Lack of preschool puts Latino kids behind

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Isaiah Cortes and Pedro Alvarez-Bernandini, enjoy a picture book together at the Early Childhood Center in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010. | Donnell Collins~For Sun-Times Media

Updated: April 2, 2011 5:38PM

AURORA — Joana Rojas’ 3-year-old daughter knows her ABCs, can count up to 20, and can name colors and shapes.

At East Aurora’s Early Childhood Center, Rojas said her daughter “is learning a lot — a lot more than if she were just at home.”

But her daughter’s preschool experience defies a trend for fellow Latinos in the state.

Despite a growing Latino population in Illinois, just more than one-third of the state’s Latino children attend preschool, compared to more than half of their black peers and about two-thirds of white and Asian children, a new study reports.

Illinois’ Latino preschool rate is far below the national average of 48 percent for a few reasons, said study author Bruce Fuller, director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California-Berkeley.

Illinois Latino communities have been slower to push preschool, compared to the black community and faith-based groups, Fuller said.

For first-generation Latinos, “the tradition is not to send your child to a preschool. It’s to rely on grandparents or an aunt who lives around the corner,” he said.

Parents not aware

Norma Piza, who has had three children attend preschool in the East Aurora School District, said that she thinks it’s likely that other Latino parents are not aware of their options.

“They don’t know that they have bilingual classrooms,” Piza said. “If there’s no one there to tell you exactly how it works, you don’t know. Also, we have to work, and finding travel arrangements is difficult.”

Rojas agreed.

“I think sometimes the parents don’t even know that this option exists,” she said. “Some of my friends that I talked to didn’t even know that their kids could go to school early.”

Latino parents also may fear sending their children to strangers who do not speak their language, said Reyna Hernandez of the Latino Policy Forum. Parents also might worry about questions on legal status. That subject is off-limits to preschools, but may come up in applications for accompanying child care, Hernandez said.

No reading at home

Among Illinois 4-year-olds in the 2005-2006 school year, Fuller’s study found, 66 percent of whites, 63 percent of Asians, 54 percent of blacks and 35 percent of Latinos were attending preschool.

The average Illinois Latino child enters kindergarten five months behind whites in being prepared for school, while black children come in about three or four months behind, Fuller said.

Another contributing factor: Latina mothers are less likely to have attended college and to read to their children than their black or white peers, he said.

“Students who come from economically disadvantaged homes and are identified with risk factors do not generally gain strong language skills from the home,” said Christie Aird, assistant superintendent of elementary programs in the East Aurora School District.

“Many of our parents do not have a high school education and/or come from single-parent homes.”

The study, funded by the McCormick Foundation, comes on the heels of a new law that made Illinois the first state to require school districts to offer native-language preschool in schools with at least 20 preschoolers who speak the same language, other than English.

Bilingual classes

Of the 280 3- to 5-year-old preschool students who attended preschool in the West Aurora School District, about 120 are Spanish-speaking and in bilingual classrooms, said Michelle Shabaker, director of the Todd Early Childhood Center. This is in addition to Latino children in classrooms that speak mostly English, she said.

Hispanic students are the largest group who attend preschool screenings in the district.

Two years ago, there were no bilingual sections in West’s preschool program. This year, there are six. The preschoolers in the bilingual classes likely have learned more than their peers and are in a better position to perform well in a bilingual kindergarten classroom, she said.

“As the district prepares for next year, it is a goal to hire additional bilingual staff members so that more preschool students can be served” in their native language, Shabaker said.

About one-fourth of the preschool spots were eliminated in the East Aurora School District this year when the district cut five classrooms because of space limitations, Aird said.

About 85 percent of the students attending preschool in the district are Latino, she said.

Preschoolers who are at-risk of future academic failure typically have deficits in language and literacy development, a primary focus in West’s kindergarten classrooms, Shabaker said. The idea of preschool is that they would have a head start at preparing the student to enter kindergarten.

“We are uncertain of the skill development other children receive prior to kindergarten if they do not attend our preschool program,” Shabaker said.

English and Spanish

Piza said that if the East Aurora district did not offer bilingual preschool classrooms, she may not have enrolled her kids in the state-funded program.

“I probably would have thought twice,” she said. “I don’t want them to forget their own language. Their grandparents speak Spanish, and it could be confusing for them.”

Her son, now in the fifth grade, could have transitioned out of bilingual classes in fourth grade, but she wanted to make sure he mastered both languages, opting for one more year of bilingual instruction.

“I wanted to make sure he knew both languages the correct way. Now he’s on honor roll,” Piza said of her son, who attends Simmons Middle School.

Rojas also said it was very important that her daughter learn both English and Spanish.

In the long run, knowing both languages would help her daughter a lot, Rojas said.

Although her older daughter could have transitioned out of bilingual classes in the first grade, she also opted to keep her in bilingual classrooms longer to master both languages.

Demand high

In the West Aurora district, the waiting list to get into preschool is 70 students long, and at least 66 of them are bilingual Latino children, according to Shabaker.

“Each month we have screening we will add about 24 students to the waiting list because classrooms are filled,” she said.

Although a recent study conducted by the city of Aurora found that as many as 1,200 preschool-age children living on Aurora’s West Side were in need of preschool, the state only provides the school district with enough funding to serve 280 children, West Aurora spokesman Mike Chapin said.

The demand for state-funded preschool is high in East Aurora, where 1,277 children were screened in the 2010-2011 school year, and 960 students were admitted to the preschool program.

“Preschool provides students with experiences in all content areas and a foundation in expressive and receptive language,” Aird said. “Many of our students do not come to school with the same enriching experiences that their non-economically disadvantaged peers in neighboring communities would have.”

Chapin said that about half of West’s kindergartners arrive on the first day behind grade level.

“Perhaps if a higher percentage of students enter kindergarten adequately prepared to learn, a higher percentage of students would graduate from high school well prepared for college and the work force,” Chapin said.

The West Aurora district is considering other options to expand early childhood education and is considering full-day kindergarten classes next year.

Sun Times Media contributed to this report.