After a comprehensive review of the literature, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill confirm that Latino and Spanish-speaking children benefit from well-regulated early childhood programs like Head Start or state-funded pre-kindergarten, particularly with respect to improving language and literacy skills.
The work, led by Virginia Buysse and Ellen Peisner-Feinberg at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC, underscores the need for early education programs for dual-language learners, who represent a large and rapidly growing population in the United States.
In their work, the researchers screened 4,000 initial studies from several academic databases before determining 25 that met their rigorous selection criteria. Almost all the studies focused on Latino or Spanish-speaking children between 3 and 5 years old, and most were enrolled in center-based early childhood programs.
“This is a surprisingly small group of studies, given the number of children under the age of 5 in this country who do not speak English as their home language,” Buysse said. “The dearth of top-caliber research itself was an important finding.”
FPG contact: Dave Shaw, (919) 966-086, dshaw@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: Thania Benios, (919) 962-8596, thania_benios@unc.edu