Pre-K and Latinos

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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.