Education qualification requirements for early childhood teachers are increasing in many types of federal, state, and community-based early childhood programs. The 2007 reauthorization of Head Start requires all teachers to have associate degrees and 50 percent to have earned a baccalaureate degree in early childhood education by the year 2013. At…

Skagit/Islands Head Start (SIHS) in Washington State has always taken pride in its high-quality learning program. But in spring 2002, a problem was discovered: the child assessments from 13 centers serving children from birth to age 5 indicated that although Spanish-speaking 3-year-olds entered with language and literacy skills at a level similar…

Title I, Part A and Title II, Part A funds are provided to Houston Independent School District (HISD) through the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Both funds focus on enhancing student achievement, Title I, Part A through providing…

Bilingual education has taken center stage in Illinois with a new education mandate; many public preschools will be required to offer bilingual education to all three- and four-year-olds who do not speak English. Dual-language (DL) classrooms represent one very promising model in bilingual education that is being used to develop these new…

The purpose of this study was to design and establish the technical adequacy of curriculum-based measures (CBMs) of vocabulary acquisition for use with preschool children. This study sought to establish the technical adequacy of two tools that can be used for measuring benchmarks of vocabulary acquisition for both native English speakers and for…

The ability to read on grade level is a fundamental skill required for children to achieve academic success. Students who are English language learners (ELLs) and/or those who have learning disabilities often find it extremely difficult to achieve at the reading expectation level. This study examines English phonemic awareness and phonic skills in…

Full-day pre-K students from the 2001-2002 cohort were more likely to pass the 2010 7th-grade reading TAKS than were kindergarten students from the 2002-2003 cohort who were assumed eligible for pre-K but did not attend pre-K in 2001-2002. There is a full report and a separate executive summary report. [For the executive summary of this study, see…

Background: It is generally assumed that children with Down syndrome (DS) present a deficit in lexical production relative to their cognitive abilities. However, the literature on this topic has recently shown several contradictory results. In addition, most studies only consider vocabulary production in its vocal modality. However it is also…

Theories concerning the development of phonological awareness place special emphasis on lexical and orthographic knowledge. Given the large degree of variability in preschool classrooms that house Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELL), this study controlled for classroom effects by removing classroom means and covariances based on 158…

This article explores the benefits and challenges of a Spanish language immersion preschool from the perspective of a non-Spanish speaking African American family. Data explored include the decision to enroll, reactions from peers and family, home-school communication issues, language development, and family involvement. In addition,…

Immigrant families in countries such as the United States are expected to integrate within the majority culture socially, academically, politically, and economically (Hernandez-Sheets, 2005). For many immigrant families in the United States it is particularly challenging to continue practicing their values and beliefs since they are often not…

The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) is a measure relevant to intervention decision making and progress monitoring for infants and toddlers. With increasing recognition of the importance of quality early childhood education and intervention for all children, measurement plays an important role in documenting children's progress and outcomes of…

It is well established that variation in caregivers' speech is associated with language outcomes, yet little is known about the learning principles that mediate these effects. This longitudinal study (n = 27) explores whether Spanish-learning children's early experiences with language predict efficiency in real-time comprehension and vocabulary…

This investigation examined the Spanish and English receptive vocabulary and language comprehension abilities of bilingual preschoolers who attended Head Start over a two-year period. It was hypothesised that bilingual children's development would follow linear trajectories and that the development of children who were only exposed to Spanish in…

Purpose: The current study presents preliminary nonword repetition data from Spanish-speaking preschool children using a new set of stimuli. Method: Twenty nonwords were constructed to be phonotactically possible in Spanish and to conform to published guidelines for nonword repetition stimuli. Fourteen Spanish-speaking typically developing…