Para Nuestros Ninos: Expanding and Improving Early Education for Hispanics

The National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics urges that Hispanic children be enrolled in high quality education programs as early as possible in order to make more rapid progress in closing the Hispanic-White achievement gap. The Task Force released a national report, Para Nuestros Niños: Expanding and Improving Early Education for Hispanics, in Washington, D.C. on March 8, 2007.

Hispanic children, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, continue to lag behind non-Hispanic Whites on measures of school readiness and school achievement, including in reading and mathematics. At the same time, there is growing evidence that large state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) programs are producing valuable school readiness gains for Hispanic youngsters who have the opportunity to attend them. Head Start also is beneficial. In addition, high quality infant/toddler programs can contribute to greater school readiness. Thus, the earlier Hispanic children have access to high quality educational programs, the better.

However, despite the benefits of greater access to such programs, Hispanic youngsters continue to be underrepresented among children who attend pre-K for several reasons. Among them are an inadequate supply of affordable preschool seats in many Hispanic communities, a lack of information for Hispanic parents on the programs that are available, and language barriers with program operators.

An important component of high quality early education for Hispanic children who are English language learners (ELLs) is having the opportunity to learn in both English and Spanish. There is a great deal of evidence that K-3 education that provides instruction in both languages leads to higher achievement among Hispanic ELLs. There also is evidence that the use of both languages in preschool can contribute to greater school readiness for these youngsters.

Although extremely valuable, the most effective existing infant/toddler, pre-K, and K-3 strategies are able to close only part of the readiness and achievement gaps between Hispanics and Whites. As a result, there is a need to engage in research and development in these areas that would involve extensive design, testing, and evaluation of new or improved strategies at all three of these levels. A great deal of emphasis should be on pursuing more effective ways to improve early language development among Hispanic English language learners from disadvantaged circumstances, owing to the importance of early language skills in predicting later success in school.