Studies Provide Guidance for Teaching Immigrant Preschoolers

By Mary Ann Zehr

Ed Week

Princeton, N.J.

A growing number of studies are providing guidance to school districts that are increasingly looking for ways to support preschoolers from immigrant families so that they are ready for kindergarten.

Recent findings from that growing body of work—including studies that examine the effectiveness of tools for measuring preliteracy, explore immigrant preschoolers’ access to early-childhood education, and analyze how immigrant children measure up with their nonimmigrant peers academically, socially, and emotionally upon entering kindergarten—were presented here late last month at a conference held in tandem with the release of a special issue on immigrant children in the journal Future of Children. The event, at Princeton University, drew nearly 200 educators.

While the term “immigrant children” can be interpreted in different ways, experts at the April 29 conference defined it to include any child under age 18 living in the United States with at least one parent born in a foreign country. Currently such children account for a quarter of the nation’s 75 million children. By 2050, they are expected to make up a third of more than 100 million children in the United States.

The well-documented academic disparities between many immigrant children and their peers in high school are rooted in early-childhood education, said Robert Crosnoe, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

He pointed out that immigrants to the United States are not a monolithic group. Immigrants from Latin American countries tend to be more disadvantaged than those from Asian countries, for example. But, while preschoolers from Latin American immigrant families are more likely to live in poverty, have mothers with low educational attainment, and have health problems, they also have some strengths.

“They are better behaved than other children,” Mr. Crosnoe said. He said Latino preschoolers have an edge over their African-American peers in their level of social-emotional development, which is something he believes educators can build on.

Getting Ready to Read

Meanwhile, the field of preschool education is “moving in the right direction” in developing effective tools to assess preliteracy for bilingual youngsters, said Sandra Barrueco, an assistant professor of psychology at the Catholic University of America, in Washington.

She recently reviewed 19 preliteracy assessments for their validity and reliability with children who speak Spanish at home. She deemed three quarters of the measures to be suitable, and ....

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