Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2012 - 13

online>> www.edweek.org/go/dc12

Preschoolers play inside a tube tent during indoor recess at Ignacio Cruz Early Childhood Center in Perth Amboy. The New Jersey district, which serves mostly Hispanic students, has managed to enroll 100 percent of eligible 4-yearolds in preschool.

pecially as 3-year-olds. An analysis by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center of preschool-enrollment data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2008-2010), shows that, on average, 39 percent of Latino 3- and 4-year-olds were enrolled in preschool over that threeyear period, compared with 52 percent of African-American children and 48 percent of white children. Asian children, at 54 percent, had the highest rate of participation. While there may be some cultural reluctance to send children as young as 3 to preschool, especially

among parents who are immigrants, early-childhood experts say that factor is much less significant than others in explaining why Latino children lag in preschool participation. “It’s almost entirely an issue of access, and access to high-quality programs for Latino families,” says W. Steven Barnett, the executive director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, based at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “And even when there is availability, Latinos are like any parents who don’t want to send their children to pro-

grams that are low-quality.” Related to access, the cost of preschool is often a major barrier for Latino families, as it is for some other population groups that often have economic disadvantages. The vast majority of preschool programs in the United States are privately run and cost more than many Latino families can afford, says Meléndez. Also, many private preschools offer only part-time programs—an unfavorable arrangement for families with two working parents. At the same time, many Latino families with two working parents

find ways to juggle schedules so that parents can take turns caring for young children, or, as is often the case, the mothers opt to stay home with their children, says Meléndez. She is in the early stages of studying the growing participation of Latino children in a preschool program in Evanston, Ill.

Language Obstacles
Even in communities where there may be more-affordable public options readily available, fampage 14 >

Heritage profile: el salvador
Student From El Salvador Travels 3,000 Miles to Reunite With Parents
To get to the United States, 11-year-old Adiel Granados traveled more than 3,000 miles by land, leaving his grandparents’ home in El Salvador to live in Silver Spring, Md., with his parents. They had immigrated eight years earlier and settled into work—his father drives a recycling truck, and his mother works for a local government program for young, pregnant women—while Granados and his younger brother attended school in El Salvador. Granados, now 17, said that as a child he missed his parents, who kept in touch over the phone but never returned to El Salvador. Though he always knew he would eventually make the move to the United States, he was nervous about the transition and leaving his friends. After Granados and his brother finally arrived in Silver Spring, they found a large and well-established Salvadoran community, including several relatives. Many of his peers at Wheaton High School, where he is a junior and his brother is a freshman, also moved here from El Salvador or have parents or grandparents who made journeys similar to his. The boys arrived in summer 2006. Their parents had already researched how to go about enrolling them in school, and Granados and his brother entered the Montgomery County public school system that fall. Granados entered an English-as-a-second-language program right away, and by 8th grade, he had exited the program. Still, language was his biggest challenge, the teenager says. He has never had a Salvadoran teacher, and most of his teachers do not speak Spanish. At first, since he spoke almost no English, “I could only make a certain kind of friend,” he says. “It was about a year before my English got good enough to make other friends.” But now, he says, he doesn’t stick to one group and is in classes with students from many backgrounds. “I’m from nowhere—I’ve never been a person [who] thought I represented my whole country,” he says. Since arriving in the United States, however, Granados says it sometimes seems as though “everyone [from El Salvador] is thought of as the same.” Granados and his brother attended school in a suburban community in El Salvador, but learning the system at his new school in this country took time. “Here, there’s more money [in school], and it’s more organized,” he says. There, often, “no one was trying to learn.” Here, too, he sees peers who seem “discouraged,” he says, but he is set on college and has done well in school. Mathematics and science, in particular, made sense even as he was learning English. According to Granados, the biggest difference between his home and school is the food. At home with his family, Granados mainly eats Salvadoran food like pupusas, whereas at Wheaton High, it’s “hamburgers and stuff I would never eat.” At school, Granados plays soccer and is enrolled in several Advanced Placement courses. He takes his studies seriously and hopes to become an engineer. “I want to go to college because I like to learn and because I want to be a better person. It will open many opportunities to do better. My parents want me to do better than them,” Granados says. “And I want to help my parents so they can stop working.” “I’m trying to help people see that it is possible” for Hispanic students to do well, he says. He tells classmates: “You can do better than you think. You have to try hard.” n —jaclyn zubrzycki

el salvador
selected statistics on children of salvadoran heritage in the u.s.

Adiel Granados, 17, reviews a quiz in his Advanced Placement Chemistry class at Wheaton High School in Silver Spring, Md. Born in El Salvador, the junior plans to go to college and become an engineer.

3.0%

salvadoran-Heritage education attainment (ages 25-64)
1.8 5.9 15.9

share of latino children who are of salvadoran descent

11.1%

l less than high
school

salvadoran-heritage children born outside the united states

l High school
diploma (including ged)

60.6% 25.9%

52.0 24.4

l some college
(including associate degree)

salvadoran-heritage children living in low-income families

l Bachelor’s degree l graduate or
professional degree

salvadoran-heritage children whose parents are fluent speakers of english
sourCe: epe research Center, 2012. analysis of data from the american Community survey (2008-2010), u.s. Census Bureau.

nicole frugé/education week

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Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2012