The influence of educational background upon the variety of English as a second language speech was examined. Adults in a rural New Mexico community were interviewed in order to elicit data on phonological variation. Data were collected through free speech, controlled speech which required the informants to translate Spanish questions to English, and specific speech which encouraged the identification of familiar objects in both Spanish and English. Twenty-four adults ranging in age from 23 to 81 participated. Thirteen had a college education, 5 a high school education, and the remainder an elementary education. The subjects with more education showed less variance in producing English. Compared to the other groups, the most highly educated group took more time in speech production or avoided the three speech features which caused difficulty. The less educated groups either confused the feature "sh" with "ch" or used variants of "th." The performance of the native Spanish speakers improved with education and this improvement did not impair Spanish production. It is concluded that bilingual speakers can pattern their speech to what they hear as the standard of the three features. (RW)