Pre-K and Latinos

The future productivity of the U.S. workforce depends on our current commitment to providing high-quality early childhood education programs for all children, but especially for the quickly growing Latino population. Although many states have a history of primarily serving at-risk children through targeted programs like Head Start, a pre-k-for-all approach is more effective in increasing Latino participation and addressing disparities in school readiness, achievement, and attainment.

Demographics

• Latino children make up the largest and most rapidly growing racial/ethnic minority population in the United States.
• Of children in the U.S. under age five, 4.2 million or 21 percent are Hispanic.
• Ninety-three percent of Latino children in the U.S. under age 5 are U.S. citizens.
• The largest percentage increases in the Latino population during the last ten years have occurred in the South (North Carolina, 394 percent; Arkansas, 337 percent; Georgia, 300 percent; Tennessee, 278 percent; South Carolina, 211 percent; and Alabama, 208 percent).

School readiness gap

• Hispanic children often start kindergarten less prepared than Caucasian children and are unable to catch up during the primary grades.
• Nationally, the dropout rate for Hispanics is much higher than for other ethnic groups -more than double that of African Americans and more than three times the rate for Caucasians.
• A recent Georgetown University study showed that Latino children in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s pre-k-for-all program experienced the greatest academic gains of all groups.

Enrollment

• Only 40 percent of Hispanic three to five year olds are enrolled in early education programs, compared to 59 percent of Caucasians and 64 percent of African Americans.
• Latino enrollment in Head Start increased far more than that of any other ethnic group between 1994 and 2004 (20 percent versus 3 percent for Caucasians and 8 percent for African Americans).
• Financial, linguistic, educational, and access barriers, as well as a lack of awareness of program availability and benefits account for large portions of the pre-k enrollment gap.

English language learners (ELLs)

• Research indicates that ELLs acquire literacy skills in English faster and do better in school if they have a strong foundation in their home language.
• Schools report that 80 percent of ELLs are native Spanish speakers.

Assessment

• While the testing of all pre-k-aged children can be controversial, assessment of ELLs is especially complex. Nevertheless, these evaluations are still valuable and necessary.
• Few of the assessments developed specifically for young ELLs meet the rigorous standards necessary for use as part of program evaluations.
• Evaluations should not compare the scores of ELLs to the scores of monolingual English-speaking children.