Four-year-old children with parents who speak little to no English reap important benefits by participating in one year of center-based care—such as Head Start or state preschool—before starting kindergarten, a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California concludes.
These so-called “linguistically isolated” children, who have virtually no exposure to the English language in their home and neighborhood environments, demonstrate much stronger early reading skills than their peers who do not attend a center-based preschool program, the study concludes.
The researchers did not find the same improvements for children’s mathematics skills, which “suggests that center-based programs serving linguistically isolated children are missing the opportunity to promote readiness in mathematics,” the study says.
