; and (3) provide students with the language skills necessary for an interconnected and global world. 3. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Recent academic studies demonstrate that America’s language capacity has reached a crisis point, with only one fifth of United States residents speaking a language other than English at home, 90 percent of United States-based employers reporting a reliance on employees with language skills other than English, and one third of foreign language-dependent employers reporting a language skills gap. This language crisis has real world implications for business, government, the military, and diplomatic and intelligence services. (2) The Department of Education does not have an innovative world languages program for elementary and secondary students. (3) The Nation’s education system is suffering from severe shortages of world language, English learner, and bilingual and dual language immersion educators that have been exacerbated by the COVID–19 pandemic. Currently, foreign language is the second highest teacher shortage subject area in the Nation, with 6% of English as Second Language or bilingual education positions vacant. (4) The lack of a Federal elementary and secondary school world language and dual language program, coupled with the continuing shortage of world language and bilingual teachers, creates significant obstacles to providing equitable opportunities for all students to develop multilingualism. English learners, a population which has grown by 2,100,000 between 2000 and 2019, have been disproportionately impacted. (5) The Federal Government has a strong interest in better preparing American students to compete in the global economy. 4. Definitions In this Act: (1) Community-based heritage language school The term community-based heritage language school means a nonprofit, community-based school that offers classes for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12, for the purpose of maintaining and teaching the language and culture of non-English speaking