This report describes findings on the quality of the More at Four Program and the outcomes for children during pre-k from two program years: 2003-2004 (year 3) and 2005-2006 (year 5). Separate results for the 2005-2006 cohort are presented to provide a picture of the program in its most recent year of operation as well as results from the 2…

For Week of the Young Child, a Texas school offers a bilingual parent institute to nurture school-family relationships, demonstrate and build on school respect for home cultures, and foster community awareness of early childhood education. Families recognize the learning for children inherent in daily routines, learn teaching techniques, and feel…

Group therapy with multilingual, multicultural populations is a challenging and unexplored area that is beginning to be addressed because of the growing population of multilingual, multicultural children. In this article, the importance of working with children from different cultural backgrounds, and current research on bilingualism are reviewed.…

Evidence of phonological awareness levels usually comes from English-speaking children. The evidence in Spanish is scarce. The present study examined the phonological awareness of syllables, onsets--rimes, and phonemes, extending the Treiman and Zukowski (1991) results to preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children. The sample comprised…

This report summarizes Austin Independent School District's prekindergarten program for the 2007-2008 school year.

A student's entire journey along the educational spectrum is affected by what occurs--and, crucially, by what does not occur--before the age of eight or nine. Yet early learning has never received the attention it deserves and needs. In his latest book, education expert Gene Maeroff takes a hard look at early learning and the primary grades of…

The PLS-4 (Preschool Language Scale, 4th edition) is a psychometrically sound instrument constructed to assess language skills in children from birth to 6 years 11 months. It is a useful diagnostic and research tool that can be used to identify current comprehension and expressive language skills and can measure changes in language skills over…

For 15 years, "Newark Kids Count" has provided insight into the challenges facing Newark's children and families. This report presents the portrait of Newark children in 2010. A special section on Newark charter schools is also presented. Advocates for Children of New Jersey's (ACNJ's) goal in choosing this topic was to inform the…

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), was first launched in 1997 as a periodic longitudinal study of program performance. This report is the fourth in a series that uses data from the FACES 2006 cohort to describe…

This report summarizes evaluation results from AISD's prekindergarten program during school year 2000-2001.

This article describes a food and restaurant project undertaken by 6-year-old children in a bilingual school in Mexico City. The teacher who conducted this study illustrates the children's involvement in this investigation through photographs, samples of their work, and explanations.

By the year 2025, 25 percent of school-age children in the United States and 22 percent of the college-age population will be Hispanic. Yet even with the growth of the population there remain significant achievement gaps between Hispanic students and other racial and ethnic groups, leading to fewer Latino high school and college graduates.…

This study measured the English and Spanish language proficiency and phonological sensitivity skills of Hispanic children who attended Head Start. Its primary objective was to determine the relationship between language proficiency and phonological sensitivity in English and Spanish independently, and whether this relationship differed in English…

In this article, the author critiques six articles. Five of the six articles are about motivation in language learning, an area which has seen considerable theoretical and empirical development over the last decade. The articles she reviews include: (1) Udo Jung's report on the top twelve "most prestigious FLT (foreign language teaching) journals"…

This report summarizes AISD bilingual and English as a second language programs for the 2003-2004 school year.