Background: We examined prevalence, incidence, and trajectory of obesity from kindergarten through grade 8 in one of the first states to implement annual surveillance. Methods: Participants included 16,414 children enrolled in kindergarten in Arkansas in 2004 with complete body mass index (BMI) measurements in kindergarten and eighth grade.…

Contemporary perspectives on emergent literacy in preschool emphasize the importance of providing developmentally appropriate, authentic, early writing experiences and supporting students' home language and culture. The current study analyzed kindergarten outcomes for 82 linguistically diverse, low-income children (60% Black, 40% Latino) who…

This study investigates the contribution of the home language environment of Latino children of immigrants (N= 228) and their Spanish and English proficiency in relation to their social and emotional well-being. Multiple regressions evidenced that home language use and literacy practices accounted for significant variance in children's Spanish and…

Research shows that Black and Latino students continue to perform significantly below their white counterparts in academic achievement. How school leaders support teachers who work with the Black and Latino students comprising this gap was the premise of this study. This study was conducted to understand the role of school leaders in supporting…

A half century of research details how segregating racial groups in separate schools corresponds with disparities in funding and quality teachers and culturally narrow curricula. But we know little about whether young Latino children have entered less or more segregated elementary schools over the past generation. This article details the growing…

This article investigates the relationship between student-teacher ethno-racial matching and students' placement in reading ability groups in kindergarten and first grades in the United States. Multilevel regression analysis of a nationally representative sample of students shows that Latino/a first graders are more likely to be placed in higher…

There have been numerous studies about the instructional delivery models utilized for meeting the needs of ELLs, and particularly for ELLs with LD, but no specific studies were discovered that identify the instructional delivery models available for ELLs with LD from Latin America. Therefore, the problem that was addressed in this study was to…

Two decades ago, the New Jersey Supreme Court in "Abbott v. Burke" mandated that the state establish high quality preschool education in the 31 highest-poverty school districts. New Jersey created a pre-K program with high standards and a continuous improvement system that transformed a patchwork of private and public programs into a…

The twenty-first century has seen a surge in scholarship on Latino educational history and a new nonbinary umbrella term, Latinx, that a younger generation prefers. Many of historian Victoria-María MacDonald's astute observations in 2001 presaged the growth of the field. Focus has increased on Spanish-surnamed teachers and discussions have grown…

The goal of this short-term longitudinal study was to examine the functioning of the grit measure; grit's relation to emotional engagement; and grit's prediction of later literacy achievement, above and beyond emotional engagement, among dual language learners. Data were collected at two time points four months apart with dual language learner,…

The author looks at bilingual first language acquisition Spanish-English Mexican American bilinguals across an elementary school in Colorado. Based on classroom observations, and small group and one-on-one interviews with student participants, their teachers, and immediate family members, these bilinguals reveal how their identity is compromised…

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) Ready to Learn project, "Hero Elementary," has an emphasis on reaching Latino communities and supporting the needs of children with disabilities. The project embeds the expectations of kindergarten to 2nd grade science standards into a series of…

This study uses empirical data from a version of the Clark doll experiment and Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) to determine the factors that shape the perceptions of college among 35 randomly selected Latina/o children in Grades 2nd to 5th. The findings of this study lead to two conclusions: (a) that Latina/o children hold their…

This article reports on a case study of a kindergarten, monolingual teacher and how she used Spanish, the home language of her Latino/a students who are English language learners (ELLs), in the classroom. The article focuses on how the teacher develops and uses her emerging knowledge of Spanish to scaffold students' learning, specifically when…

Theory of Mind (ToM), as a relevant aspect in children's socio-cognitive development, has been widely studied. Some results have suggested that bilingual children have an advantage over their monolingual peers in development of ToM. However, there is less research regarding the predictive role of ToM in performance of oral and reading…