiness at the U.S. Department of Defense; Holly Kuzmich, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary 

Spellings at the U.S. Department of Education; and Everette Jordan, Director of the National Virtual Translation Center. 

As you know, it is the custom of the Subcommittee to swear in 

all witnesses, and so I would like to ask all of you to stand and 

raise your right hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to this 

Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 

truth, so help you, God? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I do. 

Ms. KUZMICH. I do. 

Mr. JORDAN. I do. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. Let it be noted in the record that 

the witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

Mr. Dominguez, you may now proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. MICHAEL L. DOMINGUEZ,1 PRINCIPAL 

DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (PERSONNEL AND 

READINESS), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator 

Voinovich. I am pleased to be able to appear before you today to 

discuss the actions the Department of Defense is taking to address 

the need for greater foreign language capability both in our force 

and, through our involvement in the National Security Language 

Initiative, in the Nation as a whole. 

My written statement goes into some detail about these actions 

and I request that be entered into the record. 

Chairman AKAKA. It will be included in the record. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Thank you, sir. Some of the actions we have 

taken, for example, are we made organizational and policy changes 

to support foreign language improvement for the long term. We reoriented our training to focus on the languages critical to our success today and important for the future, languages such as Arabic, 

Chinese, and Pashto. 

7

1The prepared statement of Ms. Kuzmich appears in the Appendix on page 61. 

For the first time we are conducting an assessment of the language proficiency of our military and civilian personnel, and we 

have increased our payment for maintaining those language skills 

to encourage identification, sustainment and development of those 

languages. 

We are providing just-in-time basic instruction in language and 

culture to our forces before they deploy. Our military academies are 

expanding language programs, and we are expanding the number 

of foreign area officers, our top-level professionals who possess not 

only foreign language but significant regional expertise. 

But a very important point I wish to underscore today is the Defense Department cannot meet the full set of our national security 

needs solely though a strategy of teaching language to people after 

they have joined us. 

We believe that this country, which supplies us with the people 

that we need, needs to rededicate itself to the study of foreign languages so that people arrive in our workforce already equipped 

with those skills. 

A large part of our effort, therefore, has been reaching out to universities, school systems and our sister Federal agencies and to the 

American population to stimulate progress in this area. 

In January 2006, the President announced the National Security 

Language Initiative, in which we joined with the Department of 

State, Department of Education, and the Office of the Director of 

National Intelligence in crafting an ambitious national agenda designed to increase the number of Americans speaking critical languages at advanced levels. 

The Department committed funds in its fiscal year 2007 budget 

in support of our part of NSLI, and we embraced the initiatives as 

part of our Quadrennial Defense Review. 

With the support of our Defense Oversight Committees, I am 

pleased to say that DOD is progressing toward the objectives the 

President set for us in NSLI. Our partner agencies were not so well 

supported, and those proposals deserve the Congress’ support and 

funding. 

Mr. Chairman, we appreciate your interest in this important 

area so vital to our national security and our future economic development. Thank you. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you for your statement. Ms. Kuzmich, 

please proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF HOLLY KUZMICH,1 DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF 

FOR POLICY AND PROGRAMS FOR SECRETARY OF EDUCATION MARGARET SPELLINGS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 

Ms. KUZMICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Voinovich. 

Thanks for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Department 

of Education regarding our efforts to improve the Nation’s foreign 

language education, especially in critical-needs languages. 

You both talked about the critical needs that we have, so I am 

not going to get into details on that. I am going to focus on the 

things that we have done at the U.S. Department of Education to 

8

start supporting foreign language education and to work with our 

sister agencies. 

When the Administration announced the National Security Language Initiative in January 2006, it included $57 million in initiatives at the Department of Education, and very briefly, we had five 

different requests as part of that. 

The first was a $24 million request for the Advancing America 

Through Foreign Language Partnerships Program to allow for the 

creation of continuous programs of study of critical-need languages 

from kindergarten through university. This program was modeled 

after the successful program at the Department of Defense that 

they have started, their K–16 pipeline model. 

We also included $24 million for the Foreign Language Assistance Program, which provides incentives to school districts and 

States to offer instruction in critical-need foreign languages in elementary and secondary schools around the country. 

Because we also know, obviously, critical-need language programs and language programs in general mean we need a supply 

of teachers, we included $5 million for a Language Teacher Corps, 

which would provide training to college graduates and professionals with critical-need language skills who are interested in becoming foreign language teachers. 

We also included $3 million in funding for the Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative to provide intensive summer training sessions and online professional development for foreign language teachers and $1 

million for a nationwide E-Learning Clearinghouse to help deliver 

foreign language education resources to schools, teachers, and students across the country. 

This clearinghouse would provide a central repository for schools, 

teachers, and the general public to find materials and web-based 

programs and language programs from our National Resource Centers, K–12 instructional programs, institutions of higher education 

and agencies of the Federal Government. 

While continuing to advocate for additional appropriations for 

NSLI, we have also leveraged our existing foreign language programs, and one of those examples is the Foreign Language Assistance Program at the U.S. Department of Education. 

During our 2006 grant cycle, we proposed to develop projects that 

would establish, improve or expand foreign language learning in 

grades K–12 in one or more of the critical-need languages. 

Of the 70 grants we made to school districts last fall, 57 address 

one or more of the critical-need languages for a total of $32 million. 

We also gave four grants to States around the country, and three 

of those address critical-needs languages. 

Also, during fiscal year 2006, the Department conducted a series 

of summer workshops through its Teacher-to-Teacher Program to 

promotes best practices for foreign language instruction with an 

emphasis on critical-need languages. 

We brought together over 500 educators to share best practices 

in two workshops, one in California and one in Virginia, focused on 

Mandarin Chinese. 

In the summer of 2007, we will expand the number of workshops 

for foreign language teachers to four and the languages will be foVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:36 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 033872 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\33872.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
9

1The prepared statement of Mr. Jordan appears in the Appendix on page 68. 

cused on both critical-need languages and commonly-taught languages in an effort to expand our reach. 

Another way the Department is able to improve language skills 

is through our Title VI Programs of the Higher Education Act, the 

National Resource Centers where we are providing incentives for 

them to reach out to the K–12 community. 

NRCs are funded in a variety of world areas including Central 

Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Europe, Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America. And in fiscal year 

2006 we encouraged our grantees to consider the NSLI goals as 

they launched their new projects. 

In addition, the Department is undertaking a comprehensive review of our Title VI Programs, our largest foreign-language investment, to make sure they are meeting their purpose and adequately 

preparing Americans for public service. 

We also have a new program at the Department of Education 

called the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Program, which we call the National SMART Grants. And 

these provide an additional $4,000 to third and fourth year Pell-eligible students to major in math, science, and critical foreign language. And that is an exciting new program that we have got going 

in the past year. 

Most recently, Secretary Spellings along with Assistant Secretary 

of State Dina Powell returned from leading a delegation of U.S. 

university presidents, including the President of Ohio State, on a 

three-country Asian tour to highlight the United States as a premier destination for study abroad. 

That trip was a direct outcome of our January University Presidents Summit that we hosted with the Secretary of State where 

the President announced the National Security Language Initiative. 

In closing, NSLI has produced a unique collaboration among Federal agencies. Having reached agreement on the importance of foreign language acquisition and the goals of this initiative, the agencies are working in a coordinated way to allocate needed resources 

and implement the initiative, with each agency concentrating on 

those activities and programs that best utilize its existing expertise 

and relates to its individual mission. 

Thank you, and I would be happy to answer any questions. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much. Mr. Jordan, will you 

proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF EVERETTE E. JORDAN,1 DIRECTOR, NATIONAL 

VIRTUAL TRANSLATION CENTER (NVTC), ON BEHALF OF 

THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS 

Mr. JORDAN. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Akaka and 

Senator Voinovich. It is good to be here. I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about the National Virtual Translation Center, which I am going to refer to as the NVTC for the rest of my 

comments and discuss how we are assisting the U.S. Government 

in meeting the translation needs and requirements that are coming 

at us. 

10

The NVTC was established 4 years ago through the House Intelligence Authorization Act to create a cadre of translators available 

anytime around the United States who could handle the overflow 

of information from the U.S. Government. 

We were here to augment existing resources and also build the 

pool, make it get bigger and find the methods to do that, use the 

possible means of training that is there, as well as take advantage 

of people who do have skills already who are perhaps leaving the 

government or maybe between jobs with good skills but perhaps located outside of Washington, DC, and put them to work, moving 

the work to the translator versus trying to bring the translator to 

the work. 

We were told to do a new thing in a new way. We were told to 

be relevant, innovative, and creative, and we tried to do that in 

putting the NVTC together. 

We are an interagency organization made up of members of the 

intelligence community at the leadership level whose job it is to 

work as a business, a small business of the government, if you will, 

in that we have to generate a client set, generate a provider set, 

generate revenue and turn out a product. So we are not like most 

government organizations. 

We function to develop new policies, procedures and systems for 

managing NVTC translation requirements and services. And we 

have created a virtual information sharing architecture that connects the translation tasks, the language resources and linguists 

anywhere in the United States. We are seeking to identify and utilize translation resources from the U.S. Government, academia and 

private industry. 

For instance, as a method of ensuring that the vital language applicants to government agencies can be used while their clearances 

and background investigations are taking place, the NVTC has offered to bring these people aboard and get them working on unclassified overflow material from any one of its 42 intelligence community customers. 

When the parent agency is ready to bring them on full time, the 

NVTC releases them. This way the resources that the government 

really wants to bring on and maintain are not lost for waiting for 

their clearances or waiting for other accesses. 

This is one of the ways that we are able to not lose the resources 

that we have available to us. 

I would also add that we support continued development and 

fueling of proven human language technologies designed to help, 

process and exploit foreign language data. 

Most important is who we do this for. We do it for the 16 member agencies of the intelligence community. Those are the major 

agencies. We work for approximately 42 distinct customers within 

that agency set now. 

It is very interesting. They are coming from all around the intelligence community and their needs are quite varied, but they require language translation skills at the highest level. 

For us the issue is not so much the numbers of people; it is an 

issue of quality. And the quality comes through training, it comes 

through education, it comes through abilities that have been first 

11

introduced, been practiced then tested and tested again, then applied. 

The NVTC works at the application layer. Our translators learn 

their job as they do it. We provide feedback to them to help them 

improve their skills. We feel that you just do not automatically get 

good translators; you train good translators. You work with them. 

The National Security Language Initiative assists us in bringing 

and providing a very good, rich pool of people who have the language-skill training, the education from the earliest ages on up to 

college. This is important for us because we cannot do our jobs unless the foundation of the education has been put there in the first 

place. 

We partner well with non-government organizations such as the 

American Translators Association and the National Association of 

Judiciary Interpreters and Translators. These are groups of people 

who are all around the country. Some of them may not have 

worked for the U.S. Government before, but they are willing to 

lend their skills to our needs. 

We would use them in the case of our intelligence community 

translations that might be required, but also in the event of natural and national disasters that come up where they may be able 

to help locally. We provide information on their capabilities and 

ability to the local agencies that can provide that assistance. 

And so we partner with the Interagency Working Group on Limited English Proficiency as well as the Red Cross and FEMA to 

make sure that our translators can help end the national need. 

This is one good way to help build and use the entire pool. 

We are a member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a member of the Foreign Language Executive Committee that oversees the process and the progress made towards 

foreign language policy within the intelligence community. 

For us it is about partnerships, it is about relationships, and trying to make the best use of the resources that are there as well 

as growing the pool for tomorrow’s resources, and with that, I will 

close. 

I thank you for your time, and if you have any questions, we 

would be happy to answer them. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Jordan. Thank you 

all for your testimony. 

We will have two rounds of questions. My first question goes to 

Mr. Dominguez. I want to applaud DOD’s work to address the language needs of the military and civilian workforce in a comprehensive manner. 

Despite these efforts, however, the Iraq Study Group Report said 

that there are still too few Arab-language-proficient military and 

civilian officers in Iraq. What is the Department doing to address 

this specific need? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Senator, we are doing a lot of things, but the 

first caveat is that it takes a long time to build an Arabic speaker 

if you are starting from scratch, so a lot of our effort was associated 

with not starting from scratch. 

I think the most exciting program that I would like to make sure 

you are aware of is what the Army calls the 09L Program. 09L is 

a military occupational specialty that has been granted to heritage 

12

speakers, the expatriates from the Arab world that we are recruiting to bring into the individual ready reserve with the prior agreement that they will be mobilized for 2 years and sent into the combat theater to work with our maneuver forces right there. 

That has been a wildly successful program. The volunteers for 

that program love it, the commanders downrange love it. We have 

got contracts to acquire interpreters and get those into the fight in 

support of our troops. 

We do some cultural prep training and some basic language survival skills to every unit that is deploying. We try and make sure 

that there are translators so there is reach-back capability available to commanders. 

On the other side in terms of just building capacity, we have doubled the number of Arabic linguists, people studying Arabic at the 

Defense Language Institute. It is up to about 900 to 1,000 people 

a year there. 

More importantly, we have done this inventory of the people in 

our workforce who have self-identified skills. We are now in the 

process of having them tested to see what level of skills they have 

so that we can make that inventory available to meet the need in 

the theater. 

And just looking at that without regard to what skill level these 

people may have, we have more than 8,500 people self-identified 

with some level of Arabic speaking skills in the DOD workforce, 

military and civilian. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. I just want to note at this point 

that in World War II and particularly in the Pacific, the military 

had what they called an ‘‘MIS,’’ which is the Military Intelligence 

Service. 

During that time, MIS trained Japanese-speaking and reading 

troops, and it was very successful partly because many of the Japanese in Hawaii knew Japanese, so that did not take that long for 

them to learn. These individuals were deployed out into the Pacific, 

and history tells us that World War II was shortened by 2 years 

because of their work. That is really an accomplishment. 

I hope the military would continue this kind of effort: That whenever our military action might require language needs DOD would 

set up MIS’s. 

I do understand that you cannot teach language skills to new 

troops overnight because you have to train them for other things. 

Let me ask the next question to Ms. Kuzmich. State and local 

governments have great latitude in deciding whether to include foreign language education in school curricula. What can the Federal 

Government do to encourage foreign language education in elementary and secondary schools when administrators are focused on 

meeting the requirements of No Child Left Behind? 

Ms. KUZMICH. I think obviously one area where we have already 

been putting a lot of focus on is our Foreign Language Assistance 

Program and putting out model programs across the country in foreign language instruction. You are right, the Federal Government 

is only an 8 percent investor in education. 

Chairman AKAKA. I should say that you testified on some of the 

programs that are in place now that have been successful. 

13

Ms. KUZMICH. Correct. And one of the things we are trying to do 

is incentivize through that program not just traditional language 

programs but programs that can be models for other districts that 

will provide online resources for a lot of areas where they do not 

have as much access to foreign language education. 

One of the things we know is a school cannot teach foreign language if they do not have the teachers to teach it, and so that is 

partly why we are proposing the new Language Teacher Corps and 

the new E-Learning Clearinghouse to be able to have a central repository for a lot of the instructional materials that are being developed across the country, especially in some of these critical-need 

languages where there are not a lot of resources and a lot of—district officials who are interested in expanding programs in their 

community do not know where to go to find them. 

The other thing we are doing through our continued growth in 

Teacher-to-Teacher is showing schools how to do foreign language 

programs in their schools at the same time that they are focusing 

on reading and math, which are obviously the goals of No Child 

Left Behind. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. 

Mr. Jordan, you said that most of the members of the intelligence community rely on linguists in their own agencies first and 

that NVTC linguists are usually used when there is a critical overload of intelligence, a tight deadline, or a specific language need. 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes. 

Chairman AKAKA. Based on the requests you have received, 

which agencies seem to have the greatest need for linguists in their 

own agency? 

Mr. JORDAN. Right now we have both the National Security 

Agency and the Department of Defense, those are the ones that are 

greatest by work that comes to the NVTC, by far and away the 

greatest need. Next comes the CIA, and they send a lot of material 

to us that needs to be done in many different languages. 

We have found the need to be in 60 languages to date. It was 

not our task to prepare for 60, but we have found through our clients calling up asking for translation services it has been 60 languages, and the major languages as well as the less commonly 

taught languages in all different shapes and sizes of the task itself. 

This has been a discovery for us from the Defense Department as 

well as the intelligence community. 

The type of language needs that there are do not so much conform to what we consider to be Global War on Terrorism languages. People who may tend to do harm to this country will speak 

any language they feel like speaking to anyone else, and it is up 

to us to find people with those language skills, at the right depth 

of knowledge, to provide the service back to our client. 

Chairman AKAKA. I would ask you about NVTC’s capacity in foreign languages. Would you be able to teach or translate any language that is spoken or are you limited to 60? 

Mr. JORDAN. No, sir, to the first part. We are unable to teach any 

language that there is. Our job is to respond to the question at 

hand. 

Most of the time, we do pretty well. We are able to find people 

with the right skills. Sometimes finding the people with the right 

14

skills is not so much a problem with a foreign language as it is the 

English that the person possesses. 

Their English may not be good enough to get information into 

good idiomatic English for our customers, and so we have taken 

steps especially working with the English Heritage Language students at Georgetown and also at the University of Washington, Seattle, to help them improve their English. As they translate from 

the foreign language, we provide feedback and guidance to them as 

to ‘‘this is better put in English this way.’’

It is a way of trying to build the entire workforce from the native 

speaker’s standpoint as well as the non-native-learner’s standpoint. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. Mr. Voinovich, do you have questions? 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. As I mentioned in my opening 

statement, improving the Federal Government’s ability to meet its 

human capital needs has been one of our top priorities of this Subcommittee. And over the past several years, Senator Akaka and I 

have worked together to produce significant reforms of the Federal 

workforce. 

Do you currently have the flexibilities you need to go out and recruit individuals to come to work for you in this area or are you 

thwarted by not having the flexibilities? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I will start. I think that our flexibilities will be 

enhanced as we begin deploying or continue deploying the National 

Security Personnel System, because there are flexibilities that were 

incorporated into that legislation. 

But I believe the other activity we have is through the National 

Security Education Program where people go in and get advanced 

skills in language and then come back seeking service in the Federal Government as part of a program design. I think that is of 

great benefit to us as well. So I do not know of actually any impediments that would keep us from hiring somebody. 

There are some problems we are working with the intelligence 

community on with regard to getting people their clearances because people, particularly either heritage speakers or people who 

have studied abroad, pose problems to the traditional way the intelligence community would view them in terms of being able to 

validate their security risk. But we are working through the intelligence community with that right now. It is a shared goal of 

streamlining that process. 

Senator VOINOVICH. In other words, let us say that you are out 

there looking for people to come to work for the State Department 

or the Department of Defense. Can you go out into a university, for 

example at Ohio State, and look at some exemplary students there 

maybe in their sophomore year and say, ‘‘We really like you and 

we would like you to think about coming to work for the Federal 

Government when you graduate,’’ and offer them any kind of incentives, say internships, so that when they get out of school, they will 

go into your agencies? 

Chairman AKAKA. Mr. Jordan, you want to answer that from 

your perspective? 

Mr. JORDAN. I also liked the first question too. As far as recruiting, we try to go to the professional organizations and go to their 

15

conferences where they have a lot of people who have high-level 

skills that we are looking for. 

Also, one of the hindrances to us is the U.S. citizenship requirement in that we are required to only hire U.S. citizens. Some of the 

people who could provide services to us may not be U.S. citizens 

and some of the material I need to have done is open-source unclassified material that they may do from home. 

And so one of the impediments we have right now to really opening up an entire—like 200,000 to 300,000 more people is the citizenship requirement. Yes, of course, we would put them through 

checks to make sure that they are who they say they are, and we 

would also test their language skills, but I would very much like 

to be able to use that pool as well. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Are you precluded from hiring non-citizens? 

Is it just a matter of security? 

Mr. JORDAN. At this time we are precluded from using them because the requirements put on us is that all of our employees must 

be U.S. citizens. 

Chairman AKAKA. Is that in the law? 

Mr. JORDAN. That is directive guidance from I guess in this case 

would be our executive agent who is the FBI. 

I need to be reminded on the second part of the question. I want 

to make sure I have that right. The second part of your question, 

sir? 

Senator VOINOVICH. Are you able to bring them in, and do you 

have a strategic human capital plan in place that you are following 

right now? 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, we do. We have put together a strategic plan 

which we delivered to the Director of National Intelligence as to 

how we will reach out around the country and go into universities 

and work with actually the students in particular, to send them 

open-source unclassified material whereby as part of their classroom environment, they can work on material that is real-world 

that requires translation and return it to us. 

The students work on it, the teacher grades it and sends us back 

a completed copy. The student gets college credit for it, but moreover, they get experience and exposure to our standards, our quality issues, deadlines, time lines, methods of doing this. 

It does not matter to us so much where they go to work when 

they graduate, but we are satisfied that they know how to do translation work, that they understand the higher use of language as it 

will be required by the U.S. Government. 

We are very pleased with that approach. It is called the Virtual 

University Translation Network, and we have been at it for about 

14 months now with universities around the country. Kent State 

is one of the universities. My colleague, Galal Walker, over at Ohio 

State, he and I have talked about it a bit. He has the Chinese Flagship Program there. 

I am also happy [in Russian] earlier, so thank you. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. We had the General Accountability Office’s report in 2002 and they talked about five agencies 

which could use human capital strategies to address staffing and 

proficiency shortfalls, and that was the Department of State, the 

16

Army, the National Security Agency, the Foreign Commercial Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Is there now a written plan in each of the agencies to increase 

foreign language skills? If we asked you to come into our office and 

sit down and show us your plans that agencies put in place as a 

result of the GAO report, would we be able to see what kind of 

progress that you have made in those agencies to implement the 

plans? 

Mr. JORDAN. Although I do not speak for the FBI, I can tell you 

that the FBI representatives would be able to come in and speak 

to you about the plan that they have put together. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I think really it is important that strategic 

plans have measurable benchmarks that allow you to measure if 

progress is being made. 

The other thing that came to my mind as you all three are here 

sitting at the table is whether your agencies get together to look 

at the big picture and see whether there is any duplication and 

how you could coordinate better with your respective responsibilities? 

Ms. KUZMICH. We have. I will take that first. Obviously, in putting together the National Security Language Initiative, we started 

meeting the Departments of Education, State, Defense, and the Director of National Intelligence most directly have the pieces of the 

National Security Language Initiative. 

But we started meeting almost 2 years ago and included even 

other agencies within that to look at what programs do we currently have at our agencies, where do we need to expand our efforts 

and that is how we came up with our initiative, and why at the 

Department of Education we are so focused on starting the pipeline 

of getting speakers earlier so that when they enter higher education they have already got a base of language knowledge and can 

be proficient when they graduate and meet the needs of the workforce in the Defense and State Departments. 

Senator VOINOVICH. So the lightbulb went on and you said, ‘‘Look 

if we are going to do this, we better get the Department of Education and see if we cannot start working with them because we 

are going to need the teachers and we are going to need the students, and we better start early and we are looking at the longterm picture.’’

I would like you each to comment on if you had a magic wand, 

what additional things could you be doing that you cannot do currently because of resources? 

And right now, Senator Akaka, we have this Continuing Resolution. I just cannot believe it, because when I was a mayor and a 

governor, if you did not pass the budget in your appropriations, 

people would have recalled you. Yet here we are in January and 

we are talking about a Continuing Resolution, which from what I 

am picking up more and more from agencies is really putting everybody in kind of an uncertain position about whether or not they 

are going to be able to go forward with their priorities. 

But that being said, if you want to comment on it, you can, and 

if you are unwilling to do that, I would like to know, if you had 

your druthers, if you really wanted to do the job that you would 

like to do, what resources would you need to make a difference or 

17

do you feel that you are adequately funded right now to get the job 

done? 

The point is that so often we ask agencies to do things, and then 

you do not get the resources to do them. And I am just really interested to know, if you really wanted to increase foreign language 

proficiency at your agencies and said, ‘‘This is something that really is needed,’’ do you have the resources currently to get that job 

done? 

Mr. JORDAN. Senator, let me leap in and say from the Defense 

Department’s point of view, I think we have made an enormous effort and got enormous support from the Congress for these resources. 

Where I would say the marginal addition ought to be is the Department of Education needs to take those K–16 pipelines and expand them all over the country. The plan was for them to be able 

to get to 100. I do not believe, and Ms. Kuzmich will be able to address that, but I do not know that they will be able to do that 

under a continuing resolution. 

We need forums like this where we focus the national attention 

on this challenge, and we need our business leaders engaged in 

putting this on the agenda so kids know this is important to them 

so they should study this because that is where the jobs will be. 

So I think we are doing what we can. I really am concerned 

about the support my partner agencies need for the creative, imaginative concepts they have come up with and our business community is still not heavily engaged in the discussion. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Have you ever brought this up with the National Business Roundtable? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. We are planning this year to do conferences regionally around the flagship universities where we bring in local 

governments and local businesses, again to start generating some 

demand pull from that community. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Ms. Kuzmich. 

Ms. KUZMICH. You are right, Senator, we are under a Continuing 

Resolution, so obviously we are doing as much as we can with the 

programs we have right now. It would help if we were able to get 

funding for the pieces we had included in our budget last year. 

But I do think we are doing a lot of other things with the higher 

Education and K–12 community because we are a small piece of 

the education funding stream in America. In colleges and universities we have been working with our Title VI institutions. 

As I said, Secretary Spellings led a delegation of university presidents. We have been encouraging them to think more strategically 

about where they are focusing their dollars and what programs 

they are spending them on. So I think it is a partnership there. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Any other comment, because I am running 

out of my time. 

Mr. JORDAN. Also on funding, it would be fantastic for sustained, 

long-term funding across fiscal years would be very good because 

short-term, one-year money does not always help us put the programs together that we need for the long-term outcome. 

Working with the business community, I have found in my discussions with Boeing and also with Disney, a lot of the times they 

just reach out to a local company who may be able to provide servVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:36 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 033872 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\33872.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
18

ices, and the training of their executives has been of secondary concern in that they did not necessarily see the need to train their executives because they would only be in a country for 2 or 3 years 

and then out. 

So spending 2 or 3 years to teach them the language then putting them there for a short period of time was not necessarily as 

cost-effective as just hiring local assistance. 

One of the problems that we have in getting the buy-in from the 

business community is for them to see the vision, for them to see 

how it is important to have that very good language capability 

within their own staffs and to take the time to develop their workforce that as they go either nationwide or internationally that they 

are able to reach out and do business in certain communities and 

at the government leadership level wherever with people who are 

skilled and are trained and are comfortable with the language 

skills. 

So this is a challenge still to us we engage regularly, and they 

do come to our conferences now because they see that language is 

something not just easily done. It takes time, it takes study, it 

takes education and practice. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich. I 

would like to direct this question to Mr. Dominguez. Last year 

David Chu, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 

Readiness, invited the Chief Human Capital Officers to join DOD 

in building the Language Corps. 

In what ways has OPM, as well as the CHCO Council, been involved in working with Federal agencies to address the Federal 

Government’s foreign-language needs? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Other than the discussions that Mr. Chu has 

with the Chief Human Capital Officers and the staff dialogue that 

we have with several agencies about this Language Corps that we 

are trying to build, the Civilian Language Reserve Corps, I do not 

know of anything concretely. 

One of the problems that you run into here is that outside of the 

intelligence agencies there are some narrow positions in the DOD. 

Civilian jobs in particular are not written as they must require this 

language skill, and so unless it is an interpreter or an intelligence 

analyst or something, that skill is not really a big piece of the way 

agencies viewed their missions in the past. 

Now as we engage and support each other, interagency support, 

to be able to reach out and do the kind of work that is required 

in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa, where you 

are helping locals establish the rule of law and build institutions 

to deliver services to people and create credibility and we need to 

then tap into those skills. 

Then language is an additional duty requirement, but it was not 

what we hired the person for and you will not find it in the position 

description. So we are working through those challenges now of 

trying to find out how to define the requirement in our workforce 

for languages. 

I think we are going to end up moving away from position-based 

and more to inventory. We need a bunch of petroleum engineers 

who also can speak Farsi and we need to find mechanisms to reach 

19

out and grab them from their full peacetime jobs and engage them 

when we need them when a provincial reconstruction team is being 

assembled by the State Department to help one of our partner 

countries. 

So there is a lot of talk and dialogue in trying to figure out how 

to do this, but there is some heavy lifting yet in front of us on this. 

Chairman AKAKA. My reason for asking that is to find out whether there were ways in which these agencies and departments coordinated their efforts of trying to find language speakers. Let’s 

say, OPM gets a request from DOD that it needs a certain kind of 

language. Could OPM reach out into the Federal workforce and 

find someone to help DOD temporarily? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Right. Senator, we are trying to build that kind 

of capability within the Defense Department, and we are in dialog 

with our partner agencies on those same kind of capabilities. 

Again, the provincial reconstruction teams that are part of the 

President’s strategy in Iraq, for example, are very definitely interagency challenges, and so we will need these kind of capabilities. 

Chairman AKAKA. And that speaks to what you said that often 

you do not have people and you do not have the time to teach 

them. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Right. 

Chairman AKAKA. If you have somebody in the workforce in 

other places that may be able to do that. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Absolutely. 

Chairman AKAKA. Now, let me ask you another question, Mr. 

Dominguez. I thought the white paper was extremely effective on 

laying out the critical steps needed to address the Nation’s shortfall 

on language skills. 

The first recommendation calls for strong and comprehensive 

leadership; specifically, a national language strategy to be developed and implemented by the National Language Director and for 

a Coordination Council to coordinate implementation of the strategy. 

Do you agree with this recommendation and is such a leadership 

structure in place today? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Senator, I agree that this is an interagency 

challenge, that the Federal Government has to work together. As 

I have said, I want the Department of Education’s programs to succeed, so that is an illustration of how important the interagency aspect of it coordinated across the Federal Government action. 

Now, I believe that we are doing those things. We are talking to 

each other. We are working together so whether it is the Chief 

Human Capital Officers talking about how to get language capabilities into the Federal workforce or it is the people who are working the National Security Language Initiative coordinating their 

activities, those kind of activities are on-going. 

This white paper did a great thing in being the cause to bring 

us together to begin those discussions to begin aggressively working together. 

I would not, however, accept that one way to do it is the only 

way to do it. They offered a structure, but that is only one way to 

get the job done. The important thing is the outcome, the achieveVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:36 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 033872 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\33872.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
20

ment, agencies working together and moving the Nation forward 

that way. I believe that is happening. 

Chairman AKAKA. Can you tell me who is in charge of NSLI? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I would say it is a collective responsibility monitored by the Domestic Policy Council that the President has assembled would be my answer to that. 

Chairman AKAKA. And finally, before I turn to Senator 

Voinovich, Mr. Dominguez, what steps are being taken to sustain 

and institutionalize continued leadership in language education in 

future administrations to look ahead? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, at least in the Defense establishment, we 

have identified senior language authorities across the Defense Department, and there is one in my shop. 

This will be a long and continuing and compelling need in the 

national security business. So we are not going to stop screaming 

that this country has to take language seriously and we have to 

take language seriously because it is a critical skill now to success 

on the battlefield. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much. Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I would like you to go back to your respective offices and give me a list of things that, if we could do them, 

it would enhance your ability to do what we are asking you to do 

with the idea that there are some things that Senator Akaka and 

I can do in this Subcommittee to help you. 

For example, this citizenship requirement, I think that is something we ought to look at. 

I would assume that the fact that we are doing such a lousy job 

on security clearances is also a problem? What bothers me is a Federal agency hires somebody to come in and work, but then they say 

to that individual, ‘‘Hey, you cannot go to work until you get your 

clearance.’’ 

And security clearances have been on the GAO High Risk List 

now since 1990, and our Subcommittee is trying to work on that. 

But the neat thing is that it appears that, at the NVTC, you are 

able to provide temporary employment to language skilled individuals while they await their clearance. 

Is there kind of like Defense wants to hire an individual but 

must wait until he or she has the proper clearance, and do you 

then find translation work for them at NVTC so we can at least 

utilize them in the meantime? 

Because if I am going to hire somebody and then I tell them, ‘‘I 

am sorry, but you really cannot go to work for 6 months,’’ they say, 

‘‘Bye.’’ Is that going on now? 

Mr. JORDAN. This is in its very early stage, meaning within the 

last 4 weeks that we decided to do this. It is all quite informal. We 

would call and ask. 

So far the NVTC has approached one of the major agencies to see 

if this is possible and that agency says, ‘‘Yes, it is very possible.’’ 

We just happen to do it because we are in the language business. 

The same may be possible with analysis or any other type of skill 

that the government needs that can be done not necessarily onsite. 

It can be done in an area whereby you send the information in, you 

start training the people in the skills. So right now it is quite informal but it is quite possible. 

21

Senator VOINOVICH. I would like you to think about it and get 

back to me on it because I think that this might be a way of saying 

to somebody, ‘‘OK, we cannot put you on the payroll yet, but we 

can temporarily employ you at MVTC where you can work on 

translating and you have got a job.’’

Mr. JORDAN. This is possible, yes, definitely. 

Senator VOINOVICH. That way, an individual will be there while 

we try to adjudicate their security clearances. 

The other thing that I am interested in is, for example, Ohio 

State has a great language program. Does this type of consideration impact where you focus your K–12 efforts? 

In other words, we have an emergency here. I keep thinking 

about how do we get this going, and are you looking to States 

where you have got low-hanging fruit? In other words, you have 

good language universities, so that kids can have incentive to study 

language in primary and secondary school and they know they can 

continue at the university level. 

Ms. KUZMICH. I think one of the biggest areas where we would 

like to expand that my colleague talked about is this K–16 partnership model that the Department of Defense has started. 

We know that, I think, learning lessons that they have already 

learned, the places we would most likely go first are our strong 

Title VI centers, our flagship programs where they have significant 

capabilities already at the higher education level to start pushing 

those language programs down into the K–12 level. 

So we have always talked to that community and we know they 

would be most likely to be the first ready to sign up and able to 

push these programs farther down. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I understand DOE did not budget money to 

conduct your survey of foreign language education. 

Ms. KUZMICH. The Clearinghouse? 

Senator VOINOVICH. Yes. I guess you did not get any money in 

2006. 

Ms. KUZMICH. We are under a CR. 

Senator VOINOVICH. OK. You think that is important, we should 

fund that so you have got a baseline to know where you are starting from. 

Ms. KUZMICH. Yes. 

Senator VOINOVICH. But the point I am making is, can you look 

at the schools that are really doing a terrific job, and say, ‘‘By golly, 

they are the ones that we ought to really start concentrating on 

right now,’’ because the possibility of generating fluent language 

speakers from them is greater than just widely distributing resources and saying, ‘‘Well, we are going to fund them all.’’ Are you 

doing any of that? 

Ms. KUZMICH. Hopefully if we get additional resources and are 

able to start some of these programs, that would happen during 

our grants process. 

Normally, the way that they have to write grant applications is 

to put down their efforts that they have already made and give us 

the most serious and most capable people are usually the ones that 

rise to the top. So that is likely to happen if we get this program 

funded in the future. 

22

1The prepared statement of Ms. Oleksak appears in the Appendix on page 72. 

Senator VOINOVICH. OK. I think, Senator Akaka, we both have 

a vote. 

Chairman AKAKA. Yes. We have 3 minutes left. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I have no other further questions. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much. Let me say thank you 

to our witnesses, and I want you to know we look forward to working with you on improving the foreign language capacity of the 

Federal Government. I want to thank you for your testimony this 

morning. 

I would also like to note for the record that the Department of 

Labor was invited to testify today but declined the invitation stating that the Department has not been active in reviewing the 

American workforce language needs or its own needs. 

So with that I want to dismiss this panel, and I am going to call 

for a recess of about 15 minutes and we will have the second panel 

when we return. 

Thank you very much. 

[Recess.] 

Chairman AKAKA. This hearing will come to order. 

I would like to welcome our second panel, Rita Oleksak, President of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages; Michael Petro, Vice President and Director of Business and 

Government Policy for the Committee for Economic Development; 

and Dr. Diane Birckbichler, Director of the Foreign Language Center at Ohio State University. 

I welcome all of you. As you know, it is a custom of this Subcommittee to swear in all witnesses, and I would like to ask you 

to stand and raise your right hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give before 

this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 

the truth, so help you, God? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. I do. 

Mr. PETRO. I do. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. I do. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. Let me start in the order of the 

way in which I introduced you and ask you to proceed with your 

statement. Thank you, Ms. Oleksak. 

TESTIMONY OF RITA OLEKSAK,1 PRESIDENT, AMERICAN 

COUNCIL ON THE TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Chairman Akaka, and Ranking Member Voinovich, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. 

ACTFL supports the premise you so eloquently stated in your 

letter inviting us to testify: That the national security and economic vitality of the United States and the basic career security of 

many American citizens is now tied in large part to our foreign language capability. 

We believe this capability is in dire need of strengthening. Indeed, the United States suffers from a language deficit because our 

country has failed to make language learning an important part of 

every child’s education. 

23

ACTFL and the language teaching profession support initial efforts by the government to address this language deficit through 

proposals made by the Department of Defense following its 2004 

National Language Conference, as well as their Defense Language 

Transformation Roadmap. 

We also support the President’s National Security Language Initiative, but the lack of authorizing legislation has resulted in an incomplete plan, duplication of efforts, and an unequal emphasis on 

the importance of the initiative within the various agencies. 

While the Department of Education has redirected some of its existing resources, it, too, does not have the authorizing legislation it 

needs to implement all of the education-based activities envisioned 

by NSLI. 

The initiatives and funding from the Departments of Defense and 

State are welcomed, but for the long term, we do not believe that 

it makes sense for the National Security Agency and the Director 

of National Intelligence to run teacher training and summer youth 

programs. 

Just as the military has its Defense Language Transformation 

Roadmap, we need a similar roadmap for a comprehensive and coordinated plan to expand and strengthen school-based foreign language education in the United States. 

The goals of achieving a language-trained military and languagequalified personnel in embassies around the world will fail unless 

strong support is provided to our Nation’s K–20 foreign language 

education infrastructure. 

ACTFL offers the following recommendations to strengthen the 

foreign language capabilities of our Nation: 

One, ensure that all languages are supported in our educational 

system, not just the languages that are deemed critical for today. 

Since research supports the notion that after learning a second language, a third and a fourth language come more easily. 

It is important to support any language that a school system considers important for its community and for which teachers are 

available. 

Two, encourage and support the creation of articulated, continuous sequences of language courses beginning in the earliest 

grades and continuing through college with immersion and language study abroad as key components. 

Three, include funding for the development of a consistent program of assessment starting in the earliest grades to measure student progress towards proficiency in foreign languages. 

Four, since learning a foreign language increases performance in 

other core subject areas, make foreign languages truly part of the 

core curriculum in every school. 

Five, provide assistance to community colleges and universities 

offering specialized foreign language instruction focused on combining language instruction with other majors and for special purposes such as law enforcement, healthcare, and first responders. 

Six, provide incentives to enhance teacher recruitment and retention, such as loan forgiveness, and ensure teacher quality through 

teacher education and certification process. 

Seven, require intensive training for teachers recruited from 

abroad so they understand how to teach in American schools and 

24

1The prepared statement of Mr. Petro appears in the Appendix on page 87. 

provide professional development for teachers currently in their 

classroom on how to incorporate standards-based teaching into the 

curriculum. 

Eight, develop the skills of our heritage language speakers by encouraging the continued learning of their native language as well 

as English. 

Nine, fund research into a wide range of areas including enrollments, best practices, and longitudinal studies to examine the effects of language education on cognitive development as well as the 

academic and career success of students. 

And finally, 10, provide funding for public education initiatives, 

such as ‘‘Discover Languages . . . Discover the World!’’ campaign. 

Policymakers and business leaders need to support efforts to 

change public attitudes towards foreign language learning. 

In summary, we need a coordinated plan and funding of Federal 

legislation to strengthen foreign language education and enable us 

to provide the linguistic capabilities so desperately needed by government agencies and the workforce in general. 

ACTFL and the language profession stand ready to assist Congress in developing this plan in order to achieve a multilingual citizenry, thereby strengthening our national security and securing 

our leadership role in a global economy. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you for your testimony. Mr. Petro, you 

may proceed with your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL PETRO,1 VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT RELATIONS AND 

CHIEF OF STAFF, COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 

Mr. PETRO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Voinovich, and 

Members of the Subcommittee. I want to thank you for inviting me 

to testify at today’s hearing. 

I am speaking on behalf of the Committee for Economic Development, a nonpartisan public policy organization comprised of over 

200 business leaders and university presidents throughout the 

country. 

CED has been providing a business perspective on public policy 

issues for almost 65 years. CED was formed in the 1940s when our 

business trustees participated in discussions on how to move the 

country from a wartime to a peacetime economy. 

CED’s first policy study became the blueprint for the Marshall 

Plan. In fact, CED’s first chairman, Paul Hoffman, CEO of Studebaker became the first administrator of the Marshall Plan. 

Today what I would like to do is briefly highlight a CED study 

released last year entitled, ‘‘Education for Global Leadership: The 

Importance of International Studies and Foreign Language Education for U.S. Economic and National Security.’’

CED has long been a business voice for education reform and 

globalization. From preschool to higher education, CED recommendations have called for reform of our school system to prepare today’s children to become tomorrow’s educated workforce. 

25

CED’s work on globalization has called for enhancement of education and training of the workforce to maintain U.S. competitiveness. 

As we all know, the education reform movement of the 1980s and 

1990s urged greater focus on standards and accountability in our 

schools, particularly in subjects such as reading, science, and mathematics. At the same time, globalization of the world’s economies 

has created a host of distinctly new demands on our workforce, our 

citizens, and our students. 

CED is concerned that the recent trend in these two policy areas 

may be pulling us in opposite directions. Full participation in this 

new global economy will require not just competency in reading, 

science, and math but also a proficiency in foreign languages. 

In addition, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath remind us of the need for the study of the less-commonlytaught critical languages that are crucial to national security, such 

as Arabic, Persian, Farsi, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, and Japanese. 

Unfortunately, some school districts have shifted resources away 

from foreign language instruction in recent years in order to concentrate on teaching the subjects that require testing under No 

Child Left Behind, and this trend must be reversed. 

The study of foreign languages must figure prominently in the 

overall effort to improve educational outcomes through standards 

and assessment. CED recommends that high school graduates 

should be required to demonstrate proficiency in at least one foreign language. 

Meeting this challenge will require a concerted and coordinated 

effort among all levels of government as well as the private sector. 

CED recommends an expansion of the foreign language training 

pipeline at every level of education. This will require an intensified 

focus from the Federal Government as well as additional resources 

to support partnerships between higher education institutions, 

State governments, local school systems, and the business community. 

Federal language initiatives should encourage States and local 

school districts to implement language programs in elementary 

grades and offer more advanced language classes in middle schools 

and high schools. 

Strengthening the teacher training and professional development 

is another critical factor in improving foreign language studies. 

Higher education institutions should partner with State and local 

education systems to provide professional development in foreign 

language instruction. 

I want to conclude in encouraging coordination among all levels 

of government, higher education institutions, and the private sector. 

I want to let this Subcommittee and the folks here know that 

CED is about to launch an endorsement campaign where we send 

letters out and communicate to our 200 trustees asking them to 

publically endorse the CED recommendations. In addition, we will 

ask them to reach out to their colleagues in business and get them 

to publically endorse these recommendations. 

26

1The prepared statement of Ms. Birckbichler appears in the Appendix on page 91. 

This campaign will take a few months, but once this group is 

ready to get together, this partnership, I think, will be key in playing a role to continue the support of these vital programs. 

So I am here to answer any questions and I thank you for inviting me. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you for your testimony. Dr. Birckbichler. 

TESTIMONY OF DIANE W. BIRCKBICHLER, PH.D.,1 DIRECTOR, 

FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTER AND CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF 

FRENCH AND ITALIAN, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Certainly. Chairman Akaka and Senator 

Voinovich, I want to thank you for holding this hearing dealing 

with the Federal Government’s efforts to develop our national capacity in foreign languages. 

I am also pleased to be part of a panel that represents multiple 

stakeholders in the language learning enterprise, a clear indication 

that cooperation and collaboration are essential in our collective futures. 

As already indicated by other people testifying, the language profession and the Federal Government have begun to respond to the 

task of preparing a global-ready citizen equipped with professionallevel language and culture skills. 

Major changes have occurred in our language programs over the 

past several decades that make language learning and language 

teaching more congruent with the goals of this panel. Gone are 

classrooms where students learn through grammar translation and 

through dialogue memorization, a hallmark of a popular methodology in the 1960s. 

Today’s students learn in classrooms where their performance is 

linked to nationally-accepted norms for levels of language proficiency such as the Foreign Service Institute or the American 

Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. 

Today’s students learn in classrooms where the focus is no longer 

exclusively on literature but has expanded to include history, culture, economics and mass media, to give a few examples. With increasing frequency, today’s students participate in longer-articulated sequences of language instruction. 

Today’s students are encouraged, as our panelists have already 

indicated, to go beyond basic requirements and work toward advanced levels of language and culture proficiency whether through 

longer periods of study, intensive language courses, or studying 

abroad. 

This substantial progress that the language profession has made 

owes much to initiatives and programs sponsored by the Federal 

Government, among them the National Security Language Institute, Title VI programs that were talked about earlier, the National 

Flagship Initiatives have been essential, and I would like to single 

out the Partnership for Public Service, a very successful collaboration of the Federal Government, a private foundation and academia. 

27

In light our new curricula, strong State and Federal support, the 

advocacy of organizations such as the Committee for Economic Development, the foreign language community recognizes that much 

progress has been made; at the same time, we realize that much 

work still needs to be done to create a language-ready workforce 

for the future. 

I would like to suggest the following, and some of them will repeat what my colleagues on this panel have said and what has 

been said earlier. 

We need continued funding of language programs that offer 

longer-articulated sequences of foreign language instruction and 

which clearly and unequivocally target the development of advanced language skills. The National Flagship Programs in the 

critical languages serve as models in this area. 

We do, however, need additional funding opportunities to support 

extended sequences in both commonly and less-commonly taught 

languages to build a strong infrastructure in all of the languages 

that we teach in our K–16 curriculum. 

As we develop and implement longer sequences of language 

study, we need to ensure funding of programs that develop a corps 

of qualified language teachers, particularly in the critical languages, where a teacher infrastructure needs to be established. The 

State of Ohio’s House Bill 115 funding of alternative licensure programs is an excellent example of the support needed in this area. 

We need continued Federal support for study abroad programs 

where language and culture skill development are integral to the 

program; that is to say where the programs take place in the foreign language and not in English. 

The benefits of study abroad are too numerous to mention here, 

but a recent finding of a study by the Institute of International 

Education of Students quoted in a report of the Commission on the 

Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program is noteworthy. 

Eight percent of the respondents said that study abroad allowed 

them to acquire skill sets that were important to their careers, and 

this is added to the many benefits of study abroad. 

We will need continued advocacy for foreign languages by the 

Federal Government, by State Governments, and by educational 

and business organizations to make foreign languages part of the 

core curriculum and one of our basic educational skills. 

When asked about the President’s National Security Language 

Initiative, one Midwestern superintendent replied that we would be 

better off focusing on more ‘‘meat and potatoes’’ subjects. This comment gets to the core of the problem: Foreign languages need to be 

part of the core. Languages need to be considered ‘‘meat and potatoes,’’ an essential part of the educational meal and not just a tasty 

dessert. 

Finally, we need to develop a national language policy that clearly emphasizes the importance of foreign language to our collective 

interests. A policy that calls for the development of advanced skills 

with longer sequences of language instruction and a policy that 

clearly establishes foreign language as a basic component of a core 

curriculum at all levels of instruction. 

Thank you for giving me this opportunity. 

28

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much, Dr. Birckbichler. I was 

glad to hear of some of the programs that you have. I was pleased 

to see that the Partnership for Public Service and Ohio State joined 

together to hold a foreign language career day. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Right. 

Chairman AKAKA. Can you share with us a little more about that 

event and how it was viewed by students in attendance? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. OK. I can do that. And let me also say that 

in November, I think it was, at least it was in the fall quarter, in 

collaboration with the Partnership for Public Service, we had a 

campus-wide Federal career day, attended by 1,300 students and 

represented by 55 agencies. 

The student reaction to the foreign language career day was excellent. We had over 200 students, which is really a large number 

of students, and I think what is significant is the next day when 

several of the agencies had special briefing sessions, they were very 

well-attended. Thirty and 40 students attended them. 

So we had a very positive reaction, and the positive reaction was 

that our students did not know that these opportunities existed. 

They were very much taken by the incentives, the pay incentives, 

and so we felt that this opportunity gave our students—this is another pipeline to the Federal Government. Very well received. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you for that. Ms. Oleksak, you testified 

that efforts to encourage programs to study critical need languages 

should not be at the expense of current programs that are teaching 

languages such as French, German, and Spanish. 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Yes. 

Chairman AKAKA. Could you elaborate on the importance of continued Federal support for those languages? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Absolutely it is imperative, and I am going to 

bring it back to a local level because I am the Foreign Language 

Director in Glastonbury, Connecticut Public Schools where we have 

a 50-year history of elementary foreign language program. We are 

also bringing in Chinese currently at our high school. We are hoping to run a summer camp in Chinese as a way to influence the 

program. 

And we are also looking at the elementary school where we teach 

about China in third grade as part of Social Studies, but we are 

doing that in a very delicate way because we also offer Russian, 

Latin, Greek, French, and Spanish. And our program is grades 1–

12 Spanish. Our students build upon the Spanish to learn a second 

foreign language and then a third foreign language. 

It is a delicate balance that you have to have a conversation with 

in your communities, what is the need of your community for language learning. 

We have a website and on our website for our foreign language 

program we have a link to alumni where they talk about how they 

have used their languages, all the languages that we teach, in a 

variety of ways, whether it is for business or government, we have 

some that have gone in the foreign service. 

So I think that the word is a delicate balance and the need will 

be we have to continue the funding for all languages because today’s critical need will not be the same need next year and we will 

29

always need, as was said earlier in testimony, for interpreters in 

many languages. 

Chairman AKAKA. I was interested in your 10-point program that 

you mentioned and wish you well on that. 

Mr. Petro, both you and Mr. Dominguez from DOD testified 

about the need for business to be involved in supporting foreign 

language education programs. 

What is the business community doing to support foreign language programs and how can we increase these efforts? 

Mr. PETRO. Senator, I think they are probably not doing enough. 

I would argue, though, that there are reasons to be optimistic. I 

think there are several large companies around the country that 

have started to compensate their employees for learning foreign 

languages. I believe they are Proctor and Gamble, IBM, and Intel. 

I know that, for instance, the CEO of UPS, Michael Eskew, has 

been quite eloquent in speaking on behalf of increased funding for 

these programs. 

However, what CED is doing and what I had mentioned earlier 

in my testimony is really informing, engaging, and mobilizing business leaders around this issue. Since so much of this is about 

money, when legislators hear from large employers that this is an 

issue of concern, when they see an op-ed from a CEO, it is a different player in this issue. All of a sudden it turns heads and it 

says, ‘‘Oh, my goodness, those people represent voters, those people 

represent a large part of the population.’’ 

So it is really sort of informing business but also mobilizing them 

and giving them things to do and that is what CED’s role is and 

that is the way we view the things that we can add to this debate. 

Chairman AKAKA. Dr. Birckbichler, you testified that the United 

States needs a national language policy. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Yes. 

Chairman AKAKA. Can you discuss what is lacking in our current 

efforts and what should be included in any language policy? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. What is lacking is that if there is one, its not 

very well known. It is not. There are bits and pieces, and one could 

pull together what we think is the national language policy. The 

National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), there are all sorts of 

initiatives that work around languages, that relate to languages, 

but what I would like to see is a very strong policy that says the 

United States of America is committed to developing a global-ready 

workforce equipped with professional-level language and culture 

skills and that in order to do this, we need to do the following: We 

need advanced language skills, we need longer sequences, and we 

need to be in the core curriculum. 

I truly believe that not being in the core curriculum is one of the 

things at least in the K–16 language programs is what holds us 

back. We do not need to be left behind, and as long as we are not 

in the core, we continue to be left behind. We are put aside because 

there are proficiency tests that need to be taken, but they are not 

foreign language proficiency tests. 

So that is what I would like to see, and I would like to see that 

policy developed by the Federal Government, by the business community, by language professionals, by representatives from K–16. 

30

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much. My time has expired. 

Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Usually when people exert effort, they have to be motivated, and 

would you like to each comment quickly on the fact that today 

more countries around the world are teaching English, and that as 

a result of that there seems to be a lessening in people’s heads of 

the need to develop foreign languages here? 

There was a day when you had to learn French or you had to 

learn German, you had to learn another language, but today I go 

to international conferences and everybody speaks English. It 

seems to me that part of the reason why businesses and others are 

not motivated to learn a foreign language is because they figure 

they do not have to do it and they will save the cost and effort. 

Ms. OLEKSAK. I would be happy to talk about that because I 

think what is so important for us to keep in mind is that learning 

a language is more than just learning to communicate in that language, but it is learning to understand the culture as well. And 

when I say ‘‘culture,’’ I think about not only the products that are 

in existence but the practices and the perspectives. 

And I think that in learning about the culture, which is a part 

of learning another language, about the people and the community 

in which they live, would help us have a much better understanding on both an education level and also on a government level 

and on a security level. 

Senator VOINOVICH. What are the average curriculum requirements? Now, for instance in Ohio, the governor finally adopted 

more math and science, but they kind of punted on languages and 

said, ‘‘We want to study it.’’ 

No Child Left Behind does not really emphasize languages. Universities, undergraduate schools, liberal arts, in order to get a degree in the old days at least you had to have 2 years of a language 

to graduate. What I am trying to say that some of the motivation 

here has got to do with requirements. 

Ms. OLEKSAK. And if I can continue, I would say that on a couple 

of factors to address your question that is why we need a coordinated effort, and I went so far as to say K–16 that on the opposite 

from the first panel instead of looking from the top down, in our 

district in Glastonbury I could say from the bottom up. I would like 

to see people come down and talk to our juniors and seniors and 

encourage them in high school to move on to college programs. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Do you have AP courses? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Yes, we do. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Are any of your kids who are taking AP 

courses taking languages? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Yes. 

Senator VOINOVICH. They are? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Yes. And actually, we have some students that are 

taking as many as two AP language courses at the same time, 

sometimes three. I can say that we have to work with parents and 

families to talk about a skill set, a language as a skill set to help 

them. 

31

And one of my 10 points that I talked about the opportunity of 

combining with another career and language is the value-added 

piece of success in the future in a global economy. 

Senator VOINOVICH. OK. Mr. Petro. 

Mr. PETRO. When it starts to affect the bottom line, that is when 

people notice. And what I would argue is that technological advances and lower trade barriers have paved the way, as we all 

know, for lesser-developed countries to compete in the marketplace 

and that affects the bottom line. 

Ms. Oleksak mentioned about international knowledge. I want to 

read something from the CED report that Microsoft Corporation 

developed a time zone map for its Windows 95 operating system. 

It inadvertently showed the region of Kashmir lying outside the 

boundaries of India. India banned the software and Microsoft was 

forced to recall 200,000 copies of the offending product. That cost 

money. 

So what I would argue is it is the bottom line, and I do think 

business is starting to see that. And I agree when you go to these 

conferences, everyone is speaking English, but I think it is deeper 

than that and I think especially with these developed countries entering into the fray, it is starting to change some views on that. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. I think it is a very naive assumption on the 

part of businesses, and I am really kind of shocked that they continue to have that, that all business is done in the boardroom. All 

business is not done in a boardroom or in the scientific lab. So 

much of business takes place, at least in many cultures, outside of 

that formal business environment. So that combined with the compelling economic arguments, I think, would go a long way to convincing some people. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Mr. Petro, in your testimony you noted the 

intense global competition facing American businesses and emphasized a need to address 21st Century economic challenges with employees who possess knowledge of foreign languages and cultures. 

Yet even many of our Nation’s finest business schools continue to 

lack foreign language requirements and much of our corporate 

workforce lacks foreign language skills or cultural awareness. 

Your committee reports that American companies lose and estimated $2 billion a year due to inadequate cross-cultural guidance 

for their employees in multi-cultural situations. 

Do you have specific examples of those costly blunders or lost opportunities that maybe Senator Akaka and I could communicate to 

the National Business Roundtable? 

Mr. PETRO. Yes. I can certainly provide them from this Subcommittee. I do not have them right here in front of me. I would 

say that, as I mentioned earlier, university presidents are part of 

CED, and we do have some of the great business schools on board 

with us and we have talked to them about the need to increase instruction. 

I will talk to you about a survey that 80 percent of the business 

school graduates over the last 20 to 30 years talk about the fact 

that having a knowledge or a proficiency in a foreign language has 

given them an added advantage. So clearly, the people coming out 

of the schools know that it makes a difference, but there are plenty 

32

of examples that I will be happy to provide this Subcommittee 

with. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I was just thinking, Senator Akaka, if you 

could maybe draft a letter for us——

Mr. PETRO. All right. 

Senator VOINOVICH [continuing]. And we could embellish it and 

kick it around a little bit and send it over to the National Business 

Roundtable——

Mr. PETRO. Sure. 

Senator VOINOVICH [continuing]. And say, ‘‘You guys, this is a 

problem, what are you doing about it?’’

Mr. PETRO. Right. 

Senator VOINOVICH. And ask them to get back to us about whether they have goals in place and is receiving attention in corporate 

America. 

It is not enough for them to say, ‘‘Oh, boy, we need more people 

coming in that speak the languages,’’ but what are they doing 

about it? 

And one thing that is tough, Ms. Oleksak, is that we have limited resources here. I know you had many suggestions of what we 

all ought to do, and I know your job is to kind of get it all out 

there, but I really hope that you will talk with your co-workers and 

come back with a strategic priority list, because we cannot do it all. 

I mean, we would like to do it all, but it will not happen. 

So I would like to know what are the top three priorities that 

maybe we could work on that would make a difference for you and 

the things that you care about. 

Ms. OLEKSAK. We will be happy to provide that. Definitely. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much. Senator Voinovich, we 

will have a second round. 

Ms. Oleksak, I noted with interest your support for a director of 

national language initiatives as outlined in the Department of Defense white paper. At what level in the Federal Government do you 

believe a national language director should be placed and what 

should be his or her responsibilities? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. What I would like to say is that I do not feel that 

I have the right actually to determine what level the person should 

be placed at, but what I do think is that we need a coordination 

of efforts. 

There are many different initiatives going on across the country 

K–16. I am talking even within the education field. And I think 

that what we need is the opportunity to gather information at both 

the State, regional, and local levels, and we need to be able to look 

across the country at all the programs where the funds are going 

and how to best streamline our efforts. 

There were comments made in the earlier panel about not all 

districts having sufficient funding or opportunities to provide foreign language education to the same level that other districts can 

do. 

I think this is where we would be able to look and see where the 

gaps are and hopefully fill in those gaps and try to combine our efforts to try to explore a variety of avenues, not only between teacher training, professional development. We could also look at the 

education department and talk about Teacher-to-Teacher. 

33

We are looking at that with foreign language in ACTFL and we 

have invited them to participate with us this fall in our National 

Foreign Language Conference. Not only will foreign language 

teachers participate with Teacher-to-Teacher, we have invited them 

to join us as well. And I think that what we need to do is try to 

pool our efforts to try to work together better. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. Mr. Petro, you testified that the 

media, political leaders, and the business and philanthropic communities should make the public aware of the importance of improving education in foreign language and international studies. I 

support such a public awareness campaign because it will increase 

the interest and demand for more programs. 

What recommendations do you have for us to ensure that there 

is a coordinated effort to educate the public on this issue? 

Mr. PETRO. I would agree with what Ms. Oleksak just said. I 

think some sort of a coordinating body or some leadership from 

government that can help, that can tap into the various different 

sectors so people know what we are all doing at the same time. 

I know that if you look at models and examples certainly in the 

States around certain education efforts, the private sector sits very 

prominently on some of these task forces and boards, so there is 

a willingness for business certainly to participate in these sort of 

outreach efforts. 

But I do think that it is important. Just being here for the few 

hours I have learned in just chatting with some of my colleagues 

about certain things going on that I did not know about, so I think 

at the very least some sort of coordinating body or individual to 

help bring it together would be helpful. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you. Ms. Oleksak, you testified that 

universities are increasingly offering double majors coupling language study with another major such as engineering or physics. 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Yes. 

Chairman AKAKA. Do you have any information or any statistics 

on this? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. We can provide that information for you. I can 

give you an example that comes to mind right now. The University 

of Rhode Island offers a combined program in International Engineering and German and they are expanding to other languages as 

well. They have a high success rate and great student participation 

in this program, but ACTFL would be happy to provide that information for you. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much. I want to tell you that 

I really appreciate the responses from our witnesses. I feel you are 

very enthusiastic about this and together we can certainly put 

things together. Keep in touch and share information with each 

other as we go along. Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Just another comment. I am thinking about 

all of the places where you would get an opportunity to give foreign 

language education a jolt, and I am fairly familiar with the report 

of the National Academy of Sciences, ‘‘Gathering Above the Rising 

Storm.’’ It is basically on math and science preparation, upgrading 

math and science teachers. But it was interesting: I do not think 

they even mention languages. They just kind of left it out. 

34

These are the kind of reports and recommendations in which 

there should be some real effort to emphasize the importance of 

foeign language education. If it is not there, then they think, well, 

all you need to do is just study math and science, forget the rest 

of the stuff. It is that way with a lot of the States and our testing 

program in Ohio. 

I asked a question of the other panelists, and maybe you can 

help me on this, Dr. Birckbichler. When you get money from the 

Federal Government, tell me about how it gets out to the schools 

and how do schools access those funds? 

And it gets back to the question I have is if I want to get something done quick, what you do is you go for the low-hanging fruit. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Right. 

Senator VOINOVICH. How does that work? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. The way it works best is if you have a school 

with a strong language program like you mentioned earlier that 

has already begun to make connections with the K–12 community. 

One of the reasons that I think Ohio State has been so successful 

with the K–16 Pipeline Project is that the director of that program 

had already begun work in talking to high school teachers and especially high school administrators and superintendents. So there 

was already a network that was being established before the funding was given. 

And I do not know whether it was Ms. Oleksak or someone else 

talked about collaboratives, and I think this whole idea of partnerships is really important because if you establish a K–16 collaborative project in a State, you already have that network formed 

and it makes it much easier to identify the people you want to 

work with. 

Senator VOINOVICH. OK. But how much money did you get? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. It was $1 million. 

Senator VOINOVICH. So you got $1 million and do any of the 

schools get any of that money? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. At this point and, correct me if I am wrong 

on the trajectory, the trajectory right now is to develop the curriculum and then start putting it in the schools. 

Senator VOINOVICH. And so in effect you have not done that yet, 

you are working on that right now? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Right. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Probably, as you say, you have got some networks out there that you are getting input from about what they 

think about the best way of doing this. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Yes. 

Senator VOINOVICH. There are some very innovative ways to 

teach people languages these days. The Federal Government has 

got some really good training programs. 

Is there any kind of communication back and forth about what 

is really working the best? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. There have been programs like that in the 

past. I know at ACTFL there are oftentimes speakers from the 

Federal Government, but I do not know of any recent initiative 

where we had a formal gathering to do just that. 

Ms. OLEKSAK. If I could just add that at ACTFL, as you mentioned, Dr. Birckbichler, that we have worked with the Defense 

35

Languages Institute for a number of years and we have increased 

participation annually at our conference. 

We also have been working closely on a contract to develop assessments that are appropriate in the language profession that are 

proficiency-based assessments applicable for students K–12, and we 

are trying to transition that into the education field. 

We have ongoing conversations about the issues that exist at 

both the government level and at the local level and we also have 

the FBI invited to our conference and we are looking to do more 

to expand that as well. 

I can also say that a couple of years ago we had an assessment 

summit that brought in groups from various organizations to come 

in and talk about it. It was a culminating activity as part of New 

Visions in Education and talking about a variety of different areas. 

But if I could also add another piece about Federal funding, 

Glastonbury and formerly when I was in Springfield Public 

Schools, an urban district in Massachusetts, we received foreign 

language assistance program grant funding to develop curriculum 

at the elementary level, to also develop assessments. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Was that from your State? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Yes. And I can tell you though that because you 

asked the question about does it go to the schools. It does impact 

all the schools in the way the curriculum is delivered, and part of 

the requirements of that grant funding is that you also disseminate 

the information in the profession and share what you have created 

so that other teachers through professional development and other 

opportunities can learn about your program and replicate it. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Do you have any communication with each 

other, Dr. Birckbichler and Ms. Oleksak? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Oh, absolutely. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Yes. 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Dr. Birckbichler is a past president of ACTFL. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Right. 

Senator VOINOVICH. OK. All right. That is good. Ms. Oleksak, is 

that Slovak or a Czech name? 

Ms. OLEKSAK. Czechoslovakian, yes. 

Senator VOINOVICH. We have a good Italian, German, Serb, and 

native Hawaiian. That is America. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. That is right. [Laughter.] 

Senator VOINOVICH. My mother did not start to speak English 

until she was in the first grade. She speaks perfect Slovenian and 

my dad spoke perfect Serbian. 

That is another thing that is happening that I think ought to be 

encouraged. In my family, my folks were first generation, both of 

them unusual, college graduates, went to college in the Depression, 

and they never spoke their native languages at home, so I never 

learned. 

But maybe we ought to be saying, yes, we want your kids to 

learn to speak English for certain. But for goodness sakes, do not 

let them lose their heritage. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. To build on. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I guess what I am saying is that so often we 

think about all these complicated programs, but there are also 

some simple things that we ought to look at here. 

36

The other issue I would like you each to comment on is we, in 

the Homeland Security Committee are very concerned about integrating the Muslim population in the United States and how few 

people are really learning Arabic and Farsi and it gets back to the 

need for cultural education. 

What outreach could be made in that community, a real aggressive outreach to talk to Muslim and Arab American youngsters 

about the opportunities that they have for getting good jobs if they 

continue their language and get others to learn the language so 

you get some kind of a cross-fertilization going on with them. 

My last question is about Partnership for Public Service. Senator 

Akaka and I feel very good about that organization. The Partnership for Public Service got started when we had an executive session that began up at the John F. Kennedy School of Government 

that Dean Nye put together with Max Stier. Can you tell me how 

the Partnership for Public Service is assisting with this issue. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. Well, it harks back to what Senator Akaka 

said at the very beginning of the testimony and that is making the 

Federal Government the workplace of choice, and I think what it 

does is establish that pipeline between the Federal Government 

and its agencies and American undergraduates who did not know 

of these opportunities or did not have as easy access to them as 

they do now that the Partnership exists. 

Senator VOINOVICH. So because the Partnership has a relationship with your school, they are bringing to your attention the opportunities that your graduates would have in the Federal Government; is that right? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. That is right, and what is nice is it is very 

reciprocal, that means we also know there is a clearinghouse, there 

is a one-stop shopping for us that we know we can go to the Partnership and ask about opportunities in the State Department, in 

the DIA, and the CIA. So it has been very convenient in many 

ways. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Does that help you market your program at 

all? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. It does. Yes, it does. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Yes. 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. And we hope to have the same type of career 

day this coming spring and invite back the same Federal agencies 

and if not more. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Can you market that with the School of Engineering and your business school and other majors? 

Ms. BIRCKBICHLER. The campus-wide did, and the Partnership I 

believe has relationships with the College of Engineering. This was 

all a pilot program. At OSU there was the Foreign Language Initiative and engineering and I think there were one or two others. 

Senator VOINOVICH. That is great, isn’t it? Thank you. 

Chairman AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich. This 

has been a great hearing. I want to thank all witnesses today and 

to tell you you have provided valuable information to this Subcommittee. 

As I mentioned in my opening statement, I believe there must 

be sustained leadership in the Executive Branch and a coordinated 

effort among all levels of government, the private sector, and acaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:36 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 033872 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\33872.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
37

1The letter referred to appears in the Appendix on page 98. 

demia to ensure that Americans have a real understanding of other 

languages and cultures. 

Based on what I have heard today, I am more convinced than 

ever that legislation is needed to make this happen. Next week I 

will reintroduce the National Foreign Language Coordination Act 

to establish a national language director and a Foreign Language 

Coordination Council to develop and oversee the implementation of 

a national language strategy. Our economic and national security 

depends on it, without a doubt. 

The hearing record will be open for one week for additional statements or questions from other Members. 

Are there any further comments you want to make? 

Senator VOINOVICH. I would like very much if Mr. Petro would 

respond about drafting a letter to the Business Roundtable about 

the importance of foreign language skills to our economic competitiveness. 

Mr. PETRO. Yes. We will put together a letter in the next few 

days and get it over to your offices.1

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. Are any of your groups familiar 

with Senator Akaka’s legislation? 

Mr. PETRO. Yes. 

Senator VOINOVICH. And you are supporting it? 

Mr. PETRO. CED generally does not support legislation, but I can 

get my members to respond on their own behalf. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Good. 

Chairman AKAKA. I thank you very much again. This hearing is 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:19 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(39)

A P P E N D I X 


33872.001
40


33872.002
41


33872.003
42


33872.004
43


33872.005
44


33872.006
45


33872.007
46


33872.008
47


33872.009
48


33872.010
49


33872.011
50


33872.012
51


33872.013
52


33872.014
53


33872.015
54


33872.016
55


33872.017
56


33872.018
57


33872.019
58


33872.020
59


33872.021
60


33872.022
61


33872.023
62


33872.024
63


33872.025
64


33872.026
65


33872.027
66


33872.028
67


33872.029
68


33872.030
69


33872.031
70


33872.032
71


33872.033
72


33872.034
73


33872.035
74


33872.036
75


33872.037
76


33872.038
77


33872.039
78


33872.040
79


33872.041
80


33872.042
81


33872.043
82


33872.044
83


33872.045
84


33872.046
85


33872.047
86


33872.048
87


33872.049
88


33872.050
89


33872.051
90


33872.052
91


33872.053
92


33872.054
93


33872.055
94


33872.056
95


33872.057
96


33872.058
97


33872.059
98


33872.060
99


33872.061
100


33872.062
101


33872.063
102


33872.064
103

Æ


33872.065