Foreign-language experts are praising the Department of Education for taking a larger role in promoting the teaching of other languages as part of a proposed Bush administration initiative to bolster national security and the economy. The departments of Defense and State have headed up efforts to increase the teaching of much-needed foreign languages, focusing on the university level, while the Education Department has done little to promote language development at the K-12 level, the experts say. The federal government's list of critical-need languages includes Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Russian. This article briefly discusses the Department's long-term plan for language development.