Limited English Proficient students, also referred to as English Learners (ELs), perform at levels far below those of their English-proficient peers and are more likely to drop out. In fact, the high school drop-out rate among Southeast Asian Americans is a staggering 40% for Hmong American students, 38% for Laotian American students, and 35% for Cambodian American students. These numbers are simply not acceptable, which is why I view the work we do in the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) as being so critically important to achieving President Obama’s goal for the United States to have the best-educated workforce and the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020