The Latino challenge in early education
By JULIA SAENZ
Channel: Education Week
One in four children in the U.S. under the age of ten are Latino, yet they are much less likely to enroll in formal early education programs. By the age of two, Latino children find themselves well behind white children in the classroom, especially when it comes to vocabulary.
Many believe that the main cause of this severe education gap is the lack of access that Latino children have to quality preschools. Nearly 70% of white children enroll in preschools, while that number plummets below 50% for their Latino counterparts.
Educational experts have called on Latino parents to attempt to read to their children from a young age, as this has been shown to have a strong positive effect on a child’s educational growth. Still, this is only one step in the process, and hopefully as more Latinos become aware of this education disparity, there will be more of an insistence upon getting their children into school as early as possible.
