A study tested the assumption that there would be no significant difference in the test scores of the California Achievement Test between students of monolingual Hispanic and bilingual Hispanic backgrounds. The sample tested two groups of first-grade children (21 children in all) with Hispanic backgrounds in Elizabeth, New Jersey. A comparison of…

Follow-up evaluation data were collected after one year on a program to teach young children about phonemic structures. Results with 63 experimental subjects in first grade and 56 controls indicate that children who enter school with advanced phonemic awareness score high on measures of word identification, decoding, and spelling. (SLD)