Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Improve educational opportunities for Hispanic children
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Sharon Saldarriaga
Saldarriaga is the state director for Telamon Corp. and also serves on the board of the Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations in Richmond. The Virginia Forum
Virginia's Hispanic population is steadily growing. In fact, from 1990 to 2004 the share of babies born in the commonwealth to Hispanic mothers grew from 3 percent to 11 percent. But are we doing enough to ensure that these children start their educational path off right?
Expanding and improving the quality of early education for the commonwealth's Hispanic population should be among our highest educational priorities. One way to give our children the best possible start is to provide them with greater opportunities in the early childhood years through the PK-3 approach.
What is PK-3? PK-3 programs raise achievement among children by offering quality early education programs that align the curriculum and instruction for children from prekindergarten through the third grade. Research has shown that the PK-3 years are crucial to providing the foundation for life-long learning. Aligning the curriculum and instruction for children from prekindergarten through the third grade contributes substantially to higher levels of school readiness and achievement.
PK-3 is especially important for Hispanic children. Hispanic children lag well behind their non-Hispanic counterparts on measures of school readiness when they start kindergarten and subsequently achieve at much lower levels in the primary grades. This pattern of lower academic achievement persists through high school and college.
In the short term, we will experience reduced special education and grade retention costs to school districts that use the PK-3 approach. In the long term, we will see decreased dropout rates, savings to the juvenile and adult justice systems, and increased earnings from participants.
Moreover, increased investments in PK-3 programs, which are proven to prepare our young children for school success, also strengthen the state's economy. Better education equals better jobs and a stronger local economy.
The good news is that the PK-3 approach is gaining strong support. A recent report by the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics echoed the need to provide these services to the growing Hispanic populations.
Today, Hispanics constitute one-fifth of the nation's young children (infants through 8-years-old) and are projected to be a quarter of all young children in the United States by 2030. In 24 states, at least one in eight children in the 0-8 age group is Hispanic. Some of the most rapid growth is taking place in the South and the Southeast.
While PK-3 programs raise achievement among Hispanic children and provide better educational opportunities in the early childhood years, there is an inadequate capacity to meet demand in many Hispanic communities. Other problems exist, such as a lack of knowledge about program availability among Hispanic parents and the inability to afford prekindergarten. Lack of English also affects the ability of Hispanic parents to get information.
Studies show that PK-3 programs such as Head Start can improve the literacy and math skills of all children, and especially English language learners and low-income children. PK-3 strengthens children's skills to help them succeed. The PK3 approach creates the continuity in teaching and curriculum that makes it more successful for Hispanic children to learn English. We must also encourage Hispanic college students to choose PK-3 education as a career. We must do our best to improve access to programs for Hispanic children by providing information to Hispanic parents and locating programs in neighborhoods with large concentrations of Hispanic families.
We need to ensure that all children have greater access to high quality early learning programs like PK-3. Greater opportunity needs to exist for Hispanic children from low income families, especially those who are English language learners.
All children must have access to programs like PK-3 so we can make a difference in bringing all children up to academic standards.
We must also continue to expand state-funded prekindergarten programs with the objective of creating voluntary universal prekindergarten and eventually move to a PK-3 curriculum.
Virginia should do all it can for all its children by investing in prekindergarten programs like PK-3. If we don't, we could miss a critical window of opportunity to do what's best for our growing Hispanic population.
