In this series: Texas 2025-26 Enrollment.

In 2004-05, fewer than one in three Dallas ISDET students was classified as an English learner. Twenty years later, it is one in two. The district's LEP share hit 50.5% in 2023-24 and held at 50.4% in 2024-25, with 70,422 of the district's 139,776 students learning English alongside every other subject. Dallas is the largest school district in Texas, and likely the nation, where English learners now constitute a majority.

The crossing was not abrupt. Dallas's LEP share has climbed steadily, from about 31% in 2005 to roughly 50% today, a gradient so gradual it barely registers as news in any single year. But the cumulative result is a 19.8 percentage-point shift that has fundamentally altered what instruction looks like in the state's second-largest district.

A statewide pattern with a Dallas concentration

Dallas is not alone. Fifty-four Texas districts now have LEP-majority student bodies, up from 19 in 2005. Statewide, 1,345,031 students are classified as English learners, 24.3% of all enrollment. That is nearly double the 684,007 counted in 2005, a 96.6% increase over two decades. Non-LEP enrollment grew just 13.1% over the same period.

But Dallas stands out for scale. Among districts with at least 5,000 students, border-region districts like Roma ISD (81.6%) and Rio Grande City Grulla ISD (72.8%) have higher shares, but they serve fewer than 10,000 students each. Alief ISDET (58.6%, 22,597 students) and Irving ISDET (57.5%, 17,674 students) have higher shares among DFW-area peers. Dallas's distinction is combining a majority LEP share with a total enrollment of nearly 140,000 students.

Houston ISDET, the state's largest district at 176,039 students, has not followed the same trajectory. Houston's LEP share sits at 39.3%, with 69,145 students classified as English learners. In raw count, Houston and Dallas are nearly identical. The gap is in overall enrollment: Dallas has shed students faster, concentrating the LEP share upward. Dallas enrolled 157,743 students in 2005 and 139,776 in 2025, a loss of 17,967. Houston has seen comparable losses but from a larger base.

The 2022-2023 acceleration

The statewide LEP surge is visible in year-over-year data. Texas added 97,747 English learners in a single year between 2022 and 2023, the largest annual increase on record. The largest prior single-year jump had been 63,454, in 2022. Two forces converged: a wave of new arrivals at the southern border and expanded identification of existing students under revised state criteria.

In August 2023, the Texas Education Agency adopted revisions to the rules governing emergent bilingual student identification and reclassification. The changes to 19 TAC Chapter 89, Subchapter BB updated criteria used by Language Proficiency Assessment Committees (LPACs) when determining which students qualify for services and when they can exit. The redesign of the TELPAS writing assessment and STAAR reading assessment in spring 2023 delayed reclassification decisions, potentially keeping some students classified as LEP longer than they would have been under the prior timeline.

Disentangling reclassification effects from actual new arrivals is difficult with enrollment data alone. One proxy: in Dallas, the ratio of LEP students to Hispanic students rose from 49.0% in 2005 to 70.7% in 2025. That means seven in 10 Hispanic students in Dallas ISD are now classified as English learners, up from fewer than half two decades ago. Some of that reflects new immigration. Some reflects evolving identification practices. The data cannot separate the two.

Across the metroplex, every direction points up

Fort Worth ISDET has followed the steepest recent trajectory among large districts, climbing from 28.0% LEP in 2012 to 42.2% in 2025, a 14.2 percentage-point increase in 13 years. Aldine ISDET in north Houston reached 48.2% in 2025, on track to cross 50% within a year or two.

Alief and Irving both crossed the 50% threshold several years before Dallas. Alief reached 54.0% in 2023 and Irving hit 52.3% the same year. Both are mid-sized districts in the DFW and Houston metro areas, respectively, with deep roots in immigrant communities. Their trajectories suggest that Dallas's crossing is part of a broader urbanization of English learner enrollment in Texas rather than an anomaly specific to one district.

The staffing equation

More than 90 languages are spoken in the homes of Dallas ISD students, according to the district's own reporting. To serve its 70,422 students classified as English learners, Dallas operates two-way dual language programs at 76 campuses and a Newcomer Program for recent immigrants in grades K through 5. The district has pursued international recruitment from Spain, Mexico, and Puerto Rico to fill bilingual teaching positions.

"More than 90 languages are spoken in the homes of Dallas ISD students, and more than 70,000 students are considered emergent bilingual." Source: Dallas ISD Staff News, January 2025

Dallas started the 2024-25 year with fewer than 70 total teacher vacancies, the lowest in nearly a decade. But ESL certification gaps persist. In January 2025, the district began offering $500 stipends for teachers who obtain ESL certification, a signal that qualified bilingual educators remain in short supply even as overall vacancies have improved.

The Texas Early Childhood English Learner Initiative reports that 49% of Dallas ISD's pre-K through third-grade students are English learners, above both the Dallas County average of 40% and the statewide average of 27%. The pipeline of young English learners suggests Dallas's 50.4% district-wide share is likely a floor, not a ceiling.

Two enrollment trajectories, one state

The divergence between LEP and non-LEP enrollment growth in Texas is the sharpest pattern in the state's data. Since 2005, LEP enrollment has nearly doubled while non-LEP enrollment has grown just 13.1%. The two lines, indexed to 2005, are separating at an accelerating rate.

In 2025, the statewide LEP count essentially flatlined for the first time since 2021, declining by 869 students. Whether this marks the end of the post-2020 surge or a one-year pause is unknowable from a single data point. The 2025-26 LEP data has not yet been released by the Texas Education Agency.

The question for Dallas is not whether the district can serve a majority-English-learner student body. It already is. The question is whether the instructional infrastructure, the bilingual teaching pipeline, and the per-pupil funding formulas that drive resource allocation were designed for a district where the typical student is learning English. For 70,422 students in Dallas, that is no longer a hypothetical.

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