Among students learning English in Greater Houston area public school districts, Spanish, Vietnamese and Arabic were the most common home languages spoken in the 2025-26 school year, according to Texas Education Agency data.
The breakdown
Emergent bilingual students are students “in the process of acquiring English and [who have] another language as the primary language,” as previously reported by Community Impact.
In regions 4 and 6—which comprise most of the public school districts in the Greater Houston area—the most common home language spoken by emergent bilingual students was Spanish, according to TEA data released April 27.
However, the number of Spanish-speaking students decreased year over year in both regions.
Meanwhile, behind Spanish, the top home languages spoken by emergent bilingual students in regions 4 and 6 in 2025-26 were:
- Vietnamese with 8,742 students across both regions
- Arabic with 5,777 students across both regions
- Urdu with 4,644 students across both regions
- Mandarin with 3,974 students across both regions
A closer look
Community Impact analyzed data from the TEA to learn how many emergent bilingual students were in 30 public school districts across the Greater Houston area during the 2025-26 school year.
According to TEA data released May 29 and June 2, the districts with the highest percentages of emergent bilingual students, compared to total student enrollment, in the 2025-26 school year were:
The districts with the smallest percentages of emergent bilingual students in 2025-26 were:
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Publisher: Houston – Community Impact Newspaper