Free preschool will help Latinos and US | csmonitor.com: We generally think of kindergarten as a time of possibilities and fresh starts. But kids don't begin their formal education on equal footing: When they arrive at the schoolhouse door, poor and minority students often lag behind their peers by as much as 18 months. The imperative of reducing this achievement gap has convinced state leaders to invest in toddlers' education. Over half of governors increased spending on pre-K last year. Three states - Oklahoma, Florida, and Georgia - offer free preschool to 4-year-olds, and policymakers in Arizona, Virginia, and Illinois are considering universal programs.
While California voters voted down a proposition that would have provided free preschool to 4-year-olds earlier this year, the state is set to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to provide early education to poor children, the group likely to profit most from high quality programs.
In order to deliver on the promise of pre-K, states will need to aggressively reach out to the fastest-growing part of our population: Latino children. Only 40 percent of Latino 3- to 5-year-olds attend preschool, compared with approximately 60 percent of both African-American and white children. Ironically, Latinos are particularly in need of early intervention: They often live in poverty, their parents generally have low levels of education, and in recently arrived immigrant families, children's exposure to English can be minimal.
