A Reading-Focused Early Childhood Education Research and Strategy Development Agenda for African Americans and Hispanics at All Social Class Levels Who Are English

Speakers or English Language Learners L. Scott Miller Eugene E. Garcia Office of the Vice President for Education Partnerships Arizona State University August 2008

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Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements 2 Executive Summary 3 Introduction 9 Racial/Ethnic Reading Readiness and Reading Achievement Patterns 11 Achievement Differences among Racial/Ethnic Groups as a Function of Differences in Intergenerational Educational Advancement Opportunities 23 Between-Social-Class Differences in Parenting-Related Literacy Development Opportunities for Children 25 Within-Social-Class Differences among Racial/ Ethnic Groups in Parenting-Related Literacy Development Opportunities for Children 27 Early Childhood Education Challenges Related to Negative Educational Stereotypes of Blacks 30 Challenges of Learning Two Languages 32 Challenges of Having Many Low Achievers and Few High Achievers Beginning in the Early Years of Formal Education 35 Challenges of Between-Class and Within-Class Achievement Gaps 36 Early Childhood Education Strategies and Research Leads for Improving Black and Hispanic Reading Readiness and Achievement 39 Recommendations for Action 45 Appendix 1: National Assessment of Educational Progress Achievement Data for Racial Ethnic Groups in Six Subjects 58 Appendix 2: Attendees of May 18-19, 2007 Meeting on Developing a Literacy-Oriented Early Childhood Education Strategy Design, Testing and Evaluation Agenda for African Americans and Latinos 63 Endnotes 66

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Acknowledgements We would like to express our deep appreciation and thanks to the attendees of a meeting held at Arizona State University on May 18-19, 2007 to discuss options for developing an early childhood education research and strategy design, testing, and evaluation agenda for African Americans and Hispanics from a literacy perspective. We have benefited greatly from those discussions during the preparation of this report, as well as from the attendees’ subsequent suggestions for revising it. The attendees of the meeting are listed in Appendix 2. We also would like to thank the A. L. Mailman Family Foundation for supporting this initiative, including its funding of the May 18-19, 2007 meeting and the publication of this report. Special thanks goes to Luba Lynch, the Executive Director of the Mailman Foundation for suggesting that the meeting be held and for arranging for its funding. We also would like to thank her colleague at the Mailman Foundation, Joelle-Jude Fontaine, for her assistance in planning this initiative.

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Executive Summary Developing a set of proven strategies for making more rapid, sustained progress in raising the academic achievement of African Americans and Hispanics continues to be one of the nation’s most pressing educational needs and challenges. At all levels of the education system, these groups continue to lag well behind non-Hispanic Whites and Asians Americans in most academic areas by traditional achievement measures, including standardized test scores and grade point averages (GPAs). Moreover, little progress has been made in closing these gaps over the past two decades. The lack of significant progress is increasingly problematic because these two groups now constitute nearly two-fifths of the nation’s young children, and the Hispanic share is growing rapidly. This report addresses the need for a much expanded early childhood education research and strategy development agenda concerned with making substantial, ongoing improvements in the reading readiness and reading achievement of Latinos and African Americans. The focus is on the early childhood years because the achievement patterns of racial/ethnic groups are largely established in the period from birth through the end of the third grade (ages eight or nine for most children). The emphasis is on reading, owing to the importance of having strong reading skills, especially in reading comprehension, by the start of the fourth grade. At that point, students need solid reading comprehension skills to master most areas of the curriculum. It is important to address several reading aspects of these two groups’ overall achievement gaps with Whites and Asians. First, Latinos and African Americans continue to be heavily overrepresented among low achieving students and severely underrepresented among high achievers. Producing large reductions in the percentages of low achievers and marked increases in the percentages of high achievers among Blacks and Latinos will require commensurate changes in the percentages of students from these groups with weak and strong reading skills. Second, Hispanics and African Americans have lower academic achievement than Whites and Asians at all socioeconomic status (SES) levels. Consequently, there is a need for improvements in reading among Blacks and Latinos across the social class spectrum. Third, among most groups, including Latinos, children from immigrant families who are English language learners (ELLs) tend to achieve at lower levels than youngsters who are English speakers when they enter school. Although this is a problem at all social class levels, it is most acute for children from low SES circumstances. Because a large percentage of Hispanic ELLs are from such circumstances, major improvements in their reading skills will be required for Latinos to reach achievement parity with Whites and Asians. Fourth, many low SES Black children enter school speaking African American English (AAE), which means that they are starting school as quasi–English-language-learners. Substantial improvements in the reading skills of this segment of Black children will be required in order to raise the overall achievement of African Americans. The early childhood research and strategy development focus of this report also is designed to respond to several closely related realities for educators who are working to raise the achievement of African Americans and Latinos. The most important of these

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realities is that there are still relatively few educational strategies at any level of the educational system that have been documented to raise the achievement of any group of students on a widespread basis above that which would be expected from typical schooling arrangements. In addition, most of the strategies with extensive evidence of achievement benefits are for low SES youngsters; strategies with strong evidence that they have positive achievement impacts for middle class or high SES youngsters are rare. Consistent with the low-SES focus of most strategies, most achievement benefits have been for below-average-achieving children; strategies with firm evidence that they raise achievement among above-average-to-high-achievers are scarce. Finally, the documented achievement benefits have generally been of modest size. These limitations of existing strategies apply not only to reading, but also to most other academic areas as well, including math and science. Recommendations for Action Despite these limitations, research on emergent literacy, reading, and second language acquisition has produced a number of leads for developing early childhood education strategies that may contribute to significantly higher achievement among a wide range of Latino and Black children. In addition, some existing early childhood education strategies that have not yet been subjected to rigorous long-term evaluations may eventually be found to contribute to meaningfully higher levels of reading readiness and reading achievement for some segments of African American and Hispanic youngsters. Consequently, there is reason to believe that much progress could be made over the next 10-20 years toward the development of proven infant/toddler, prekindergarten (pre-K), and kindergarten through third grade (K-3) strategies for reducing reading readiness and reading achievement gaps among racial/ethnic groups and increasing the percentages of Black and Hispanic youngsters who have solid reading comprehension skills in the fourth grade. In the most optimistic case, the foundations will have been laid as well for increasing Latino and African American representation among the nation’s strongest readers. In order to maximize the amount of progress, a three-pronged approach will be needed. First, it will require a much expanded set of efforts directed at designing, testing, and evaluating a number of new or significantly modified strategies that draw heavily on research leads on factors that may influence whether much larger percentages of Blacks and Hispanics become strong readers. Second, it will require much more extensive evaluations of strategies—whether they are existing strategies or new ones—than have typically been undertaken to date. Third, it will require a considerable amount of new research designed to inform strategy development efforts. Designing, Testing, and Evaluating New or Modified Strategies To be effective, the expansion of strategy development efforts should have several attributes. A key aspect of this work should be the pursuit of strategies designed to address the reading readiness and reading achievement gaps for African Americans and Latinos that exist at all SES levels. It is no longer sufficient to continue to focus almost exclusively on improving outcomes for low SES youngsters. These strategy development efforts also will need to work in a range of schools and educational settings, reflecting the diversity of circumstances experienced by Hispanics and Blacks. Furthermore, this work will need to provide strategies that offer much more

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quality time to learn across the early childhood years for many Black and Hispanic children, in order to come much closer to providing language and literacy development opportunities similar to those available to many high SES youngsters (who are heavily White and Asian American) who have strong language and reading comprehension skills at the end of the primary grades. This work also will probably need to provide much more continuity in learning opportunities across the early childhood years than is possible in the nation’s current fragmented and incomplete early childhood education “system,” in order to help ensure that the expanded time is used productively in a cumulative fashion. These efforts also will need to address the dual language development challenges experienced by many low SES Latino English language learners and the somewhat similar needs of low SES Black children who speak African American English. Finally, they will need to be effective in environments in which longstanding negative educational stereotypes of African Americans may continue to have a significant presence. Recommendation 1: At least two teams of experts should develop detailed vocabulary lists and vocabulary learning sequences for the entire early childhood period that could help guide the vocabulary and language and literacy development opportunities provided by infant/toddler programs, pre-K programs, and K-3 education for all SES segments of African Americans and Latinos. Recommendation 2: Several teams should be organized to plan an articulated set of two-year infant/toddler programs, two-year pre-K programs, and K-3 programs with associated multiyear summer programs for all SES segments of Hispanics and Blacks; together, they would be designed to provide language and literacy development opportunities benchmarked to those of children who have average, above average, and very high levels of knowledge and skills on measures of language and literacy development across the early childhood years. Recommendation 3: Several teams should be organized to create parent/family programs designed to support efforts by parents (and grandparents and other family members and primary caregivers) among all SES segments of Latinos and African Americans to provide developmentally appropriate opportunities for language acquisition and use for their young children across the early childhood years. Recommendation 4: Some teams should be created to design and test supplementary education strategies for the K-3 years, including after-school and weekend programs, with a language and literacy development emphasis that would meet the needs of all SES segments of Hispanics and African Americans. Recommendation 5: The strategy development teams should include individuals with the diverse set of disciplinary skills needed to undertake that work as well as individuals who have experience working with African Americans and Latinos from all social class levels. Recommendation 6: Some teams should be organized to develop programs designed to produce a large expansion in the number of pre-K and K-3 teachers who are proficient in English and Spanish and substantial growth in the number of pre-K and K-3 teaching specialists in second language acquisition.

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Evaluating Existing, New, and Modified Early Childhood Education Strategies This report emphasizes the need to develop early childhood education strategies that could contribute to meaningful increases in the percentages of African American and Latino children who have solid reading comprehension skills in the fourth grade. Ultimately, students need to be able to understand what they read. This goal requires evaluations that are well designed to assess early childhood strategies from that perspective. It also requires assessments that are concerned with helping understand why strategies are able to make positive contributions toward this goal—or why they are unable to do so. Understanding why they work will be necessary to mount effective implementation efforts. Understanding why they do not work can help guide efforts to modify and retest strategies that show promise, even though initial results may have been disappointing in some respects. It also will be necessary for evaluations to identify clearly which students are and are not benefiting from particular strategies. There is no reason to assume that most strategies will produce similar results for most students in most situations. Results also may vary considerably from location to location. Recommendation 1: Evaluations of early childhood education strategies that show substantial positive results for Hispanic and Black children on measures of reading readiness or reading achievement should frequently follow samples of children through at least the fourth grade, and in some cases for many years longer, in order to gauge potential impacts on reading comprehension as students move into the upper elementary school years and beyond. Recommendation 2: Evaluations should include large enough numbers of children to determine whether strategies increase the percentages of African American and Latino children who reach average, well above average, and high levels of reading comprehension in the fourth grade and beyond. Recommendation 3: Evaluations should collect extensive social class information on the participating children and their parents. Recommendation 4: New Spanish language assessments should be developed to monitor Latino children’s knowledge of Spanish across the early childhood years. Recommendation 5: Extensive experience with promising new strategies should be gained before subjecting them to sophisticated long-term assessments. Conducting New Research to Inform Strategy Development Efforts A considerable amount of information is currently available on reading readiness and reading achievement patterns of African American and Latino children, as well as on factors that influence those patterns, that can contribute a great deal to long-term-oriented strategy design, testing, and evaluation efforts. Nonetheless, there are important gaps in the research base that carefully designed studies should be able to help close and, in the process, strengthen strategy development work a great deal.

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For example, one area of need is for extensive research on language and literacy development opportunities available in low SES, middle class and high SES African American and Latino families. There is evidence that low SES, middle class, and high SES Black and Hispanic parents are somewhat less likely than their White counterparts to read frequently to their children. There also is some evidence that low SES, middle class, and high SES Hispanic and Black children lag behind their White counterparts on some measures of reading readiness, and that there may be substantial differences in the vocabularies of middle class and high SES African American and White children as early as age three. However, actual in-home observational data on oral language and emergent literacy environments of Black and Hispanic families at all SES levels is limited. Furthermore, there is conflicting evidence on the sizes of the reading readiness differences at the start of kindergarten and on how differences in reading skills and reading achievement evolve over the K-3 years. In the case of Latinos, there is some evidence that differences exist in emergent-literacy-oriented parenting practices between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Hispanic parents, and that these differences cut across social class lines to some extent. However, observational data are not available for representative samples of Latinos. In a related vein, there is little information on why such differences exist. In the case of both Latinos and Blacks, there also is little information available regarding the extent to which reading readiness and reading achievement patterns may vary among children from first, second, third, or later generations of low SES, middle class, or high SES families—and whether there also are significant within-class generational differences in parenting practices. For example, it is unclear whether and how education-related parenting practices and other family resources may vary among African American families or among Mexican American families in which the parents are the first, second, or third generations to have a bachelor’s degree or more. There also is evidence that above-average-achieving African American children seem to be making less academic progress than their below average achieving counterparts in schools in which Blacks are a large percentage of the students. More information is needed on the extent to which this pattern is present in the primary grades and what factors may be contributing to it. In a related vein, the language development opportunities in preschools that serve mostly low SES African American children may be geared de facto mainly to youngsters who are behind in vocabulary development and in other areas of emergent literacy. To the extent that this is the case, the vocabulary development and emergent literacy opportunities may often be too limited for Black children who are average or above average in these areas. The continuing public discussion of the negative intellectual stereotype of Blacks, coupled with research indicating that the stereotype can undermine learning among some African American students raises questions about: 1) the extent to which the negative stereotype is held by educators in prekindergarten programs and in the primary grades; and 2) whether and how it influences interactions between some educators and African American children in ways that may negatively impact their language development and reading readiness and reading achievement. There is a need for information on these questions for preschools and elementary schools serving low SES, middle class, and high SES Black children. It also may prove necessary to look at infant/toddler programs.

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There also may be social class and cultural differences that negatively influence interactions between Hispanic and African American children and educators as early as the preschool years. For instance, this could be the case for some low SES Black children who are speakers of African American English. Consequently, there is a need for observational information on interactions between these children and their educators over a period of several years—from the start of preschool through fourth grade and beyond. It may be necessary to examine experiences in infant/toddler programs in this area as well. Recommendation 1: A longitudinal study of a large national sample of African American, Latino, non-Hispanic White, and Asian American children, stratified by SES, should be undertaken that would be designed to document both the language and literacy development opportunities and the language and literacy development trajectories of low SES, middle class, and high SES youngsters from each of these racial/ethnic groups from birth through at least the end of the fourth grade. Recommendation 2: A study of a sample of elementary schools serving mainly low SES Latinos, mainly low SES African Americans, and mainly low SES Whites should be conducted to assess the reading-related curricular and instructional opportunities provided to low SES children who are in the first (bottom) quartile, second quartile, third quartile, and fourth (top) quartile on measures of reading readiness and reading achievement at the start of each school year from kindergarten through at least the fourth grade. Recommendation 3: A longitudinal study of preschools and elementary schools should be conducted that would assess the quality of teacher-child interactions for low SES, middle class, and high SES African American and Latino children. Funding the Recommendations Acting on the recommendations presented here would involve mounting many large, complex, expensive initiatives that in some cases would require 20 years (and possibly many more) of sustained work. Currently, no departments or agencies of the federal government seem well positioned to underwrite such long-term education R&D endeavors, especially with the scale, scope, and continuity that will be needed. It also seems unlikely that existing private grantmaking foundations will be able to underwrite more than a small part of this R&D agenda. Consequently, it is recommended that leaders of a group of existing foundations give high priority to facilitating the creation of some new education R&D foundations that would specialize in funding the kind of long-term strategy development and related work proposed in this report. This is an era in which there are many wealthy individuals who could endow such foundations. Leaders of some existing foundations should be able to present a strong case that some of these individuals do so over the next few years. After all, few, if any, educational challenges in the United States are more compelling than developing solutions to the achievement gaps experienced by African Americans and Latinos in reading and most other academic areas.

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Introduction One of the nation’s most important and longstanding educational challenges is to develop a set of proven strategies for making more rapid, sustained progress in raising the academic achievement of African Americans and Hispanics.i At every level of the education system, these groups continue to lag well behind non-Hispanic Whites and Asians Americans in most academic areas (science, history, mathematics, etc.) by all traditional measures, including standardized test scores, grade point averages, and class rankings. Moreover, little progress has been made in closing these gaps over the past two decades, despite extensive efforts by educators and policymakers.1 This lack of significant progress is increasingly problematic because these two groups now constitute nearly two-fifths of the nation’s young children, and the Hispanic share is growing rapidly. In 2000, Latinos were 20.3% and Blacks 14.7% of the 0-8 age segment of the U.S. population.2 In 2006, 24.4% of the babies born in the United States had a Hispanic mother and 14.5% had a non-Hispanic Black mother.3 In response to these circumstances, this report presents recommendations for pursuing a much expanded early childhood education research and strategy development agenda concerned with making substantial, ongoing improvements in the reading readiness and reading achievement of Latinos and African Americans.ii The focus is on the early years because the achievement patterns of racial/ethnic groups are largely established in the period from birth through the end of the primary grades (ages eight or nine for most children). The emphasis is on reading, owing to the importance of having strong reading skills, especially in reading comprehension, by the start of the fourth grade. At that point, students need solid reading comprehension skills to master most areas of the curriculum. The report’s recommendations are designed to address reading dimensions of several aspects of these two groups’ achievement gaps with Whites and Asians. First, Latinos and African Americans continue to be heavily overrepresented among low achieving students—students in the bottom 5-25% of the achievement distribution; and they are severely underrepresented among high achievers—those in the top 5-25% of the distribution.4 Consequently, a large reduction in the percentage of low achievers and a marked increase in the percentage of high achievers will be needed, if these groups are to converge on the achievement patterns of Whites and Asians. This will require commensurate changes in the percentages of Blacks and Latinos among the nation’s students with weak and strong reading skills. Second, the academic achievement of Hispanics and African Americans lags behind that of their White and Asian counterparts at all socioeconomic levels, whether social class is measured by parent education, family income, parent occupation, or a combination of i In this report, the terms African American, non-Hispanic Black and Black are used interchangeably. That also is the case for the terms Hispanic and Latino, non-Hispanic White and White, and Asian American and Asian. ii Two terms used in this report are reading readiness and emergent literacy. As used in this report, reading readiness refers mainly to the extent to which children have the knowledge and skills at the start kindergarten that they need to learn to read in school. Two examples of such knowledge are the children’s skills in letter recognition and their understanding of the beginning and ending sounds of words. In contrast, emergent literacy is concerned with children’s acquisition of literacy-oriented concepts, understandings, and skills from infancy through the time that they master reading and writing (usually) in elementary school.

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the three. Moreover, some of the largest of these “within-class” achievement gaps are at high SES levels. This is especially the case for African Americans.5 Thus, if Blacks and Latinos are to reach similar levels of academic achievement as Whites and Asians, substantial gains will need to be made across the social class spectrum. Third, children from immigrant families who are English language learners tend to achieve at much lower levels than youngsters who are English speakers when they enter school.6 Although there is evidence that this is a problem to some extent for ELLs at all social class levels, it is most acute for children from low SES families.7 Because a large percentage of Hispanic children are ELLs from low SES circumstances,8 improving the reading readiness and reading achievement of these children will be essential if Latinos are to reach achievement parity with Whites and Asians. Fourth, many low SES Black children enter school speaking African American English. Because AAE varies considerably from the academic English used in the schools, these youngsters are entering school in quasi–ELL circumstances.9 In addition to addressing these dimensions of the academic achievement differences between African Americans and Latinos and their White and Asian American counterparts, the early childhood research and strategy development focus of this report is designed to respond to several closely related realities for educators. The most important of these realities is that there are still relatively few educational strategies at any level of the educational system that have been documented to raise the achievement of any group of students on a widespread basis above that which would be expected from typical schooling arrangements. A closely related reality is that most of the strategies with extensive evidence of achievement benefits are for low SES youngsters. Strategies with strong evidence that they have positive achievement impacts for middle class or high SES youngsters are rare. Consistent with the low-SES focus of most strategies, most of the documented achievement benefits have been for below-average-achieving children. Strategies with firm evidence that they raise achievement among above-average-to-high-achievers are scarce. Finally, the documented achievement benefits have generally been of modest size.10 These limitations of existing strategies apply not only to reading, but also to most other academic areas as well, including math and science. Indeed, the persistence of large readiness and early achievement gaps in math suggest that an early childhood education report similar to this one should be prepared for math. (In contrast to reading, however, such a report would be able to note that considerable progress has been made over the past two decades in raising math achievement for students from all racial/ethnic groups. Nonetheless, similar to reading, that report also would have to note that Latinos and African Americans have been able to close only a small part of their math achievement gaps with Whites and Asians.)11 Despite these limitations, as will be discussed later in this report, research on emergent literacy, reading, and second language acquisition has produced a number of leads for developing early childhood education strategies that may contribute to significantly higher achievement among a wide range of Latino and Black children. In addition, some existing early childhood education strategies that have not yet been subjected to rigorous long-term evaluations may eventually be found to contribute to meaningfully higher levels of reading readiness and reading achievement for at least some segments of African American and Hispanic youngsters.

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In the next section of this report, the reading readiness and reading achievement patterns of Black and Latino students are reviewed in a manner that illustrates their readiness and achievement gaps with Whites and Asian Americans from several perspectives. There also is a short discussion of group differences in educational attainment trends. The report then turns to discussions of group differences in opportunities for intergenerational educational advancement over time; some of the parenting-related between-social-class and within-social-class factors that contribute to readiness and achievement gaps; the impact of negative stereotypes of African Americans on their academic achievement; the challenges of learning two languages for Hispanic English language learners; the challenges of learning academic English for many Black children who speak AAE; the challenges of having many low achievers and few high achievers in the early years of school for Latinos and African Americans; and the existing knowledgebase for improving reading readiness and early reading achievement. The report closes with recommendations for action. Racial/Ethnic Reading Readiness and Reading Achievement Patterns The data presented here describe reading achievement patterns at the elementary school level, beginning at the start of kindergarten, as well as at the middle school and high school levels. Among the key findings are that: 1) on average, both African American and Latino children lag well behind Whites and Asians on measures of reading readiness at the start of kindergarten; 2) a major contributing factor is the overrepresentation of Hispanics and Blacks among youngsters from low SES circumstances; 3) African Americans and Latinos also lag behind Whites and Asians somewhat in several social class segments at the beginning of kindergarten; 4) the gaps for Black children grow relative to Whites and Asians over the kindergarten through fifth grade (K-5) period; 5) in contrast, among Hispanic children who speak some English at the start of kindergarten, the reading gaps with Whites and Asians close somewhat over the K-5 years, although in absolute terms the gaps remain substantial; 6) in high SES segments, large within-class gaps in reading achievement emerge rapidly in the K-5 years for African Americans relative to Whites and Asians; 7) low SES Hispanic children who speak little or no English at the start of kindergarten are reading at very low levels on average at the end of the fifth grade; 8) the much lower overall reading achievement patterns of Blacks and Latinos continue through the middle school and high school years—as do the within-class achievement gaps. Elementary School Readiness and Achievement Patterns One of the best current sources of information on the reading readiness and early reading achievement of American youngsters is the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), which has been following a large national sample of children who enrolled in kindergarten for the first time in the fall of 1998.iii Reading data are now available from the start of kindergarten through the end of the fifth grade. Box 1 describes ECLS-K reading proficiency levels.

iii The ECLS-K began with a nationally representative sample of 22,782 children enrolled in 1,277 full- and part-day public and private kindergarten programs in the 1998-99 school year. For a discussion of the sample, see Rathbun, A., West, J., and Hausken, E. G. (2004). From Kindergarten through Third Grade: Children’s Beginning School Experiences. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

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Box 1 ECLS-K Reading Proficiency Levels for K-5

Level 1: Recognition of letters Level 2: Understanding beginning sounds of words Level 3: Understanding ending sounds of words Level 4: Sight recognition of words Level 5: Comprehension of words in context Level 6: Literal inference from words in text Level 7: Extrapolating from text to derive meaning Level 8: Evaluating and interpreting beyond text Level 9: Evaluating nonfiction

Source: Princiotta, D., and Flanagan, K. (2006). Findings From the Fifth-Grade Follow-up of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

The data in Table 1 show that the overall English reading readiness patterns of African Americans and Hispanics at the start of kindergarten were well below those of non-Hispanic Whites and Asian Americans. The data indicate that Black and Hispanic children were further behind Asians than Whites at the start of kindergarten, e.g., at the start of kindergarten 20% of African American and Latino children understood beginning sounds of words (Level 2), while that was the case for 42% of the Asian Americans, and 34% of the Whites. It is important to note, however, that these data exclude about 30% of the Hispanic children and 19% of the Asian children in the ECLS-K sample because they did not have strong enough oral English skills to be given the English reading assessment that was used in the study at that time. That is to say, these Latino and Asian children were English language learners with little or no knowledge of English when they entered kindergarten. Also, the ECLS-K data presented here for Whites and Blacks are for only third generation children—those with two U.S.-born parents.iv Third generation children are the “baseline” segments of these groups from a generational standpoint because relatively small percentages of White and African American youngsters are immigrants (first generation Americans) or children of immigrants (second generation Americans).v In contrast, because many Hispanic and Asian American youngsters are immigrants or children of immigrants, their data are for all generations of children.vi iv The third generation category includes not only children who had two U.S.-born parents, but also those for whom all of their grandparents, or great grandparents, and so forth were U.S.-born. Thus, this category includes children who were technically third generation as well as those who were technically fourth, fifth, or sixth generation or more. v For second generation children, one or both parents were immigrants. vi For a discussion of the development of the subsamples used in the analysis, see Reardon, S.F., and Galindo, C. (2006). Patterns of Hispanic Students’ Math and English Literacy Test Scores. Report to the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University.

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Table 1 Percentages of Hispanics, Whites, Blacks, and Asian Americans Scoring At or Above Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Reading at the Start of Kindergarten, Overall and by SES Quintile

Group Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 70% of Hispanics that were English Proficient, Fall K 54 20 10 2 First (Lowest) SES Quintile 37 8 3 0 Second SES Quintile 54 17 8 1 Third SES Quintile 54 20 11 3 Fourth SES Quintile 72 33 17 2 Fifth (Highest) SES Quintile 73 41 25 5 All Third Generation Whites 73 34 20 4 First (Lowest) SES Quintile 48 13 5 0 Second SES Quintile 60 20 10 1 Third SES Quintile 69 29 16 3 Fourth SES Quintile 80 38 21 3 Fifth (Highest) SES Quintile 86 50 33 8 All Third Generation Blacks 56 20 10 1 First (Lowest) SES Quintile 43 9 3 0 Second SES Quintile 52 12 5 1 Third SES Quintile 63 26 13 1 Fourth SES Quintile 79 43 26 4 Fifth (Highest) SES Quintile 64 31 20 3 81% of Asian Americans that were English Proficient, Fall Kvii 75 42 27 8

Source: Reardon, S.F., and Galindo, C. (2006). Patterns of Hispanic Students’ Math and English Literacy Test Scores. Report to the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University. The data in Table 1 also show that, in addition to having markedly lower overall reading scores at the start of kindergarten than Asians and Whites, Hispanics and African Americans also lagged somewhat behind Whites in most SES quintiles, i.e., there were within-class” gaps.viii For example, 13% of Whites in the first (lowest) SES quintile scored at Level 2 (understanding beginning sounds of words), while 9% of the African Americans and 8% of the Latinos did so. In the fifth (highest) SES quintile, 33% of the Whites, 25% of the Hispanics, and 20% of the African Americans scored at Level 3 (understanding ending sounds of words). Over the five SES quintiles, the within-class reading readiness gaps between Latinos and Whites were one-eighth to two-fifths of a standard deviation in size, while the within-class gaps between Blacks and Whites were somewhat smaller.12 The data in Table 2 show that the reading situation had changed considerably by the end of the fifth grade. Importantly, the 70% of Latinos who had been assessed in English at the start of kindergarten demonstrated stronger reading skills than the African American youngsters at the end of the fifth grade, even though the Latinos continued to lag well behind the White and Asian American children. For instance, among the 70% of Hispanics, 41% were proficient at evaluating and interpreting beyond text (Level 8), while this was the case for 31% of the Blacks, 52% of the Whites and 54% of the Asians.

vii The sample of Asian American children in the ECLS-K was too small to break out by SES quintiles. viii Social class in these data is a composite of parent education, family income, and parent occupation.

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Table 2 Percentages of Hispanics, Whites, Blacks, and Asian Americans Scoring At or Above Levels 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Reading at the End of Fifth Grade, Overall and by SES Quintile

Group Level 6 Level 7 Level 8 Level 9 30% of Hispanics that were not English Proficient, Fall K 72 41 23 1 70% of Hispanics that were English Proficient, Fall K 86 69 41 5 First (Lowest) SES Quintile 77 51 29 1 Second SES Quintile 89 74 44 6 Third SES Quintile 86 66 38 2 Fourth SES Quintile 92 81 51 9 Fifth (Highest) SES Quintile 95 87 59 13 All Third Generation Whites 91 79 52 10 First (Lowest) SES Quintile 73 51 30 3 Second SES Quintile 86 68 40 4 Third SES Quintile 91 77 48 7 Fourth SES Quintile 94 86 55 9 Fifth (Highest) SES 96 91 64 20 All Third Generation Blacks 78 53 31 2 First (Lowest) SES 70 39 23 2 Second SES Quintile 76 52 30 2 Third SES Quintile 83 59 33 2 Fourth SES Quintile 88 72 44 7 Fifth (Highest) SES Quintile 85 66 39 4 81% of Asian Americans that were English Proficient, Fall K 93 84 54 10

Source: Reardon, S.F., and Galindo, C. (2006). Patterns of Hispanic Students’ Math and English Literacy Test Scores. Report to the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University. The proficiency differences that emerged between the 70% of Hispanic youngsters and the third generation African American children reflected the fact that the Latino youngsters gained some ground relative to Whites and Asians in reading between the start of kindergarten and the end of the fifth grade, while the Black youngsters lost some ground. More specifically, the Hispanic-White within-class reading gaps tended to grow smaller over the K-5 years, while the Black-White within-class gaps tended to grow larger—and, in the process, some within-class differences developed between Hispanics and African Americans as well. For example, among children in the highest SES quintile, 59% of the Hispanics, 39% of the Blacks, and 64% of the Whites demonstrated proficiency in evaluating and interpreting beyond the text (Level 8). Among the children in each group who were in the lowest SES quintile, 29% of the Latinos, 23% of the African Americans, and 30% of the Whites demonstrated Level 8 reading proficiency. It is unclear why the Hispanic-White gaps grew smaller and the Black-White gaps grew larger over the K-5 period. It is known that much of the improvement for the 70% of Latinos who had been assessed in English at the start of kindergarten was among students who had low reading readiness scores on the English assessment, that many of these children were from immigrant families, and that most of the gains relative to Whites took place during kindergarten and first grade.13 It also is unclear why there were increases in the Black-White reading score gaps over the K-5 years in the ECLS-K data. An important aspect of the growth in the gaps is that they were centered among reading comprehension skills (e.g., evaluating and interpreting beyond text), rather than “technical” reading skills (e.g., understanding ending sounds of words). Reading comprehension in the fourth grade and beyond is heavily dependent on students’ vocabularies and experiences with the use of words. It may be that the assessment instruments used in the ECLS-K at the start of kindergarten did not pick up some important language development differences in these areas. Consistent with that possibility, some other data sets show larger gaps at the start of kindergarten than the ECLS-K; and, the assessments used with those other data sets tend to have substantial vocabulary/word meaning dimensions.14 Alternatively, the

15

growth in the gaps may be a function of marked differences in opportunities to learn between African American and White children across the elementary school years. Consistent with that possibility, there are well documented resource differences, on average, between the schools that African American and White children attend.15 These possibilities are discussed in subsequent sections of this report. Table 2 also includes fifth grade reading data for the 30% of Hispanic children who did not know enough oral English at the start of kindergarten to be assessed in it at that point. That large group of Hispanic children had about the same English reading proficiency pattern at the end of the fifth grade as the lowest SES quintile African American youngsters. (Most of the Hispanic ELLs also were from the lowest SES quintile.)16 For example, Table 2 shows that 23% of the Latino ELLs demonstrated Level 8 reading proficiency, the same percentage as the Black children in the lowest SES quintile—many of whom undoubtedly were from families in which African American English was spoken to some extent. Thus, at the end of the fifth grade both of these segments were doing less well in reading not only than the low SES Whites, but also than the low SES Hispanics who were among the 70% of Latinos who did have sufficiently strong oral English skills at the start of kindergarten to be assessed in it. It also is important to point out that there are some anomalies in the Hispanic and Black data. Typically children from higher SES segments have higher achievement test scores, on average, than children from lower SES segments. However, in the fifth grade data, the scores for second SES quintile Hispanics were higher than those of third SES quintile Hispanics. Similarly, the scores of fourth SES quintile African Americans were higher than those in the fifth SES quintile at both the beginning of kindergarten and the end of the fifth grade. This raises the possibility that the samples of African American and Latino children may not be fully representative, at least within all of the SES quintiles.17 Despite the anomalies in the data in Table 2, however, other data sets also show large within-class reading score gaps for African Americans and Hispanics, including in high SES segments, in the primary grades as well as the upper elementary grades.18 In that regard, Table 3 presents national data for the percentages of fourth graders in public schools from the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment that reached the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced levels. Box 2 provides definitions for these three levels of reading performance. Note that these definitions are focused on students’ reading comprehension capacities and text analysis skills.

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Box 2 NAEP Reading Levels for Fourth-Graders

Basic: Students demonstrate an understanding of the overall meaning of what they read. When reading text appropriate for fourth-graders, they can make relatively obvious connections between the text and their own experiences and extend the ideas in the text by making simple inferences. (A score of 208 on 500 point scale.) Proficient: Students demonstrate an overall understanding of the text, providing inferential as well as literal information. When reading appropriate text for fourth-graders, they can extend ideas in the text by making clear inferences, drawing conclusions and making connections to their own experiences. (A score of 238.) Advanced: Students can generalize about topics in the text and demonstrate an awareness of how authors compose and use literary devices. When reading text appropriate for fourth-graders, they can judge texts critically and, in general, give thorough answers that indicate careful thought. (A score of 268.)

Source: Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Donahue, P. (2007). The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2007. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute for Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

The data in Table 3 are disaggregated by race/ethnicity, social class (whether children did or did not qualify for free or reduced lunch), and language status (whether they were English language learners or English speakers). Whether students qualified for free or reduced lunch is a crude social class marker, but it is the only one available for fourth-graders in NAEP assessments. In the 2007 NAEP reading assessment, children who were eligible for free or reduced lunch had family incomes less than $37,000 per year.19 Table 3 Percentages of Fourth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally that Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the 2007 NAEP Reading Assessment, by Race/Ethnicity, Eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch and Language Status

Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch ELL Not ELL ELL Not ELL

Racial/ Ethnic Group >

Basic > Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- Ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

White 35.2 9.5 2.0 62.6 24.5 3.7 50.9 19.4 4.5 82.7 47.9 12.8 Black 35.4 12.1 1.4 40.2 10.2 1.0 48.0 12.3 0.7 62.2 24.6 4.0 Hispanic 25.1 4.8 0.3 57.0 18.6 2.6 32.5 7.7 1.0 71.1 32.6 6.2 Asian/PI 42.5 12.6 1.7 71.5 35.9 8.2 60.9 24.7 4.4 87.3 57.5 20.7 Nat.Amer. 17.7 2.9 0.1 47.3 16.3 2.9 NA NA NA 65.5 29.4 7.1 Source: Analysis of 2007 NAEP reading data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Several things stand out in the data in Table 3. First, the lowest scoring patterns in each racial/ethnic group were among students who were both eligible for free or reduced lunch and English language learners. Second, among ELLs who were eligible for free or reduced lunch, the Hispanic youngsters had extremely low scoring patterns. (Only the small group of Native American ELLs had lower scores.)ix Just 25.1% of these Hispanic

ix Similar to African Americans and Latinos, Native Americans have large reading achievement gaps, including within-class gaps, with Whites and Asian Americans on NAEP reading assessments (and on NAEP assessments in other subjects). However, because Native Americans are a small and diverse population, this report does not attempt to make recommendations for improving their reading readiness and reading achievement. A separate report is needed to address their needs.

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children scored at the Basic level or higher, while only 4.8% reached the Proficient level and a mere 0.3% reached the Advanced level. This is of great consequence because 31% of the Latinos in the national sample in the 2007 NAEP reading assessment for fourth-graders were in the free-and-reduced-lunch/ELL segment.20 Third, among English-speaking children, within-class achievement gaps with Whites and Asians were larger for Blacks than for Hispanics. For example, only 10.2% of the English-speaking African American children who were eligible for free or reduced lunch scored at the Proficient level, compared to 35.9% of Asians, 24.5% of Whites, and 18.6% of Latinos. Among English-speaking children who were not eligible for free or reduced lunch, only 24.6% of the Blacks scored at the Proficient level compared to 57.5% of Asians, 47.9% of Whites, and 32.6% of Hispanics. Significantly, the percentage of African Americans who were not eligible for free or reduced lunch that scored at the Proficient level was essentially the same as the percentage of Whites who were eligible for free or reduced lunch that did so (24.6% and 24.5%, respectively). Middle School and High School Reading Achievement NAEP reading data also are available for eighth-graders and twelfth-graders. Table 4 presents national data for the percentages of eighth-graders in public schools in the 2007 NAEP reading assessment that reached the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced levels. The data are disaggregated by race/ethnicity and social class (with parent education level used as the marker for social class). Box 3 provides definitions of the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced levels of reading performance in the eighth grade.

Box 3 NAEP Reading Levels for Eighth-Graders

Basic: Students demonstrate a literal understanding of what they read and are able to make some interpretations. When reading text appropriate for eighth-graders, they can identify specific aspects of the text that reflect the overall meaning, extend the ideas in the text by making simple inferences and connections among the ideas in the text to personal experience, and draw conclusions based on the text. (A score of 208 on 500 point scale.) Proficient: Students show overall understanding of the text, including inferential as well as literal information. When reading appropriate text for fourth-graders, they can extend ideas in the text by making clear inferences, drawing conclusions and making connections to their own experiences, including other reading experiences. They also should be able to identify some of the devices authors used in composing texts. (A score of 281.) Advanced: Students can describe the more abstract themes and ideas of the overall text. When reading text appropriate for eighth-graders, students can analyze both meaning and form and support their analyses explicitly with examples from the text, and extend text information by relating it to their experiences and world events. Their responses are thorough, thoughtful, and extensive. (A score of 323.)

Source: Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Donahue, P. (2007). The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2007. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute for Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

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Table 4 Percentages of Eighth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP Reading Assessment in 2007, by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 82.5 63.9 74.3 85.7 88.4 38.1 15.7 24.2 38.4 47.2 3.2 0.3 1.0 2.4 4.7 Black 54.0 47.3 45.7 63.9 58.3 11.8 6.3 7.4 15.2 14.8 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.6 Hispanic 57.0 52.4 56.3 69.2 69.6 14.5 10.6 12.1 20.6 24.3 0.6 0.1 0.3 0.9 1.4 Asian/PI 79.1 59.9 71.3 83.8 85.8 39.6 22.2 28.8 36.3 49.4 4.8 0.6 1.6 3.5 7.1 Nat.Amer. 58.4 50.6 50.8 71.5 65.9 19.2 14.4 11.8 26.8 24.8 2.0 1.7 0.7 2.2 3.4 Source: Analysis of 2007 NAEP reading data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Table 4 shows that in 2007 Black and Hispanic (and Native American) eighth-graders were heavily underrepresented among high achievers and severely overrepresented among low achievers in reading relative to non-Hispanic Whites and Asian Americans. Just 0.4% of African Americans and 0.6% of Latinos scored at the Advanced level compared to 3.2% of Whites and 4.8% of Asians; and 46.0% of African Americans and 43.0% of Latinos scored below the Basic level, while 17.5% of the Whites and 20.9% of the Asians did so. Table 4 also shows that there were substantial within-parent-education-level gaps—and that these gaps tended to be largest at the highest parent education levels. Among students with at least one parent with a college degree, 47.2% of Whites and 49.4% of Asians scored at the Proficient level or higher, but only 24.3% of the Hispanics and 14.8% of the Black did so. The 14.8% of African Americans was a little less than the 15.7% of Whites with no parent with a high school degree who scored at the Proficient level. The 24.3% for Latinos was essentially identical to the 24.2% of Whites who had no parent with more than a high school diploma. The patterns for eighth-graders are repeated in recent NAEP data for twelfth-graders. Table 5 presents national data for the percentages of twelfth-graders in public schools in the 2005 NAEP reading assessment that reached the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced levels. The data are disaggregated by race/ethnicity and social class (again with parent education level used as the marker for social class). Box 4 provides definitions for the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced levels of reading performance in the twelfth grade.

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Box 4 NAEP Reading Levels for Twelfth-Graders

Basic: Students demonstrate an overall understanding and make some interpretations of the text. When reading text appropriate for twelfth-graders, they can identify and relate aspects of the text to its overall meaning, extend the ideas in the text by making simple inferences, recognize interpretations, make connections among and relate ideas in the text to their personal experiences, and draw conclusions. They can identify elements of an author’s style. (A score of 265 on 500 point scale.) Proficient: Students show an overall understanding of the text, which includes inferential as well as literal information. When reading appropriate text for twelfth-graders, they can extend the ideas of the text by making inferences, drawing conclusions, and making connections to their own personal experiences and other readings. Connections between inferences and the text should be clear, even when implicit. They are able to analyze the author’s use of literary devices. (A score of 302.) Advanced: Students can describe more abstract themes and ideas in the overall text. When reading text appropriate for twelfth-graders, they can analyze both the meaning and the form of the text and explicitly support their analyses with specific examples from the text. They can extend the information from the text by relating it to their experiences and to the world. Their responses are thorough, thoughtful, and extensive. (A score of 346.)

Source: Grigg, W., Donahue, P., and Dion, G. (2007). The Nation’s Report Card: 12th-Reading and Mathematics 2007. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.

Table 5 Percentages of Twelfth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP Reading Assessment in 2005, by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 77.5 52.6 68.2 79.2 84.7 40.9 20.3 26.6 38.8 50.9 5.5 1.0 2.1 4.3 8.1 Black 53.3 41.4 42.1 58.5 60.9 15.2 7.5 9.9 16.3 20.4 0.9 0.2 0.2 0.7 1.7 Hispanic 58.9 57.4 53.6 69.4 65.8 18.3 15.9 16.5 23.8 22.6 1.4 0.9 0.9 2.1 2.1 Asian/PI 73.5 NA 73.4 76.4 77.9 34.9 NA 33.0 36.2 43.0 5.3 NA 3.2 4.5 8.2 Nat.Amer. 67.6 NA NA NA NA 27.1 NA NA NA NA 2.3 NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2005 NAEP reading data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders Similar to the data for eighth-graders, Table 5 shows that in 2005 African American and Latino (and Native American) twelfth-graders were heavily underrepresented among high achievers and severely overrepresented among low achievers in reading relative to non-Hispanic Whites and Asian Americans. Only 0.9% of African Americans and 1.4% of Latinos scored at the Advanced level, while 5.5% of Whites and 5.3% of Asians reached that level. Also, while 46.7% of African Americans and 41.1% of Latinos scored below the Basic level, only 22.5% of the Whites and 26.5% of the Asians did so. The data in Table 5 indicate that there were large within-parent-education-level gaps; and, similar to the eighth-grade data, these gaps for twelfth-graders tended to be largest at the highest parent education levels. Among students with at least one parent with a college degree, 50.9% of Whites and 43.0% of Asians scored at the Proficient level or higher, but only 22.6% of the Hispanics and 20.4% of the Blacks did so. The 20.4% of African American students with at least one parent with a college degree that reached the Proficient level was almost identical to the 20.3% of Whites with no parent with a

20

high school degree that did so; and the 22.6% of Latinos that reached the Proficient level was only moderately higher. It is important to point out that the NAEP reading achievement patterns presented in this report not only for twelfth-graders, but also for fourth-graders and eighth-graders, are very similar to the achievement patterns on NAEP assessments in other subjects. To illustrate this reality, Appendix 1 presents data for fourth-graders and twelfth-graders, disaggregated by race/ethnicity, SES, and language status, from recent NAEP assessments in six subjects—civics, geography, U.S. history, mathematics, science, and writing. Of course, the similarities to the reading patterns are generally unsurprising because having solid reading comprehension skills is necessary to master much of the school curriculum in most of these subjects, and to be able to read and to understand the NAEP assessments in them. The fourth-grade data for the six subjects underline the importance of developing solid reading comprehension skills by the end of the K-3 years. School Grades and Standardized Test Scores In addition to standardized test scores, the grades that students earn in school are another means of assessing academic achievement. However, grades have several limitations. One is that grades in school, by definition, provide no information on reading readiness as children start school. Another is that there are no nationally representative sources of long-term trend data on grades at the elementary school level. Yet another is that, owing to variations in elementary and secondary school curricula and grading practices, K-12 grade data can be more difficult to interpret than standardized test scores. Nevertheless, available racial/ethnic data on school grades nationally tend to have achievement patterns similar to those found in standardized test data. For example, in the NAEP transcript study of high school graduates in 2005, the average overall GPA of the graduates on a 4-point scale was 3.16 for Asian Americans, 3.05 for Whites, 2.82 for Hispanics, and 2.69 for African Americans.21 These differences were accompanied by within-parent-education level GPA differences that parallel those in the NAEP reading data presented in Table 5.22 Reading Readiness and Reading Achievement Trends There are no nationally representative standardized test trend data on reading readiness at the start of kindergarten or for reading achievement during the primary grades. The earliest point in the education system for which there are recent national trend data on reading achievement is the fourth grade. NAEP fourth grade reading assessment data are available for 1992-2007. During that fifteen-year interval, the Black-White reading score gap was reduced modestly, while the Hispanic-White gap remained about the same size. Furthermore, the Black-White and Hispanic-White reading score gaps on the NAEP reading assessment for eighth-graders were about the same size in 2007 as they had been in 1992. There also were no changes among twelfth-graders.23 Although NAEP reading score gaps between Hispanics and Whites have changed little since the early 1990s, the high level of Hispanic immigration in the period may be masking progress on an intergenerational basis. Many Latino newcomers to the United States are adults with little formal education, which is an important educational risk factor for their children, whether the latter are themselves immigrants (first generation) or U.S.-born (second generation). Third generation Hispanic children (those with two U.S.-born parents) may be faring better, since these youngsters’ parents tend to have completed

21

more years of schooling than their parents’ did. (Educational attainment data on this point are presented in the next section of this report.) ECLS-K data support this conclusion for the largest segment of Hispanic children, Mexican Americans. In the ECLS-K sample, third generation Mexican American children had a somewhat higher level of reading readiness (in English) at the start of kindergarten and higher reading achievement at the end of the fifth grade than first and second generation Mexican Americans. Table 6 presents data for beginning kindergartners and Table 7 presents data for the end of the fifth grade. Table 6 Percentages of Children Scoring At or Above Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Reading at the Start of Kindergarten: Third Generation Whites and First, Second, and Third Generation Mexican Americans

Group Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Third Generation Whites 73 34 20 4 Third Generation Mexican Americans 60 23 12 2 Second Generation Mexican Americans 43 14 8 2 First Generation Mexican Americans 42 14 6 0 Source: Reardon, S.F., and Galindo, C. (2006). Patterns of Hispanic Students’ Math and English Literacy Test Scores. Report to the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. Table 7 Percentages of Children Scoring At or Above Levels 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Reading at the End of Fifth Grade: Third Generation Whites and First, Second, and Third Generation Mexican Americans

Group Level 6 Level 7 Level 8 Level 9 Third Generation Whites 91 79 52 10 Third Generation Mexican Americans 89 72 43 5 Second Generation Mexican Americans 83 61 38 6 First Generation Mexican Americans 83 61 32 1 Source: Reardon, S.F., and Galindo, C. (2006). Patterns of Hispanic Students’ Math and English Literacy Test Scores. Report to the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. The data in Table 6 and Table 7 probably underestimate the readiness and achievement differences between third generation Mexican American children and first and second generation youngsters because the data exclude the Mexican Americans in the 30% of Hispanics who had little or no knowledge of English at the start of kindergarten. That group was heavily first and second generation in its composition.24 The better outcomes for third generation Mexican American children are related to the fact they had a stronger family SES distribution than the SES distributions of first and second generation Mexican Americans. For instance, more of the third generation children were from families in the top two SES quintiles. Still, as Table 6 and Table 7 show, third generation Mexican Americans lagged well behind third generation Whites in reading skills at the start of kindergarten and at the end of fifth grade. Consistent with these patterns, a smaller percentage of third generation Mexican Americans than third generation Whites were from families in the top two SES quintiles.25

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Educational Attainment Trends There have been important gains in educational attainment in the United States over the past two generations as measured by the percentages of young adults with high school and college degrees. Table 8 tells this story for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. Table 8 Selected Educational Attainment Data for 25-to-29-Year-Old Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics: 1920-2005

Whites Blacks Hispanics Year <5 Years Element- ary School

H.S. Deg. or More

Bach. Degree or More

<5 Years Element- ary School

H.S. Deg. or More

Bach. Degree or More

<5 Years Element- ary School

H.S. Deg. or More

Bach. Degree or More

1920 12.9 22.0 4.5 44.6 6.3 1.2 NA NA NA 1950 3.3 56.3 8.2 16.1 23.6 2.8 NA NA NA 1970 0.9 77.8 17.3 2.2 58.4 10.0 NA NA NA 1975 0.6 86.6 23.8 0.5 71.1 10.5 8.0 53.1 8.8 1980 0.3 89.2 25.0 0.6 76.7 11.6 6.7 58.0 7.7 1990 0.3 90.1 26.4 1.0 81.7 13.4 7.3 58.2 8.1 2000 0.1 94.0 34.0 0.0 86.8 17.8 3.8 62.8 9.7 2005 0.3 92.8 34.1 0.4 86.9 17.5 3.6 63.3 11.2 Source: National Center for Education Statistics (2006). Digest of Education Statistics: 2005. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Table 8 shows that, between 1970 and 2005, the percentage of African Americans in the 25-to-29-year-old age segment that had a high school degree (or a GED) or more grew from 58.4% to 86.9%. In addition, the share of Black 25- to 29-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree or more grew from 10.0% to 17.5% in that period. Latinos also made some gains, but they were smaller and from lower bases. Between 1975 and 2005, the share of 25-to-29-year-old Hispanics who had at least a high school diploma grew from 53.1% to 63.2% and the share with a bachelor’s degree or more grew from 8.8% to 11.2%. (Data for Latinos are not available for 1970.) The data in Table 8 for Hispanics underestimate their gains, owing to high levels of Hispanic immigration that, as note earlier, have included many young adults with relatively little formal education. For example, a study conducted by researchers at RAND found that, between 1970 and 2000, the percentage of U.S.-born 25- to 29-year-old Latinos with high school degrees grew from 48% to 79%.26 In contrast, there was little change in the high school graduation rate for 25-to-29-year-old foreign-born Latinos. Their rate was 44% in 1970 and 46% in 2000.27 Similarly, in the 1970-2000 period, there also was significant growth in the percentage of U.S.-born 25-to-29-year-old Hispanics with college degrees. The percentage more than tripled from 5% to about 16%. These gains were made even though the percentage with college degrees among foreign-born Hispanics was basically unchanged in the period. It was less than 8% in 1970 and a little over 7% in 2000.28 Despite the progress made by African Americans and U.S.-born Hispanics, they actually lost ground to Whites in bachelor’s degree completion rates, as the White percentage doubled from 17.3% to 34.0% between 1970 and 2000.29 This large gain for Whites was partly a result of the rapid growth in the percentage of White females earning college degrees, as they took advantage of the much greater higher education and career opportunities available to women since the late 1960s.30

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Achievement Differences among Racial/Ethnic Groups as a Function of Differences in Intergenerational Educational Advancement Opportunities A large percentage of young children in the United States are from families that have had substantial-to-very-extensive access over several generations to the educational system in the United States and/or to the educational systems of a number of other countries. In contrast, some segments of the American population have had much less educational access over time. On average, non-Hispanic Whites and Asian Americans have generally had much greater opportunity for intergenerational educational advancement than African Americans and Latinos. The much lower levels of reading readiness and achievement of Hispanic and Black youngsters than Whites and Asians are consistent with these differences in opportunity. Differences in Educational Opportunity over Time The data on educational attainment presented in Table 8 illustrate differences among racial/ethnic groups in their opportunities for intergenerational educational advancement. In 1920, about 87% of young White adults had completed at least 5 years of schooling, while 22% had completed at least a high school degree and about 5% had at least a bachelor’s degree. These may not seem to be impressive statistics, but they are. The “common school” movement that produced mass public education in the United States emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century. That effort initially produced widespread elementary education. The creation of an extensive secondary education system came in the first half of the twentieth century. Mass higher education was a post-World War II phenomenon.31 These realities are shown in Table 8 in the high school and college graduate data for Whites in 1950 and 2000. In 1950, over 56% of White 25-to-29-year-olds had at least a high school education, reflecting the surge in secondary education enrollment over the previous half century; but just 8% had a bachelor’s degree at that point. By 2000, 94% of Whites had a high school credential and 34% had at least a bachelor’s degree. Table 8 tells a different story for African Americans. In 1920, almost 45% of Black 25-to-29-year-olds had not gone beyond the fifth grade, while only 6% had completed high school and just over 1% had a bachelor’s degree. Moreover, these data doubtlessly overestimate the actual amount of human capital those young Black adults had accumulated at that point.x In 1920, most African Americans still lived in the South—a region where they had not begun to gain access to formal schooling in large numbers until after the Civil War. More importantly, with the emergence of the Jim Crow era after Reconstruction ended in the late 1870s, the segregated public schools available to Blacks in the South were usually abysmally underfunded and their curricula were generally restricted, e.g., few African Americans had access to a true college prep high school curriculum in the South in 1920.32 African Americans, of course, faced extensive

x The term human capital was coined by the Nobel-Prize-winning economist, Theodore W. Schultz, nearly a half century ago to refer to the knowledge, skills, and values that individuals gain from education that enable them to them not only to be productive economically, but also “to become responsible and competent citizens.” See Schultz, T. W. (1960). “Capital Formation by Education,” The Journal of Political Economy, 68 (6), 571-583. Formal schooling is the central institutional means in modern societies for providing systematic, long-term opportunities for individuals, beginning in childhood, to acquire human capital in many (but not all) areas, including especially academic ones—reading, writing, mathematics, science, etc.

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racial discrimination in education (and in other arenas of society) outside the South as well.33 The Jim Crow period still had several decades to run in 1920. It would be 34 more years to the Brown decision, 44 years until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 45 years until the creation of Head Start and the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (with Title I), and a little longer until widespread use of affirmative action among selective colleges and universities began to provide African Americans with some access to those institutions across the country. Latinos also faced severe limitations in their access to schooling in 1920, and would continue to do so for decades as well. But, because they were a very small percentage of the U.S. population at that point, educational attainment data are not available for them in 1920.34 Indeed, it would be a half century before national educational attainment data became available for Hispanics. However, because the huge growth in the Hispanic population has been heavily driven by large-scale, sustained immigration after the mid-1960s, much of the long-term intergenerational educational advancement story for Latinos leads to their countries of origin. As noted earlier, just 44% of young adult Hispanic immigrants had a high school diploma and only 8% had a bachelor’s degree in 1970. Furthermore, young adult Hispanic immigrants 30 years later (2000) had the same attainment profile.35 This is unsurprising, since a majority of the young Hispanic adult immigrants are from Mexico, a nation which is still far from having a fully developed universal K-12 education system; and, its higher education sector is still relatively small as well.36 Importantly, despite progress, large differences among racial/ethnic groups in access to well-resourced schools have persisted down to the present. For example, schools serving low income and minority students tend to have lower percentages of certified teachers and lower percentages of teachers with strong backgrounds in math and science.37 At the preschool level, the percentage of teachers and administrators with at least a bachelor’s degree in center-based programs has fallen over the past generation from 43% to about 30% (possibly due in part to low pay).38 Owing to the importance of high quality preschool for low SES children, including African Americans and Latinos, this is a disturbing change. Intergenerational Educational Advancement and Human Capital Accumulation Among Individuals, Families, and Racial/Ethnic Groups The data showing different educational attainment patterns over a long period of time are important for understanding racial/ethnic group differences in children’s reading readiness and reading achievement because human capital derived from formal schooling is invested in children both by the schools they attend and by their parents (and other adults and peers in their homes and communities). On average, families that have had several generations of extensive access to formal schooling have much more intergenerationally accumulated human capital to invest in their children than families that have had limited access to formal schooling over time.39 This is most obvious in situations in which one group of parents includes many who are second and third generation college graduates and another group of parents includes many who have only completed grade school and their parents and grandparents also had very limited formal schooling. However, substantial human capital differences can exist even when parents in each group have college degrees and the grandparents have

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had a fair amount of formal schooling as well. Differences in human capital in that case could occur when the quality of the schooling was much higher for one group in one or both generations, even though attainment levels were similar. Differences in the amount and quality of formal schooling over time among groups in the United States can help shed light not only on the reading readiness and achievement differences between children from high and low SES families, but also on the within-class racial/ethnic achievement differences described in the data presented in previous sections of this report. For example, because African Americans have historically had much less access to formal education than Whites and the schools and colleges and universities that they attended were generally much less well resourced, it would be surprising if there were not still differences in the amount of human capital possessed by young White and Black college graduates. The lower college GPAs of African Americans than Whites that have been documented over the past few decades are consistent with this long history of differences in educational opportunity.40 As a result, college-educated Black parents evidently have less human capital, on average, to invest in their children than college-educated White parents. It also would be expected that this situation would continue to exist even among students who attend the same colleges and universities, including selective ones. For instance, the lower K-12 achievement of Blacks and Latinos than Whites at each SES level over the past four decades has meant, in practice, that the African Americans and Hispanics enrolling at selective institutions have been significantly less well prepared academically for higher education, on average, than their White counterparts since the late 1960s, when selective institutions first began enrolling much larger numbers of minority students. This has contributed to the persistent pattern of lower GPAs for Blacks and Hispanics than Whites at those institutions.41 Thus, each year for the past two generations, African American and Hispanic bachelor’s degree recipients at selective institutions have graduated, on average, with less human capital than their White counterparts (as measured by GPA). In fact, there is extensive research showing that African Americans have actually had lower grades, on average, in college—including at selective institutions—than their high school grades and college admissions test scores would have predicted. That also has been the case for Hispanics, albeit to a lesser degree.42 Between-Social-Class Differences in Parenting-Related Literacy Development Opportunities for Children Research indicates that differences in human capital associated with differences in the amount of formal schooling contribute to differences in parenting behaviors and actions related to fostering emergent literacy among children. That is because adults tend to use the knowledge and skills that they acquired via their formal education in various realms of their lives, including in their parenting. Some of the most compelling evidence of this has come from research on differences in language and literacy development opportunities between children with parents with bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degrees and children with parents who have only graduated from high school or who have less than a high school education. Regarding these education-related SES differences, research has found, for example, that low SES parents in general talk with their children much less than middle class parents talk to their youngsters; and, in turn, middle class parents talk less to their children than high SES parents talk to their youngsters. The very detailed observational

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study by Betty Hart and Todd Risley of 42 children in 42 different families provides some of the most widely cited evidence in this area. From the time that the children in the study learned to talk, the high SES youngsters’ vocabularies grew much faster than those of the middle SES children, while the latter’s vocabularies grew more rapidly than those of the low SES children. These different vocabulary growth rates reflected differences in their language environments. Hart and Risley found that, in a typical hour, very young children in the high SES families heard about 2,150 words, while those in the middle SES families heard about 1,250 words and those in the low SES families heard only about 620 words. Extrapolating, these researchers estimated that, by age three, the high SES children had heard 30 million words spoken, the middle SES children had heard 20 million words, and the low SES children had heard only 10 million words.43 Importantly, there also were large SES differences (in favor of the high SES youngsters) in how the words were used, the length of sentences, and the topics that were discussed. This meant that the parents’ modeling of the use of language differed by SES in terms of such things as the kinds of questions that were asked and how things or events were described. The children also were being exposed to very different amounts of information on a wide range to topics.44 These differences essentially meant that there were large SES differences in the ways that the parents acted as teachers of their children. The mothers in the high SES families were much more likely than those in the low SES families to ask their children to elaborate on comments. They also were more likely to ask their children questions concerned with promoting thought and reflection and eliciting behaviors rather than directing the youngsters to do things. Furthermore, they were much more likely to make positive comments to their children and much less likely to make negative comments.45 (Other research has produced similar findings.)46 These patterns, of course, did not stop when the children reached their third birthdays. They simply continued, as they were fundamental characteristics of the families’ lives. Some believe that the well-documented growth in reading skill gaps between high SES and low SES children during the summer months in the early elementary school years is partly related to family differences in literacy-related practices.47 Even though the Hart and Risley study is immensely valuable from the perspective of providing detailed information on SES-related differences in language and literacy development opportunities and in actual early development, it is based on a small unrepresentative sample of U.S. children both in terms of SES and race/ethnicity. Regarding the sample’s SES composition, 13 of the children in the study were from high SES families (the parents had professional and managerial positions), 23 were from middle SES families (the parents were middle class and working class), and six were from low SES families (all the mothers were on welfare). Regarding race/ethnicity, although a majority of the children in the study were White, a substantial number—17—were Black. However, they were not well distributed over the three SES levels. For example, all six of the low SES children were African American and all but one of the 13 high SES children were White. There was only one Latino in the study.48 Some other studies of early language development based on large samples of young children do include both Blacks and Whites across SES levels. There also are some with a substantial number of Latinos. One large study with extensive SES data for both African Americans and Whites was undertaken by George Farkas and Kurt Beron of children’s vocabulary development. They conducted an analysis of data on a sample of

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Black and White children ages three to thirteen and their parents (and to some extent grandparents) that are available from the Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth of 1979 (CNLSY79) database. Farkas and Beron found that, for both African Americans and Whites, low SES children at age three had smaller and less complex vocabularies than middle class and high SES children in their groups and that the between-class gaps for both groups continued to expand until the children started kindergarten. Once the children started school, however, the between-class gaps stopped growing for both African Americans and Whites.49 Significantly, Farkas and Beron found that about half of the higher vocabulary benefits provided by the high SES homes relative to low SES ones were associated with two measures of the home environment provided by mothers. One measure was concerned with support for cognitive development. For preschool children this was measured by the number of books in the home and maternal help with learning letters, numbers, and shapes. The other measure was concerned with maternal emotional warmth, which was measured for preschoolers by how mothers talked to their children and their responses to their children’s requests. As the authors note, “Of course, for the mother’s linguistic skill to be transferred to her child, it is not sufficient that she herself have a good vocabulary; it also is necessary for her to use these skills in her interactions with her child in such a way that the skills are transferred. At least two conditions must be present: the mother must instruct by word and deed, and she must do so in a sufficiently warm and attractive manner so that the lesson takes.”50 Other research also has found maternal cognitive support and nurturance/warmth to be of considerable importance in home learning environments, and that high SES mothers score, on average, more highly on measures of these factors than low SES mothers. This has been found for Whites, African Americans, and Latinos.51 Although the instructional and nurturance dimensions discussed here are behavioral, they are linked to some extent with material dimensions of SES. For example, research has documented that parents with little formal schooling have fewer books in their homes and read less to their children than is the case for parents with a great deal of formal education.52 There is an income aspect of this; parents with extensive higher education (who are disproportionately White and Asian in the United States) are more likely to have higher disposable incomes with which to buy books. Another example is that mothers in families that experience long-term poverty are more vulnerable to depression, which can be a substantial obstacle to providing environments that offer strong support for cognitive development. Consistent with their higher poverty rates, African American and Latino mothers are more vulnerable to depression than White mothers.53 Within-Social-Class Differences among Racial/Ethnic Groups in Parenting-Related Literacy Development Opportunities for Children ECLS-K data presented earlier in this report show that small-to-moderate within-social-class differences in reading readiness at the start of kindergarten exist between Whites and Blacks and between Whites and Hispanics. Other data sets also have shown within-class differences, particularly between Blacks and Whites—and in some cases these gaps have been much larger than those found in the ECLS-K data. These findings raise two questions. First, how early are within-class language development differences in evidence? Second, are there within-class differences in parenting-related

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literacy development opportunities associated with these differences? The previously discussed study by Farkas and Beron provide evidence on both of these questions. Regarding the first question, in their analysis of the CNLSY79 database, Farkas and Beron found that large overall Black-White differences in oral vocabulary were already present when children were only three years old (the youngest age for which they had data). At that point, the African American children were a little over a year behind White youngsters in terms of the sizes of their vocabularies. That is to say, the average White three-year-old in their study had an oral vocabulary that was about as large as the average Black four-year-old. Furthermore, little of this gap was due to SES differences, i.e., there were substantial within-class vocabulary differences between Whites and Blacks at age three. However, although the within-class vocabulary gaps were substantial in the early years, they did not grow after children entered school at age five. This is different than the pattern in the ECLS-K data presented earlier in this report. In the ECLS-K, the within-class reading readiness gaps between African Americans and Whites were relatively small at the start of kindergarten, but reading achievement differences expanded in size over the K-5 years.54 Turning to the second question, Farkas and Beron found that there were Black-White differences on their measures of home educational environment that cut across SES lines, which were correlated with the vocabulary gaps between the African American and White children. The measures of home educational environment, together with mother’s verbal skills as measured by a standardized test (the verbal component of the Armed Forces Qualification Test), accounted for about 35% of the Black-White vocabulary gap at age three.55 Consistent with the Black-White home learning environment differences found in the CNLSY79 database, the ECLS-K provides evidence of within-class differences in the amount of literacy materials, including books, in the home. In addition, the ECLS-K provides evidence of within-class differences in the frequency with which parents read to their young children. In that regard, a recent analysis of ECLS-K data found that, at all maternal education levels, a higher percentage of White mothers than Black mothers reported that family members read books daily to their children; and, a lower percentage of White mothers than African American mothers reported that family members read only once or twice a week to their youngsters. For example, among mothers with four or more years of college, about 60% of the White mothers reported that their children were read to daily, while that was the case for 47% of the Black mothers. Among mothers with 12 or fewer years of schooling, 19% of the White mothers and 39% of the African American mothers said that their children were read to only once or twice a week,56 Similarly, at each maternal education level the White mothers reported that their children had a larger number of books in the home than the African American mothers said their children had. Moreover, the within-class differences tended to be large. As a result, White mothers with 12 or fewer years of education reported that their children had more books, on average, than Black mothers with 16 or more years of education reported that their children had. The former had an average of 76 books, while the latter had an average of 65 books.57 Another recent study, which drew on data from the National Household Education Survey of 1995, also found substantial differences in reading patterns to young children

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by parents from different racial/ethnic groups, including some large within-class differences as measured by maternal education level. This study includes data for Latinos in addition to Whites and African Americans. Table 9 presents data from that study. Table 9 Percentages of Parents Never Reading to Their Children and Reading Every Day to Their Young Children, by Race/Ethnicity and Maternal Education Level

Percent of Parents Never Reading to Their Preschooler

Percent of Parents Reading Every Day to Their Preschooler

Mother’s Education Mother’s Education

Race/Ethnicity of Mother

<12 Years 12 Years BA+ <12 Years 12 Years BA+ Non-Hispanic White 13 7 5 47 56 69 African American 18 12 4 27 38 47 English Speaking Hispanic 21 8 9 32 45 66 Non-English-Speaking Hispanic 48 29 30 14 29 28 English-Speaking Other 14 7 5 39 52 67 Non-English-Speaking Other 46 32 16 13 26 40

Source: Yarosz, D. and Barnett, W.S. (2001). “Who Reads to Young Children?: Identifying Predictors of Family Reading Activities,” Reading Psychology, 22(1), 67-81. Similar to the ECLS-K analysis, the data in Table 9 show that, at each maternal education level, a lower percentage of African American parents than White parents reported that they read to their preschooler every day. These within-class gaps were quite large—to the point that the same percentage (47%) of White parents in families in which the mothers had less than 12 years of schooling reported reading daily to their preschoolers as African American parents in families in which the mothers had a bachelor’s degree or more. This study included data for Hispanics that present a complex picture related to both SES and language spoken in the home. There were large within-class differences between Whites and non-English-speaking Hispanics across the board—larger than the White-Black within-class differences. However, the within-class gaps between Whites and English-speaking Hispanics were considerably smaller. In some cases they were smaller than the White-Black within-class differences, while in other cases they were larger. Given such findings, it would be valuable to have several detailed observational studies available with substantial language/emergent literacy development dimensions that looked systematically at White, African American, and Latino families at various SES levels. Although few such studies exist, the results of an informative one from a within-class perspective were published in the mid-1980s. Conducted by Elsie Moore, the study looked at a group of elementary-school-age African American children who had been adopted by White couples and Black couples with considerable amounts of higher education, i.e., most of the mothers and fathers in the study had bachelor’s degrees. All of the children in the study were adopted before age two and had been with their families for at least five years. Dr. Moore found that, by the elementary school years, the IQ test score average of the Black children adopted by the White couples was much higher (nearly a standard deviation) than that of the Black youngsters adopted by the African American couples.58 Even though the study was not focused specifically on language and literacy development, some of the findings are relevant. For example, as part of the study, the mothers directed their children in demanding cognitive learning tasks in their homes that were carefully observed. The White mothers were more likely than the Black mothers to

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employ a guidance approach that involved positive interactions (they smiled and joked more), offered hints on how to solve the problem, and let the children know that it was all right to be wrong. In contrast, the African American mothers were more likely to offer negative reactions to what the children were doing, and to give the children specific instructions for what to do. The African American children with the White parents were more likely to offer responses and to give elaborated answers than the Black children with the Black parents. They also seemed to enjoy the process more.59 Some researchers who recently examined Dr. Moore’s findings (as well as other studies concerning racial/ethnic differences in parenting) concluded that these early differences in parenting practices may have long-term educational impacts for students. They suggest “that one reason European American adolescents have higher achievement scores than African American adolescents is that their parents are more likely to use parenting strategies that foster academic motivation and achievement.”60 Early Childhood Education Challenges Related to Negative Educational Stereotypes of Blacks The earlier discussion of differences among Whites, African Americans, and Latinos in their opportunities for intergenerational advancement over time noted the role that the nation’s history of extreme forms of racial/ethnic discrimination has played. Unmentioned was one of the major rationales for limiting African Americans’ access to schooling—the old stereotype that they are not as innately able intellectually as Whites and some other groups. Although there is evidence (mainly from public opinion survey research) that the percentage of the population that holds this view has dropped dramatically over the past half century, it is a view that continues to get considerable attention.61 For example, some scholars continue to write articles that argue for this view and their pieces find publishers.62 At the same time, other scholars continue to conduct studies and write articles designed to refute the negative stereotype.63 This topic remains active enough for it to have surfaced in some of the nation’s major newspapers (sometimes on their front pages) on multiple occasions during the writing of this report. For example, there were many articles on comments by an American Nobel-prize-winning scientist in which that individual initially seemed to endorse the negative intellectual stereotype of Blacks and then, subsequently, to reject it.64 There also was an article on racial/ethnic differences in achievement—including within-class differences—that included a quote from a chief state school officer explicitly rejecting the stereotype.65 In a related article, some educational researchers noted that discussion of such differences risked raising the negative stereotype.66 And, there was an article on how research on the human genome has contributed to renewed speculation on the possibility of genetically-based group differences in intelligence, despite lack of evidence in support of such a conclusion.67 The persistence of this stereotype is important educationally, owing to evidence that it can undermine the academic performance of some Black students. Some of the strongest evidence is from research on the undergraduate level at selective colleges and universities involving students who had been high achievers during their K-12 years. In experiments involving academically challenging situations, African American undergraduates who had been good students were found to be vulnerable to “stereotype threat,” i.e., their concern about the negative intellectual stereotype of Blacks in the experiments led to an erosion of their performance.68

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Recently, researchers have documented that children’s vulnerability to the stereotype may begin as far back as the primary grades or even the preschool years.69 During the primary grades, many youngsters become aware of the stereotype. Moreover, many of those who are in integrated school settings may learn about the stereotype in classrooms in which Black children are typically underrepresented among high achieving students and overrepresented among low achievers. That is to say, they learn about the stereotype in a context in which achievement differences may be viewed by some as seemingly providing support for the stereotype. The achievement data reviewed earlier in this report suggest that these circumstances exist for many children from the time they start school. In addition to the apparent capacity of stereotype threat to undermine the academic performance of some African American students, there also continues to be a potential for educators who hold the stereotype to act in ways that may limit the educational opportunities of some of the Black students that they serve. Although it is reasonable to believe that this is a contributing factor to the relatively low achievement of some African Americans, the data on this topic are limited, in part because it is difficult to study.70 Consequently, not only is the percentage of educators—including early childhood educators—who hold the negative stereotype unknown, there also is relatively little information (especially observational information over time) on how the stereotype may influence teachers’ interactions with individual African American students. Despite this situation, it evidently is still common for African American students to conclude that, based on their experiences in school, one or more of their teachers have had low expectations for their academic work that they think was related to the negative intellectual stereotype of Blacks.71 There is another issue concerned with a somewhat related stereotype. For the past 20 years, public discussion of reasons for the low academic achievement of many African Americans has often included the notion that many Black secondary students reject high achievement as a form of “acting White.”72 The findings of studies on this topic have produced mixed results; and a number of scholars have concluded that African American students are no more likely than Whites to reject high academic achievement as a goal.73 However, there is evidence that some African Americans, particularly some male students, may “hold back” academically because of “what others might say or think” in schools in which students like them are accused of acting White for various reasons, including the kind of music they listen to and how they speak. Furthermore, there is some evidence that these pressures are greater in integrated schools than in those that are mostly Black.74 It also is reasonable to believe that some African American secondary students (as is the case for some students from other groups) disengage from their studies when they have not had success in school over time. One of the major reasons why many educators and policymakers have concluded that it makes sense to increase investments in early childhood education as a means of closing achievement gaps is that it has proven to be very difficult to reduce the size of the gaps in the late elementary school years and thereafter.75 The apparent power of the negative intellectual stereotype of African Americans is an additional reason to expand and improve early childhood investments for them (even as it also is a reason to undertake much more work to raise achievement of Blacks across the K-12 years and in higher education).76 Moreover, the persistence of that stereotype suggests that a great deal of attention should be given not only to efforts to reduce the number of low achievers by the end of the primary grades, but also to efforts to produce meaningful increases in the number of well above average and high achieving African American

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students by that point. It also supports the notion of giving a great deal of attention to raising the achievement of middle class and high SES African American children during the primary grades in addition to low SES Black youngsters. Finally getting more African American and Latino children from all SES segments off to a good start could help reduce the number that struggle academically at the secondary level. If so, it could help reduce the number of students that may disengage from their studies. Challenges of Learning Two Languages As noted earlier in this report, almost 30% of the Hispanic children in the ECLS-K study did not know enough English to be assessed in it at the start of kindergarten. Importantly, this was a heavily low SES group of children—over 70% were in the bottom SES quintile and close to 90% were in the bottom two SES quintiles.77 It also was a group that struggled to become solid readers in English over the elementary school years. The data in Table 2 show that, by the end of the fifth grade, the English reading proficiency of these youngsters was lower than that of the low SES White children in the ECLS-K sample as well as the low SES Hispanic youngsters who did speak enough English to be assessed in it when they began kindergarten. With so many Latino English language learners having difficulty becoming good readers in English under existing educational arrangements, it is unsurprising that a continuing topic of public debate concerns whether and how Spanish should be used in their formal education. Despite this debate, however, research now provides clear support for the conclusion that Hispanic ELLs generally do better academically, if they receive some form of English-plus-Spanish (EPS) education, rather than be taught only in English.78 (EPS refers to a wide range of formal and informal approaches to using both English and Spanish in the classroom.) The evidence indicates that EPS approaches tend to produce gains that, on average, are similar to those produced by some of the more effective pre-K and K-3 strategies.79 Although the weight of the evidence strongly favors EPS over English-only strategies, a national group of experts in second-language development recently concluded that insufficient evidence is available on most existing EPS approaches to determine which ones are the most effective for which students.80 This is due partly to the fact that too few strategies have been sufficiently evaluated.81 Furthermore, even though there is considerable evidence that EPS strategies help raise reading achievement, the extent to which any existing strategies contribute to meaningful increases in the percentage of Latino ELLs who have strong reading comprehension skills in English in the upper elementary grades is unclear. It also is the case that, for the early childhood years, most of the evidence in support of EPS strategies is from the K-3 period. Relatively little of the evidence is from studies of preschool or infant/toddler programs because little of the EPS strategy-testing work has taken place at those levels. However, it is notable that the small number of preschool studies that are available in this area generally do provide support for using EPS approaches.82 Interestingly, conducting some longitudinal evaluations of EPS strategies over a large portion of the early childhood period (e.g., from the beginning of pre-K through the third grade) to determine their impact over several years would be consistent with research that has found that it usually takes several years for ELLs to become highly proficient in academic English.83 One reason is that it takes a long time for most young ELLs to

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acquire the extensive vocabularies and associated background knowledge in English that become increasingly important for reading comprehension after the third grade.84 In this area, language development challenges for young Hispanic ELLs from low SES immigrant families have similarities to some of the most difficult literacy development challenges for English-speaking children from low SES families with U.S.-born parents. As was discussed earlier in this report, researchers have found that, on average, the oral vocabularies of children in the latter families are typically much smaller than those of their middle class and high SES counterparts; and, they tend to remain much smaller throughout the primary grades.85 Consequently, many of these children are at great disadvantage by the end of the third grade, when reading comprehension has become more dependent on having a large operational vocabulary and related general knowledge. There is not extensive research on the home-based Spanish language development opportunities of children in low SES Hispanic families in the United States in which the primary language of the home is Spanish. However, as data reviewed earlier in this report show, parents in families in which the mothers have less than a high school degree and primarily speak Spanish in the home read much less frequently to their young children than parents in families in which the mothers have college degrees and speak primarily Spanish in the home—a pattern that is essentially the same as in homes with primarily English-speaking mothers who have not completed high school and in homes in which the English-speaking mothers have graduated from college.86 Thus, many Hispanic ELLs from low SES immigrant families may need to make a great deal of progress in oral vocabulary development in Spanish as well as in English during the early childhood years. This is an area that would benefit from a substantial research agenda involving both quantitative and qualitative longitudinal studies of Spanish language development of Latino ELLs from birth through the end of the primary grades or beyond from home, child care, and school perspectives. It also is important to recognize that improving strategies for helping low SES Hispanic ELLs develop their English and Spanish skills also might benefit many middle class and even high SES Hispanic children from immigrant families in which Spanish is the primary language of the home. Becoming proficient in academic English takes time to develop even for those with access to higher levels of human capital in their homes. Although these youngsters are generally better positioned to master English than their counterparts from low SES immigrant families, it can still be difficult.87 In that regard, earlier in this report Table 3 presented reading data for fourth graders on the 2007 NAEP reading assessment that are consistent with this conclusion. Only 7.7% of the Hispanic ELLs who were not eligible for free or reduced lunch (those from families with incomes above $37,000) read at the Proficient level or higher, which was only modestly more than the 4.8% of the Hispanic ELLs who were eligible for free or reduced lunch. In contrast, among English-speaking Latinos, 32.6% of those who were not eligible for free or reduced lunch and 18.6% of those who were eligible for it read at the Proficient level or higher. Irrespective of which specific EPS approaches are found to be most effective in the future, providing such programs on a much wider basis will undoubtedly require a great many teachers who are proficient in Spanish as well as in English. In fact, even in preschools and elementary schools that do not use EPS strategies, having more

34

teachers who speak Spanish would be extremely valuable for communicating with Hispanic ELL students in the classroom and with many of their parents as well. In its examination of how to develop a much larger supply of teachers who speak both English and Spanish, the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education concluded that it would not be possible to meet the demand only by encouraging more Spanish-speaking Hispanic college students to choose early childhood and elementary education as a career. It also would be necessary to pursue policies focused on increasing the number of English monolingual Whites, African Americans and others who are already teachers, or are preparing to become teachers, that learn Spanish.88 For example, strategies might be developed that draw on existing approaches, such as those of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the U.S. Department of State. The FSI offers intensive programs through which individuals can become proficient in speaking and writing various languages, including Spanish.89 As the Task Force noted, another challenge in the teacher arena is that, in many elementary schools and prekindergarten programs, the ELL student population is diverse in terms of their national origins and primary languages. In those circumstances, use of EPS approaches often is not feasible. Rather, the most effective course may be to make use of teaching specialists who are experts in strategies that can help students become proficient in a second language.90 For instance, research is beginning to identify areas in which ELLs may require modifications and accommodations in instructional practices, if they are to maximize their progress.91 Having second language acquisition specialists available in school districts to provide ongoing training and advice to K-3 teachers would be one possible approach.92 In addition to the need to expand the supply of teachers who speak both English and Spanish and of specialists in second-language acquisition strategies, there also is a need for more teachers who are very knowledgeable about the cultures of the children that they serve. This is an area in which many of the most valuable learning opportunities probably come once individuals have entered the teaching profession, especially when students from several cultures are present in their schools and classrooms.93 In any case, it is important for teachers to understand children’s cultures not only for effective communication with the children and their parents, but also from a curriculum and instruction standpoint. For example, there is evidence that children’s familiarity with the content of reading material can help promote reading comprehension. Of course, children’s cultures are not the only source of familiar material to them, but they are a potentially important one, especially for youngsters who are learning English while also learning the school curriculum. Nonetheless, evidence on the effectiveness of particular “culturally-based” teaching approaches in literacy development is still limited because few studies have been designed to assess the specific contributions of cultural dimensions of curricular and instructional strategies.94 So far, the discussion in this section has focused exclusively on English language learners. However, research indicates that many Black children in the United States initially learn African American English. AAE has a number of distinctive rules of speech and grammar that differentiate it from Standard American English (SAE).95 SAE is the main English dialect used in the United States and the basis for the version of English used in the schools, Mainstream Classroom English (MCE), including in textbooks, on

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tests, and in the way that teachers themselves typically speak to students and to each other. Recent research indicates that most children who speak African American English when they enter school learn to use MCE in the classroom by the end of the third grade without direct instruction. Moreover, the students who can engage in such dialect “shifting” achieve at higher levels than those who do not.96 Indeed, in general the reading achievement of those who do not shift to MCE is low.97 Because AAE is used most extensively among low SES segments of African Americans, it follows that low SES Black children are disproportionately those who do not make the shift to MCE in school. At this juncture, research is limited on how African American children who speak AAE acquire bidialectal skills in AAE and SAE/MCE. Challenges of Having Many Low Achievers and Few High Achievers Beginning in the Early Years of Formal Education The heavy overrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos among low achievers and their severe underrepresentation among high achievers creates both psychological and practical challenges. Some of these challenges are associated with what can be called “conditions of manyness” and “conditions of fewness.”98 A key psychological challenge associated with these things has already been raised: They have the potential to be viewed as evidence by some that the negative intellectual stereotype of African Americans may be true. They also may support negative “cultural” views in some quarters about Hispanics and Blacks regarding an alleged lack of commitment to education.99 From an early childhood education strategy standpoint, there also are some very practical curricular and instructional issues. For example, in high minority/high poverty-concentration schools in major cities, a large percentage of the mostly low SES minority children enter kindergarten with low levels of reading readiness, while a relatively small percentage have above average readiness skills and few are among those who score very highly on such measures. Thus, these are schools in which the teachers need to provide effective learning opportunities for the many extremely educationally “at-risk” youngsters in their classes, if those youngsters are to move toward national reading achievement norms during the primary grades. At the same time, the teachers also need to meet the very different reading development needs of those students who, while probably few in number, are well above national reading readiness norms. These circumstances may be even more complex in schools in which classrooms typically have several (or many) children who are English language learners from low SES circumstances. There is some evidence that many of these schools are finding it difficult to meet the needs of these different segments of children. For example, in his research on achievement gain patterns in urban schools, William Sanders has observed that the lowest achievers tend to make larger gains than those who have been higher achievers. Dr. Sanders is especially concerned that African American children who have done well in the past are particularly vulnerable to this pattern.100 Other research has found that, in schools with high percentages of African American students (which are often, but not always, schools with large numbers of low SES youngsters), low rates of progress in reading and math among Black students in the

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upper elementary grades tend to be concentrated among students who are in the top half of the achievement distribution.101 The reasons for this pattern have not yet been determined. However, apart from the instructional challenges of concern to Dr. Sanders, these data raise the possibility that some teachers have low expectations in schools with large numbers of African American students and/or that there are some negative peer effects.102 Elementary (and secondary) schools in suburban districts that are diverse in terms of both race/ethnicity and social class also can have complex curricular and instructional challenges. In classrooms in some of these elementary schools there may be a substantial number of high SES White children as well as a number of low SES and middle class African Americans and, in some cases, low SES and middle class Hispanics. These classrooms often may have several high achievers who are mostly high SES Whites, several students in the academic middle from the various groups, and several low achievers who are disproportionately low SES minority youngsters. The large achievement differences between Whites and their African American and Latino counterparts in these schools and districts have proven to be difficult to close.103 Challenges of Between-Class and Within-Class Achievement Gaps The reading readiness and reading achievement data presented earlier in this report show that, for each racial/ethnic group, children from low SES circumstances generally have lower levels of school readiness and achievement than middle class and high SES youngsters in their group. As a result of these between-social-class achievement differences, improving educational outcomes for low SES children has been a priority for educators and federal and state policymakers for the past four decades. Much of this work has been pursued via three avenues: 1) increasing the amount of funding available to schools that serve low SES children; 2) providing educational opportunities prior to kindergarten via preschool and infant/toddler programs; and 3) developing more effective educational strategies for serving low SES youngsters. The passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (which provided funds to schools serving low SES children through Title I) and the launching of Head Start that same year were important foundations of these efforts, as were a number of steps taken from the middle 1960s through the early 1970s to expand and strengthen federal education research capacities.104 It has made sense to pursue each of these avenues. Schools that serve large numbers of low SES children have tended to be much less well resourced than those serving mostly middle class children and, especially, those serving mostly high SES youngsters. This is true not only in terms of money spent per child, but, importantly, in terms of qualified teachers, student/teacher ratios, and the like.105 At the same time, there has long been a shortage of empirically-demonstrated strategies for improving existing educational practices in ways that would raise the achievement of low SES children in reading over what would otherwise have been the case in a predictable, relatively consistent manner on a widespread basis. Indeed, few, if any, empirically-demonstrated strategies were available in 1965 even on a model program basis. For example, no model preschool strategy existed in 1965 with long-term evidence that it improved school readiness and school achievement of disadvantaged children in reading or any other area. (The famous High/Scope Perry Preschool

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Program had only begun in the early 1960s and would not have long-term data on its value until the 1980s.)106 Furthermore, as the ECLS-K data reviewed earlier show, a large portion of the reading achievement gap for low SES children that exists in the fifth grade is associated with the readiness gap at the start of kindergarten. Thus, developing K-3 strategies that, by themselves, would routinely enable low SES youngsters to catch up with high SES or even middle class children during elementary school has been—and continues to be—a tall order. If there is to be a meaningful (if not full) closing of the gap for low SES youngsters during the elementary school years and beyond, expanded and improved preschool and infant/toddler programs seem likely to be a substantial part of the solution. Consequently, it has made sense for the federal government and (subsequently) state governments to expand preschool and infant/toddler program opportunities, while the federal government also has increased its funding of R&D efforts to develop better strategies across the early childhood years. Nevertheless, many people have pointed out over the years that, even if the educational system is significantly improved and expanded (including the early childhood segment), the capacity of the system to raise the academic achievement of many low SES students will probably still have significant limitations. That is because several factors that can contribute to low achievement are largely beyond the control of the education system.107 These factors tend to be most negative for youngsters who experience long-term, intensive poverty. For example, these children are particularly at-risk to family dislocations (such as frequent family moves) and serious, preventable health problems (such as fetal alcohol syndrome and paternal depression) that undermine learning.108 A recent study by Douglas Harris offers a good example of the extent of the overall low SES achievement challenge viewed from the perspective of getting relatively high achievement from student bodies that have a large percentage of disadvantaged children. His study, which included nearly 18,000 schools across the nation (about three-quarters of which were elementary schools and one-quarter of which were middle schools), looked at the probability that high and low poverty concentration schools would have student populations that average in the top third (the 67th percentile or higher) on both their state’s reading and math standardized tests for two successive years. The study found that 24.2% of the low poverty schools met this standard, while only 1.1% of the high poverty schools did so. The low poverty schools were 22 times more likely to be high achieving schools than the high poverty schools.109 The differences were even larger between schools that had both low poverty and low minority student percentages and schools that had both high poverty and high minority student percentages. While 26.7% of the former were high achieving schools, that was the case for just 0.3% of the latter. The low poverty/low minority schools were 89 times more likely to meet the high achieving school criteria than the high poverty/high minority schools.110 Although this study did not have sufficient information to offer a definitive explanation for the 89 to 1 multiple, it is generally consistent with the between-class and within-class NAEP reading achievement data for fourth-graders presented in Table 3 earlier in this report as well as similarly disaggregated NAEP fourth-grade achievement data in math and several other subjects presented in Appendix 1. In that regard, it is reasonable to assume that many high poverty/high minority schools in the study conducted by Dr. Harris had a substantial percentage of African American children experiencing intensive

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poverty and who also had reading achievement patterns similar to those in the NAEP reading sample. Many of the schools also probably had large numbers of low SES Latino children who were English language learners with English reading skills that were similar to those in the NAEP reading sample. Furthermore, to the extent that these schools had some middle class African American or Latino children, many of those children—as was the case in the NAEP sample—would have been predicted to have lower reading achievement than White middle class youngsters. Consequently, many if not most of these schools in the study would have been predicted to have Hispanic and Black achievement patterns similar to the national NAEP reading data for fourth-graders. In contrast, the low poverty/low minority schools in the study would have been expected to have had White reading achievement patterns consistent with the NAEP data. As a result, the 89 to 1 multiple is not a surprising result. However, it should be viewed as an unacceptable one. Another way to think about the between-class and within-class achievement gaps is that they present a dual educational equity agenda for African Americans and Hispanics in the United States. Although SES is a substantial predictor of student achievement, it is a somewhat smaller predictor for minority students than for Whites.111 At first glance that might seem to be a positive thing for underrepresented minorities because their academic achievement patterns are more equal across social class lines than they are for Whites. However, as the NAEP data in Table 3 illustrate, because the within-class gaps tend to be larger at higher SES levels, it also means that those SES zones are less valuable from an achievement gain standpoint for Blacks and Hispanics. That is to say, there is a “suppression effect” in academic achievement for these groups relative to Whites at all SES levels, but it is greatest at higher SES levels. Thus, the smaller impact of SES on achievement patterns for students from underrepresented groups reflects their relatively low achievement in higher SES zones. In these circumstances, it is imperative to find ways to raise the achievement of low SES children from all racial/ethnic groups, but more urgent to do so for Latinos and African Americans than for Whites. It also is imperative to find ways to raise the achievement of middle class and high SES Blacks and Hispanics. It is understandable that, given the many forces that influence achievement outcomes for low SES students, there is debate over the relative roles of school- and non-school-based efforts to raise their achievement. The positive aspect of that debate is that it can help inform the mix of school- and non-school-based efforts to improve educational outcomes for these youngsters. It is very troubling, however, that there still is little discussion of the need to mount extensive, sustained efforts to raise the achievement of middle class and high SES Black and Hispanic students. Indeed, there has been so little discussion over the years that no real debate has yet emerged regarding what the mix of school and non-school strategies should be to produce meaningful achievement gains for them, much less a great deal of actual action in either sphere. Four decades after the federal government established Head Start and Title I on behalf of low SES children, we are still awaiting equivalent foundational initiatives to address the middle class and high SES achievement gaps, even though it also has been nearly four decades since secondary analysis of data from the national sample of students used in the Coleman Report documented the existence of those large within-class gaps.112 We also are still awaiting the mounting of a well-funded, sustained R&D effort to develop effective strategies for reducing these gaps.

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Early Childhood Education Strategies and Research Leads for Improving Black and Hispanic Reading Readiness and Reading Achievement Over the past forty years, educators have gradually developed a number of early childhood education programs and strategies with evidence that they can help improve Black and Hispanic (and other) children’s school readiness and K-3 achievement, including in reading. Consistent with the availability of these strategies, educators also now have considerable knowledge of factors that influence emergent literacy in the 0-5 period and whether children learn to read in the primary grades. The existing knowledge base, however, has several important limitations. First, few strategies have evidence that they have long-term impacts on students’ reading achievement. Second, the documented gains have generally been modest in size. Third, the gains have mainly been in reducing the percentage of below average and low achievers; there is little evidence that they help increase the percentage of above average or high achievers. Fourth, most of the documented gains have been for low SES children. Documented benefits for middle class and high SES children, including Latinos and African Americans, have been limited. At the same time, the existing knowledge base provides a number of leads for developing new or improved early childhood education strategies, which might contribute to larger reading readiness and reading achievement gains. These opportunities for progress include not only those that might promote overall growth in the percentage of strong readers, but those that might generate gains among low SES, middle class, and high SES African American and Hispanic children. Reading Readiness and Early Reading Achievement Knowledge Base Over the past few decades, educators have gained a much greater understanding of factors that influence both emergent literacy in the infant/toddler and preschool years and of the development of literacy in the primary grades. Beyond this understanding, they also have a body of knowledge and skills for promoting emergent literacy in very young children and for subsequently helping children learn to read in the K-3 years. For example, they have some proven techniques for helping children acquire core reading knowledge and skills, including phonemic awareness, word decoding skills, reading fluency, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension strategies.xi On closer look, however, there are some significant gaps in the knowledge base. For instance, much of what is known about promoting emergent literacy and teaching reading concerns improving outcomes for low SES children who are “at-risk” of not learning to read. In a related vein, this body of knowledge and techniques primarily concerns reducing the number of low SES children with very limited reading skills and, in the process, helping some of these children move toward average skill levels. Even here, the evidence regarding whether there have been enduring improvements is limited, as long-term evaluations that have looked for impacts, say, on reading comprehension in the late high school years have been few.113

xiPhonemic awareness refers to the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. Decoding skills refer to the knowledge of relationships between letters and sounds that readers use to pronounce a word that they don’t know. Fluency refers to readers’ ability to know many words by sight, which is necessary in order to read quickly and efficiently.

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With the emphasis on raising reading achievement among at-risk students, relatively little seems to have been learned about how to help children with average reading readiness at the start of kindergarten, or who have average reading skills early in the primary grades, to become well above average readers (by current norms) by the end of the primary grades or later. Similarly, little seems to be known about how to increase the number of top readers, e.g., those who demonstrate reading comprehension levels that would currently be among the top 5-10% (or top 2-3%) of readers at the end of the primary grades, the upper elementary grades, or beyond.114 This is important, owing to the marked underrepresentation of Blacks and Hispanics from all SES segments among very high achieving students, including those with the highest reading performance, across the K-12 years. (See the reading data in Tables 1-5 presented earlier in this report.) The lack of proven strategies for increasing the percentage of students from any racial/ethnic group or social class segment with strong reading comprehension skills has recently led the Institute for Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education to invite research proposals that would identify existing curriculum and instructional approaches that can contribute to an increase in proficient readers or that would develop new curriculum and instructional approaches for that purpose.115 Some of the most important leads for developing better strategies for improving reading readiness and reading achievement among Hispanics and Blacks are in the area of oral language development. In fact, early oral language development and its relationship to later success in reading—including reading comprehension in the fourth grade and beyond—have become important topics for applied R&D in emergent literacy and reading strategy work. During children’s preliteracy years (which for most youngsters reach into the primary grades), most vocabulary is learned orally, owing to their limited reading skills. In addition, available evidence indicates that most of the words that children learn through the first or second grade are learned outside the school.116 Furthermore, children’s early vocabulary has been found to be an important predictor of reading comprehension skills.117 In that regard, it is estimated that, in the second grade, children in the bottom reading achievement quartile know about 4,000 root word meanings compared to 6,000 word meanings for average children and 8,000 word meanings for children in the top quartile.xii By the sixth grade, children in the bottom quartile know about as many word meanings as top quartile second graders.118 These findings are especially important for low SES children because they are heavily overrepresented among those with small vocabularies and this pattern is established early. The studies by Hart and Risley and by Farkas and Beron, which were discussed earlier in this report, indicate that low SES children are already far behind middle class and high SES children in vocabulary by age three. Both of those studies provide evidence that this pattern applies to low SES African Americans (and the Farkas and Beron study shows it applies to Whites).119 Other research, such as the randomized trial for Early Head Start, has found that low SES Latinos as well as Blacks and Whites are well behind national norms in language development in English at age three.120 As was also discussed earlier, the research by Farkas and Beron found that high SES African Americans have much smaller vocabularies than high SES Whites at age three, and that these gaps do not close over the course of the preschool and elementary school years.121 Other data sets show large overall vocabulary gaps in the preschool years between Whites and Blacks and between Whites and Latinos.122 However, as

xii A root or base word meaning is the core or main meaning of a word as it is used in a text or in a conversation. Many words, of course, have more than one meaning.

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noted earlier, one major data set shows that reading readiness gaps between high SES Blacks and Whites are relatively small in the preschool years, but grow rapidly during the primary grades.123 For strategy development purposes, additional research is needed to reconcile these differences. In the vocabulary area in particular, at least one leading researcher believes that studies need to be mounted to develop a much more detailed picture of the “vocabulary landscape.”124 Despite the uncertainties in this area, other research in the 0-5 period suggests that there are substantial within-class differences in the use of strategies that contribute to emergent literacy. Among the most notable are within-class differences in the percentages of parents from different racial/ethnic groups that read frequently to their young children. For example, as discussed earlier, there is evidence that in families in which the mothers have college degrees a much larger percentage of White parents than Black parents read daily to their young children; and, similarly, a much larger percentage of White parents read daily to their children than non-English-speaking Hispanic parents (see Table 9). Even in this area, much more needs to be learned about these patterns for strategy development purposes. For example, more information is needed on parent-child language experiences associated with reading, such as the nature of the questions and discussions that emerge from the reading experience. These discussions provide opportunities for children to learn new words; to experience their use in different ways; to acquire other information along with the words; and to ask and to answer questions that provide foundations for later, more advanced individual and group examination of the meaning and interpretation of texts in school. Despite the need for additional information, based on the existing evidence of overall and within-class differences in parenting patterns between African Americans and Whites that are correlated with school readiness and academic achievement, Ronald Ferguson, a scholar who has studied Black-White achievement gaps for many years, has called for extensive efforts to help African American and Latino parents to strengthen and enhance their parenting skills as part of what he calls a “national movement for excellence with equity” in education. This mobilization effort would serve Black and Hispanic parents across all SES levels.125 Existing Infant/Toddler, Pre-K, and K-3 Strategies Arguably, the current movement to develop empirically-demonstrated early childhood education strategies began with the launching the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program experiment in 1962. The Perry Preschool Program drew on child development theory and research to inform its design; the approach was tested via a randomized trial; and its long-term impact has been gauged through several follow-ups with participants and members of the control group, the most recent of which was when they were age 40.126 The movement to design, test, and evaluate early childhood education strategies gained momentum a generation ago, when there was considerable growth in the number of elementary school reform initiatives. Many of those initiatives have been evaluated, in some cases extensively and rigorously.127 There has been a further ratcheting up of efforts to conduct rigorous evaluations of early childhood programs over the past decade that has made much more extensive use of randomized trials and mixed methods approaches. The expansion has involved evaluations of infant/toddler programs, preschool/prekindergarten programs, and K-3 strategies. It also has involved a number

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of large-scale operating programs, such as state pre-K programs, rather than just small model initiatives.128 Despite growth in the number of evaluations, there still are only a few programs that have been rigorously assessed from a long-term perspective, such as through high school or into adulthood. Thus, the evidence of long-term impacts of early childhood education programs and strategies on reading achievement, including reading comprehension, is limited.129 That could gradually change, if some of the recent evaluations of large operating programs, such as state pre-Ks, are continued for a decade or more. As noted previously in this report, most early childhood education strategy design, testing, and evaluation work has focused on low SES youngsters who are at-risk of achieving at low levels in school. There has been very little early childhood education strategy work focused on improving the school readiness and early school achievement of middle class children in the United States—and virtually no such work specifically focused on middle class Hispanics and Blacks. There also has been virtually no such work directed at high SES youngsters for any racial/ethnic group. Nonetheless, a few studies suggest that preschool programs may be able to improve the school readiness of middle class children in meaningful ways.130 For example, early evidence from the evaluation of the State of Oklahoma’s universal pre-K program indicates that it provides some readiness benefits for middle class youngsters, including African Americans and Latinos.131 The documented gains of most early childhood education programs and strategies have been of modest size. In those cases in which initial readiness benefits of programs have been fairly large, such as they have been for some prekindergarten programs, the benefits have typically become much smaller over the course of the primary grades. The gains also seem to be mainly centered in reductions in the percentage of children who have low levels of school readiness or low achievement in the primary grades. There is little evidence to suggest that any existing infant/toddler, preschool, or K-3 strategies are producing consequential increases in the percentages of children with above average levels of readiness and achievement, much less have high achievement impacts in reading or in any other area.132 Importantly, from a reading comprehension standpoint, there is little evidence that existing strategies are producing meaningful increases in the percentages of children from any racial/ethnic group or social class segment that have strong reading comprehension skills in the fourth grade, the point at which children must have good comprehension skills to understand what they are reading. In terms of the criteria used in NAEP reading tests, there is little evidence that existing strategies are able to increase the percentage of children who read at the Proficient level, which is the level designating solid reading comprehension skills.xiii On the 2007 NAEP reading assessment for fourth graders, 31% of all fourth graders scored at the Proficient level or higher, a percentage that has changed little over the past 10-15 years. However, there were large differences in the percentages among racial/ethnic groups. While 42% of White and 45% of Asian fourth graders reached the Proficient level or higher in 2007, only 14% of African

xiii Students in the fourth grade who reach the Proficient level on the NAEP reading assessment demonstrate an overall understanding of the text, providing inferential as well as literal information. When reading appropriate text for fourth-graders, they can extend ideas in the text by making clear inferences, drawing conclusions and making connections to their own experiences. See Box 2 earlier in this report.

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Americans and 20% of Latinos did so.133 Moreover, as the 2007 NAEP reading assessment data for fourth graders presented in Table 3 earlier in this report show, large racial/ethnic differences also were present among students eligible for free or reduced lunch and among those who were not. Clearly, there is a need for strategies that can predictably increase the percentages of many segments of students (defined in racial/ethnic, social class, and primary language terms) that enter the fourth grade with solid reading comprehension skills. However, no strategies currently seem to be available with strong, unequivocal evidence that they have such a capacity. For example, the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) of the Institute for Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education recently released the results of its review of reading programs for children in the K-3 years. None were found to have “strong evidence of a positive effect” on children’s comprehension, “with no overriding contrary evidence.” A few programs were found to have “potentially positive effects.” Comprehension was defined as having two dimensions. The first is vocabulary development, which “refers to the development of knowledge of the meanings, uses and pronunciation of words.” The second is reading comprehension, which “refers to the understanding of the meaning of a passage and the context in which the words occur.”134 In contrast, to comprehension, the WWC did find some programs with strong evidence of a positive effect with no overriding contrary evidence in three other areas: 1) alphabetics—word decoding and word recognition skills; 2) fluency—the capacity to read connected text accurately, automatically, and with expression, while still gaining meaning from the material; and 3) general reading achievement—a composite of the other areas.135 Only one program, Reading Recovery, was found to have positive or potentially positive effects in all four areas. Reading Recovery is an intensive one-on-one tutoring program for children who are having difficulty learning to read. Although it provides valuable benefits to participating children, there is little reason to believe that further evaluations will establish that Reading Recovery enables a substantial percentage of the children served by the program to reach the fourth grade with the well above average reading comprehension skills possessed by students who score at the Proficient level or higher on the NAEP reading assessment for fourth graders.136 It must be pointed out that, despite the findings of the WWC, there may be reading programs and strategies, which, with further evaluation, will be found to enable many children to enter fourth grade with solid reading comprehension capacities. Moreover, some may conclude that the WWC review has underestimated the reading comprehension capacities of some programs and strategies. (Certainly, there have been vigorous critiques of methods used to date in some of the research syntheses by the WWC.)137 However, it also must be noted that it is not uncommon for evaluations of programs to find stronger benefits in technical areas of reading, such as in alphabetics, than in comprehension.138 The relatively small impact of existing programs on children’s reading comprehension skills seems to be partly related to findings on the role of the size of young children’s oral vocabulary in predicting reading comprehension skills at the end of the primary grades. There evidently are no existing infant/toddler, pre-K, or K-3 strategies that have strong evidence that they can close large vocabulary gaps on a widespread basis. As a result, those with small vocabularies for their grade have great difficulty comprehending their

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texts. For example, one study has found that children at the 90th percentile on an assessment of sight word recognition were able to recognize most of the 1,000 most frequently used words in English in the first grade and those at the 50th percentile were able to do so in the third grade. Those at the 40th percentile were not able to do so until fourth grade; and it was the fifth grade for those at the 25th percentile.139 Experts on vocabulary believe that schools need to—and can do—a much better job teaching vocabulary to children in the primary grades and in the upper elementary school years as well. Moreover, there is some evidence that doing additional teaching of vocabulary can contribute to higher reading comprehension, although more research is needed on that question.140 Despite the probable value of doing more teaching of vocabulary during the elementary school years, an obvious problem is that it is difficult to envision a strategy that would allow a substantial percentage of those with small vocabularies at the start of kindergarten to markedly reduce the gap with those with large vocabularies, for the simple reason that those with large vocabularies are a rapidly moving target. They continue to learn a large number of new word meanings each year whether or not the schools are devoting much attention to vocabulary development. Catching up with students with average vocabularies also is a considerable challenge because they too are a moving target.141 This suggests that it probably will be necessary to expand the amount of time available for many children to acquire the large number of word meanings during the early childhood period that they will need to emerge as strong readers in the fourth grade. Some time could be found through the use of multiyear summer programs during the K-3 years. In that regard, there is one well evaluated multiyear program that has shown some valuable reading benefits for low SES African American students in a major city.142 Another approach would be to expand opportunities for low SES children to attend two years of full-day (possibly year-around) preschool for three- and four-year-olds. This would provide a great deal of additional time for oral language development relevant to becoming good readers in elementary school. There is some evidence that two years of preschool can provide vocabulary benefits, but existing approaches do not have evidence that low SES children are able to close a large portion of the vocabulary gap that has already emerged by age three.143 This reality is a good reason to consider expanding infant/toddler program opportunities as well. Conceptually, the notion of providing much more extensive language development opportunities via a combination of infant/toddler programs, two-year pre-K programs, K-3 education and multiyear summer programs has merit. Moreover, two multiyear early childhood programs, one a model—the Carolina Abecedarian Project—and the other an operating program—the Chicago Parent Center Program—have shown substantial long-term educational benefits that are related in part to their ability to serve children over several years. Abecedarian provided a full-day, center-based program for children from the time they were infants until they were five years old, as well as some support during the primary grades for some participating children.144 CPC provided preschool and primary grade support. Nonetheless, the long-term evaluations of Abecedarian and CPC do not indicate that a substantial percentage of the participating children eventually developed strong reading comprehension skills.145

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This should not come as a surprise because these programs were developed long before studies such as those of Hart and Risley and of Farkas and Beron, which produced detailed information on the very large differences in language development opportunities that exist by age three between low SES and high SES children, and which documented significant language development differences between high SES White and high SES African American youngsters by age three as well. The current knowledge base on language development in the early childhood years suggests that whether substantial benefits would be realized by providing much more time-extensive early childhood programs would probably be heavily dependent on how the additional time is used. In that regard, it also suggests that much of that time should be used to promote oral language development and related knowledge in a manner that is consistent with the opportunities that the most advantaged children have via the home. Recommendations for Action This report has presented evidence that the overall reading achievement gaps between African American and Latino students and their non-Hispanic White and Asian American counterparts continue to be large across the K-12 years. It also has presented evidence that there are few early childhood education (or other education) strategies with strong empirical evidence that they can help markedly reduce these gaps on a widespread basis. Importantly, the shortage of such strategies also means that there are few, if any, strategies in the early childhood years with a demonstrated capacity to contribute to a meaningful increase in the representation of Hispanics and Blacks among students who have strong reading comprehension skills at the start of the fourth grade—the point at which students need such skills to master the school curriculum. Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that much progress could be made over the next 10-20 years toward the development of proven infant/toddler, pre-K, and K-3 strategies for reducing reading achievement gaps among racial/ethnic groups and increasing the percentage of Black and Hispanic youngsters who have solid reading comprehension skills in the fourth grade. In the most optimistic case, the foundations will have been laid not only for increasing the percentages of Latinos and African Americans who have generally solid reading comprehension skills (such as those in the upper one-third or one-fourth of all students nationally on measures of reading comprehension), but also for increasing their representation among the nation’s strongest readers (those in the top 5-10% and even the top 2-3%). In order to maximize the amount of progress, a three-pronged approach will be needed. First, it will require a much expanded set of efforts directed at designing, testing, and evaluating a number of new or significantly modified strategies that draw heavily on research leads on factors that may influence whether much larger percentages of Blacks and Hispanics become strong readers. Second, it will require much more extensive evaluations of strategies—whether they are existing strategies or new ones—than have typically been undertaken to date. Third, it will require a considerable amount of new research designed to inform strategy development efforts. Designing, Testing, and Evaluating New or Modified Strategies To be effective, the expansion of strategy development efforts will need to have several attributes. A key aspect of this work should be the pursuit of strategies designed to address the reading readiness and reading achievement gaps for African Americans and Latinos that exist at all SES levels. It is no longer sufficient to continue to focus almost

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exclusively on improving outcomes for low SES youngsters. It is essential that substantial attention finally be given to meeting the needs of high SES and middle class Black and Hispanic children. These strategy development efforts also will need to work in a range of schools and educational settings, reflecting the diversity of circumstances experienced by Hispanics and Blacks. For example, strategies are needed that will be effective for African Americans and Latinos attending preschools and elementary schools in large cities that serve mainly low SES minority student populations as well as those who attend preschools and elementary schools in suburbs that serve mostly middle class and high SES majority student populations. This work will need to provide strategies that offer much more quality time to learn across the early childhood years for many Black and Hispanic children, in order to come much closer to providing language and literacy development opportunities similar to those available to many high SES youngsters (who are heavily White and Asian American) that have strong language and reading comprehension skills at the end of the primary grades. This work also will probably need to provide considerable continuity in learning opportunities across the early childhood years to help ensure that the expanded time is used productively in a cumulative fashion. However, providing a lot more continuity is an enormous challenge, owing to the fragmented and incomplete nature of the nation’s early childhood education “system.” At this point, the nation is far from having a universal preschool/prekindergarten sector for four-year-olds, much less for three- and four-year-olds. It also is a combination of public and private programs that operate on very different bases. In these circumstances, creating meaningful linkages between the preschool sector and the elementary school sector will be an ongoing challenge for years and probably decades to come. In addition, the nation’s infant/toddler program capacity is much less well developed than the preschool sector. Despite these challenges, strategy design, testing, and evaluation efforts also will need to work in varying degrees and ways with both the children and their parents (or other primary caregivers). In that regard, it may be that the opportunities to work effectively with Latino and African American parents will be greater in some ways with high SES and middle class parents than with low SES parents, owing to the greater resources of the high SES and middle class families. For example, high SES and middle class Black and Hispanic parents have higher education levels, on average, than low SES parents. That means they have more human capital, on average, as well. These efforts also will need to address the dual language development challenges experienced by many low SES Latino English language learners and the somewhat similar needs of low SES Black children who speak African American English. Finally, they will need to be effective in environments in which the longstanding negative educational stereotypes of African Americans may continue to have a significant presence. Recommendation 1: At least two teams of experts should develop detailed vocabulary lists and vocabulary learning sequences for the entire early childhood period that could help guide the vocabulary and language and literacy development opportunities provided by infant/toddler programs, pre-K programs, and K-3 education for all SES segments of African Americans and Latinos. These

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lists and sequences should be developed in both English and Spanish. The emphasis on sequences of words will be important, because there is evidence that the order/sequence in which word meanings are learned is fairly similar for many youngsters, although some children learn particular word meanings, and many more word meanings, much sooner than others.146 Having two teams undertake this work would provide alternative perspectives on what young children need to learn in this area. In that regard, a leading expert on vocabulary, Andrew Biemiller, has recently made some vocabulary estimates for young children in the lowest and highest vocabulary quartiles, which underline the need for this work. Dr. Biemiller has estimated that children in the lowest quartile of vocabulary knowledge know about 2,400 root word meanings at the start of prekindergarten, while those in the top quartile know 3,400.xiv He also estimates that, over the course of the K-3 years, children in the bottom quartile learn 540 word meanings per year; children with average vocabularies learn about 870 word meanings each year; and, children in the top quartile learn about 1,140 word meanings per year.147 If these gaps are to be substantially reduced for many children, educators need a better understanding of the words and word meanings that most children should have the opportunity to learn during the early childhood years. Existing lists tend to focus mainly on the K-3 and upper elementary school years. Much less attention has been given to the infant/toddler and preschool years, particularly from the perspective of linking and articulating vocabulary and other language development opportunities in those years with those at the elementary school level.148 It is important to note that, owing to developmental and other differences among individual children, it is not appropriate to expect that all or most children should or would learn essentially the same list of words and word meanings, or learn particular words and word meanings at the same time, over the course of the early childhood years. But, for purposes of closing gaps between racial/ethnic groups, such lists and sequences should be very useful. It also is essential to recognize that children’s experiences with words and word meanings will be as or more important than the particular list. For example, in the infant/toddler years, the focus should be on offering an environment that provides a balance of rich linguistic interaction and moments of quiet exploration and discovery. Thus, teachers and caregivers of infants and toddlers should provide opportunities for the children to learn new or reinforced vocabulary through conversation and play; there should not be efforts to have these very young children memorize specific word lists. At the same time, these opportunities will need to be much more productive in terms of language development (including vocabulary acquisition) than those that are currently available for many children—especially many African and Latino youngsters. Recommendation 2: Several teams should be organized to plan an articulated set of two-year infant/toddler programs, two-year pre-K programs, and K-3 programs with associated multiyear summer programs for all SES segments of Hispanics and Blacks; together, they would be designed to provide language and literacy development opportunities benchmarked to those of children who have average, above average, and very high levels of knowledge and skills on measures of

xiv Because some words have more than one meaning, Dr. Biemiller focuses on the number of word meanings that children know, rather than on the number of words.

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language and literacy development across the early childhood years. Although most teams would probably have sub-teams charged with taking the lead on the infant/toddler, preschool, K-3, and summer program components, the entire team in each case would have collective responsibility for ensuring that the segments fit together developmentally. Key benchmarks might include the vocabulary (word meanings) known year by year by children with vocabularies that are average, in the top third, in the top quarter, in the top tenth, and in the top few percent of all youngsters. These benchmarks would be based on the vocabulary lists and sequences developed under Recommendation 1. Consistent with research on home learning opportunities in families with a great deal of parental human capital, the infant/toddler and preschool programs would offer extensive and diverse oral learning opportunities, including those associated with book reading, playing games, telling stories, singing songs, and the like. The K-3 strategies also would provide diverse opportunities, including direct teaching of vocabulary as one component. (Direct teaching of vocabulary is likely to continue to be needed in the upper elementary grades as well.)149 At each level, the children would have opportunities to experience the use of many of the words on several occasions in a variety of ways, including different topics and contexts of discussion. (Thus, the new words would be learned in a manner that also involved acquisition of different “content” knowledge.) This is a characteristic of the language development opportunities documented for young high SES children in the study by Hart and Risley discussed earlier in this report. Other research also has found that, while preschoolers can gain an initial understanding of a word very quickly, it often takes time and a number of exposures to its use for them to develop a relatively full understanding of the word.150 The approaches would be tested in several different settings in order to gauge their value with all SES segments of Black and Hispanic children. To maximize the effectiveness of the strategies that are developed, it probably will be necessary for the various teams to specialize in design and testing work that to some extent targets specific populations or combinations of populations and particular settings. For example, some teams might choose to focus mainly on situations in which most of the children are low SES African Americans who speak AAE, but include some middle class Black children as well. Other teams might focus on settings in which almost all of the children are low SES Latino children who are English language learners. Still others might work in situations in which most of the children, regardless of race/ethnicity, are high SES or middle class, but the high SES and middle class Blacks or Latinos are a relatively small share of the children being served, e.g., 5-10%. Special efforts may be necessary to ensure that at least one team focuses primarily on high SES and middle class African Americans, and that at least one other team focuses mainly on high SES and middle class Latinos (particularly the largest Latino national-origin segment, Mexican Americans). This is because of the longstanding inclination of educators and researchers to focus heavily on improving outcomes for low SES children. It would be essential for the strategy development and testing process to include ample opportunities to modify and retest the approaches. Consistent with that need, it also would be expected that a number of these strategy development efforts would operate for 10-20 years or more in order to provide sufficient time to implement and assess modifications. This would be necessary in order to ensure that modified versions of infant/toddler, pre-K, and K-3 strategies are tested individually and in combination.

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Testing them in combination, of course, would be essential for the creation a mature, developmentally effective early childhood education system. Recommendation 3: Several teams should be organized to create parent/family programs designed to support efforts by parents (and grandparents and other family members and primary caregivers) among all SES segments of Latinos and African Americans to provide developmentally appropriate opportunities for language acquisition and use for their young children across the early childhood years. These programs would draw on a wide range of early childhood education resources, including the vocabulary lists and sequences developed under Recommendation 1. For example, age-appropriate groups of books might be assembled for the infant/toddler, preschool, and K-3 periods. Resource guides could be developed to explain the many ways to read the books to their children. In addition, scripts might be developed for use with many of the books that would offer detailed examples of different ways that parents could stimulate discussion and conversation with the books. Videos might be produced as well for many of the books in order to provide demonstrations of strategies and approaches that the parents could review as needed. The groups of books, resource guides, scripts, and videos would be tailored for African Americans and Latinos—and build on oral language and literacy traditions and practices of many Blacks and Hispanics. For example, the individuals in the videos who provide guidance would be African Americans and Hispanics. In the case of Latinos, the groups of books would include those that are primarily in Spanish for parents who speak little English, as well as those that include many books in both English and Spanish for use in homes in which parents know both languages. Other written and video materials could be developed to provide parents with examples of how to use a range of interactions and activities with their children to promote the youngsters’ language and verbal reasoning development. These materials would be linked to such typical activities as preparing meals, trips to stores, and family outings. Seminars and web-based support mechanisms also might be developed. Traditionally, parent-support efforts—whether programs designed specifically for parents or parenting components of early childhood education programs—have heavily targeted low SES mothers. Consistent with that tradition, much of the work being recommended here would target low SES mothers and fathers. However, it also is essential that some of the teams focus mainly on high SES and middle class Latino and African American mothers and fathers. Targeting them is consistent with research evidence reviewed earlier in this report that their children, on average, are lagging behind their White counterparts in reading readiness and reading achievement, as well as evidence that these parents are not as likely to use some strategies, such as daily reading to their children, as high SES and middle class White parents. Targeting these Black and Hispanic parents also makes sense because, as suggested earlier, they usually have considerable human capital as well as other resources (such as some discretionary income) with which to make effective use of parent support programs. Recommendation 4: Some teams should be created to design and test supplementary education strategies for the K-3 years, including after-school and weekend programs, with a language and literacy development emphasis that would meet the needs of all SES segments of Hispanics and African Americans. The work on early childhood strategy development suggested in Recommendation 2 would involve efforts to develop multiyear summer programs for the K-3 years.

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Additional teams are needed to develop a wider range of language-and-literacy-development-oriented programs during the primary grades that would supplement opportunities provided by the home and the school. These supplementary education opportunities would include after-school and weekend programs for use doing the school year.xv Because they would be supplementary, such programs would have a great deal of flexibility in providing language-development-opportunities related to acquiring strong reading skills, particularly from a reading comprehension standpoint. That flexibility would exist both in terms of children’s interests and needs. Regarding interests, programs would be in a position to draw on children’s interest in fiction, nonfiction, science, etc. Because these programs would target the K-3 years, they would be working with children who are mainly in the process of becoming literate, which means that much of their language development opportunities would still need to be oral rather than reading-based. The programs also would be designed to serve children who range from those who are struggling to learn to read to those who are doing very well. They would serve English-speakers and English language learners. The also would serve children from all SES levels who attend schools in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Importantly, they would include programs operated and funded by public school systems and those run by non-profit organizations funded mostly with private resources, including from participating children’s families, especially high SES and middle class families in a position to pay for some supplementary education opportunities for their children. Recommendation 5: The strategy development teams should include individuals with the diverse set of disciplinary skills needed to undertake the work as well as individuals who have experience working with African Americans and Latinos from all social class levels. Because the teams will be developing strategies across the early childhood years, they will need to include individuals with expertise working with infants and toddlers, preschoolers, and primary grade children. They also will need to include individuals with expertise in emergent literacy overall, vocabulary development, second language acquisition, development of instructional approaches, parent support, in-service teacher training, and so forth. Because they will be serving children and parents from all SES levels, the teams will need people with experience doing so. However, because so little work has been directed over the years to improving educational outcomes for young high SES and middle class Black and Hispanic children or to strengthening education-related parenting skills of their mothers and fathers, the pool of educators and educational researchers with extensive experience in these areas is small. As a result, for this work many of the participating educators and researchers probably will be getting on-the-job training. One way to strengthen these high SES and middle class efforts might be to include individuals on the strategy development teams who have experience working with large numbers of Black and Latino college students. (These young adults constitute many of the next generation of high SES and middle class parents from these groups.) Such individuals might include early childhood education faculty members from public universities in urban areas, historically Black colleges and universities, and Hispanic-serving institutions. Other team members might include preschool and primary grade

xv For an extensive discussion of supplementary education in conceptual and applied terms, see E. W. Gordon, B. L. Bridglall, and S. A. Meroe (Eds.) (2005). Supplementary Education: The Hidden Curriculum and High Academic Achievement. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

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teachers with experience working with high SES and middle class Latino and African American children and their parents. The teams also probably should include doctoral students (serving as research assistants) who could begin to form the next generation of educators and researchers needed to ensure that work on these challenges continues over the long-term. Recommendation 6: Some teams should be organized to develop programs designed to produce a large expansion in the number of pre-K and K-3 teachers who are proficient in English and Spanish and substantial growth in the number of pre-K and K-3 teaching specialists in second language acquisition. Regarding increasing the number of teachers who are proficient in both English and Spanish, priority probably should be given to developing programs for two target groups—K-3 and pre-K teachers who are currently working with substantial numbers of low SES Hispanic ELL students and undergraduates who are planning to become teachers. One of the most promising avenues for strategy development may be to adapt existing language training programs that have already demonstrated their effectiveness for the populations that they serve (which may not be current or aspiring teachers). For example, as noted earlier, it may be possible to draw on the experience of the intensive language programs operated by the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. Initially, programs to increase the number of teaching specialists in second language acquisition probably should target experienced teachers who would become specialists charged with helping classroom teachers in schools and preschools with large numbers of ELL students to be more responsive to those students’ academic needs.151 Evaluating Existing, New, and Modified Early Childhood Education Strategies This report has emphasized the need to develop early childhood education strategies that could contribute to meaningful increases in the percentages of African American and Latino children who have solid reading comprehension skills in the fourth grade. Ultimately students need to be able to understand what they read. This goal requires evaluations that are well designed to assess early childhood strategies from that perspective. It also requires assessments that are concerned with helping understand why strategies are able to make positive contributions toward that goal—or why they are unable to do so. Understanding why they work will be necessary to mount effective implementation efforts. Understanding why they do not work can help guide efforts to modify and retest strategies that show promise, even though initial results may have been disappointing in some respects. It also will be necessary for evaluations to identify clearly which students are and are not benefiting from particular strategies. There is no reason to assume that most strategies will produce similar results for most students in most situations. For example, strategies that help many children who are lagging behind in reading readiness and reading achievement may be of little or no benefit to many youngsters who are already above average on measures of reading readiness or reading achievement. Results also may vary considerably from location to location. Recommendation 1: Evaluations of early childhood education strategies that show substantial positive results for Hispanic and Black children on measures of reading readiness or reading achievement should frequently follow samples of children through at least the fourth grade, and in some cases for many years

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longer, in order to gauge potential impacts on reading comprehension as students move into the upper elementary school years and beyond. For example, evaluations of several state prekindergarten programs are showing some initially positive reading readiness impacts.152 These programs may be good candidates for conducting evaluations that follow participating children and control groups at least through the fourth grade. Ideally, they would be followed into the middle school and high school years in some cases. Recommendation 2: Evaluations should include large enough numbers of children to determine whether strategies increase the percentages of African American and Latino children who reach average, well above average, and high levels of reading comprehension in the fourth grade and beyond. For example, evaluations might look at whether there are meaningful increases in the percentages of Black or Latino children who score in the top half, top third, top quarter, and top tenth (or higher) of students on measures of reading comprehension on nationally normed assessments in the fourth grade. The samples would need to be large, if this is to be done not only on an overall racial/ethnic group basis, but also by SES segments for each group and by language status within each SES segment. Recommendation 3: Evaluations should collect extensive social class information on the participating children and their parents. Good social class information is needed to determine if there are meaningful reading readiness and reading achievement benefits for various SES segments of Hispanic and African American children. Ideally, information would be gathered on the education levels of parents (and grandparents), as well as on one or two other SES measures, such as family income, family net worth, and/or the occupations of parents. Recommendation 4: New Spanish language assessments should be developed to monitor Latino children’s knowledge of Spanish across the early childhood years. Although there is considerable information on the limited English language skills of young low SES Hispanic children from immigrant families in which the parents have relatively little formal education and speak mainly Spanish, much less is known about the Spanish skills of these children. Better Spanish language assessments are needed to assess the children’s development in Spanish in order to help guide the development of early childhood strategies, including approaches that provide opportunities to learn in both languages. Ideally, assessments also would be developed to gauge the Spanish and English skills of their parents. Recommendation 5: Extensive experience with promising new strategies should be gained before subjecting them to sophisticated long-term assessments. It often takes a long time to learn to implement approaches fully and to make modifications to improve their productivity. As a result, it may take five or possibly several more years before sufficient experience has been gained with a strategy to undertake a long-term, large-scale evaluation, including a randomized trial or mixed methods evaluation. Somewhat ironically, responding effectively to the pressing need for strategies that are proven to produce meaningful increases in the percentages African American and Latino children with solid reading comprehension skills in the upper elementary school years may typically require proceeding relatively slowly in the implementation, testing, and evaluation process in order to do the thorough work necessary to “get things right.”

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Conducting New Research to Inform Strategy Development Efforts A considerable amount of information is currently available on reading readiness and reading achievement patterns of African American and Latino children, as well as on factors that influence those patterns, that can contribute a great deal to the long-term-oriented strategy design, testing, and evaluation efforts. This is the case not only for efforts concerned with improving reading readiness and reading achievement among low SES Black and Hispanic children, but also for those directed to high SES and middle class youngsters from these groups. Nonetheless, there are important gaps in the research base that carefully designed studies should be able to help close and, in the process, strengthen the strategy development work a great deal. For example, one area of need is for extensive research on language and literacy development opportunities available in low SES, middle class and high SES African American and Latino families. As was discussed earlier in this report, there is evidence that low SES, middle class, and high SES Black and Hispanic parents are somewhat less likely than their White counterparts to read frequently to their children. There also is some evidence that low SES, middle class, and high SES Hispanic and Black children lag behind their White counterparts on some measures of reading readiness, and that there may be substantial differences in the vocabularies of middle class and high SES African American and White children as early as age three. However, actual in-home observational data on oral language and emergent literacy environments in low SES, middle class, and high SES Black and Hispanic families is limited. Indeed, such information is really not available for any racial/ethnic group for each of these social class levels for a relatively large, nationally representative sample of children and parents. Furthermore, as also was discussed earlier, there is conflicting evidence on the sizes of the reading readiness differences at the start of kindergarten and on how those differences evolve from a reading skills and achievement standpoint in the primary grades. In the case of Latinos, some evidence was presented earlier in this report that there are differences in emergent-literacy-oriented parenting practices between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Hispanic parents, and that these differences cut across social class lines to some extent. However, observational data are not available for representative samples of Latinos, including for different national-origin segments, such as Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans. In a related vein, there is little information on why such differences exist. In the case of both Latinos and Blacks, there also is little information available regarding the extent to which reading readiness and reading achievement patterns may vary among children from first, second, third, or later generations of low SES, middle class, or high SES families—and whether there also are significant within-class generational differences in parenting practices. For example, it is unclear whether and how education-related parenting practices and other family resources may vary among African American families or among Mexican American families in which the parents are the first, second, or third generations to have a bachelor’s degree or more. (That is the case for other racial/ethnic groups as well, including Whites.) If there are large generational differences, and high percentages of Black and Mexican American parents with college degrees are the first generation in their families to hold a bachelor’s degree, current research may be underestimating the amount of intergenerational progress taking place among college-educated parents from these groups.

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As was noted earlier, there also is evidence that above-average-achieving African American children seem to be making less academic progress than their below average achieving counterparts in schools in which a large percentage of the students are Black. More information is needed on the extent to which this pattern is present in the primary grades and what factors may be contributing to it. For example, is there less opportunity for average or high achieving children to learn because the curriculum and instructional practices tend to be centered on low achieving children? Are other factors involved? Are there schools that seem to be avoiding this pattern? If so, why are they able to do so? In a related vein, the language development opportunities in preschools that serve mostly low SES African American children may be geared de facto mainly to youngsters who are behind in vocabulary development and in other areas of emergent literacy. To the extent that is the case, the vocabulary development and emergent literacy opportunities may often be too limited for Black children who are average or above average in these areas. The continuing public discussion of the negative intellectual stereotype of Blacks, coupled with research indicating that the stereotype can undermine learning among some African American students, raises questions about: 1) the extent to which the negative stereotype is held by educators in prekindergarten programs and in the primary grades; and 2) whether and how it influences interactions between some educators and African American children in ways that negatively impact their language development and reading readiness and reading achievement. There is a need for information on these questions for preschools and elementary schools serving low SES, middle class, and high SES Black children. It also may prove necessary to look at infant/toddler programs. There also may be social class and cultural differences that negatively influence interactions between Hispanic and African American children and educators as early as the preschool years. For instance, this could be the case for some low SES Black children who are speakers of African American English. Consequently, there is a need for observational information on interactions between these children and their educators over a period of several years—from the start of preschool through fourth grade and beyond. It may be necessary to examine experiences in infant/toddler programs in this area as well. Recommendation 1: A longitudinal study of a large national sample of African American, Latino, non-Hispanic White, and Asian American children, stratified by SES, should be undertaken that would be designed to document both the language and literacy development opportunities and the language and literacy development trajectories of low SES, middle class, and high SES youngsters from each of these racial/ethnic groups from birth through at least the end of the fourth grade.xvi The study would go through at least the fourth grade in order to be able to assess the children’s language skills at the point where they need solid reading comprehension skills to succeed in school. Following them much further—into the

xvi Ideally, this study also would include Native Americans. However, owing to the enormous diversity of Native Americans, the small size of many tribes, and the fact that many do not live on tribal lands may mean that a parallel study for Native Americans should be designed that would be closely aligned with the one being proposed for Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians.

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middle school and high school years— would be desirable to see if gains in reading comprehension are sustained. It would be necessary for the sample to be stratified by SES in order to ensure that sufficient numbers of high SES, middle class, and low SES children from each group are included in the study to draw conclusions about language development opportunities and trajectories for each SES segment of each group. Regarding SES criteria, the most important one probably would be parent education level because it is a general measure of the opportunities of parents to acquire human capital via formal schooling. However, others, including family income, should be used as well. For instance, very low income may prove important from the perspective of assessing the impact of extremely low SES circumstances (including intensive, long-term poverty) on language and literacy development opportunities and trajectories. Preferably, the number of children in each SES segment would be large enough to look at children who are from both first and second generation low SES, middle class, and high SES families in order to determine the extent to which language development opportunities and trajectories may change with more than one generation of participation in a particular SES segment. For instance, it might be hypothesized that second generation high SES African American children would have somewhat stronger language and literacy development opportunities and trajectories than first generation high SES African American youngsters. It also might be hypothesized that Black children who are in the second generation of very low SES circumstances (extreme poverty) may have even weaker language and literacy development opportunities and trajectories than first generation Black children in very low SES circumstances. Among Latinos, it would be desirable to look at the impact of the transition from Spanish to English as the primary language of the home. This would be valuable both for children who are in a higher SES category than the one in which their parents started, as well as for children who are in the same SES category. Regarding the latter, the study should examine how the language and literacy development opportunities and trajectories look for low SES Hispanic children who are from primarily English speaking homes in which their parents were from low SES Spanish-speaking homes; and, it should examine how they look for low SES Latino youngsters who are from Spanish-speaking families. These are potentially important topics because of evidence from NAEP that a lower percentage of low SES Latino fourth-graders who are English speakers read at the Proficient level than low SES White English speakers; and, only a very small percentage of low SES Hispanic ELLs are able to read at the Proficient level in the fourth grade. (These are especially important matters for Mexican American children. In addition to being the largest segment of Hispanics, many Mexican American children are from low SES immigrant families and a substantial number are from low SES families in which the parents are native-born and English speakers.)153 In order to gather information on the children’s language and literacy development opportunities and their actual language and literacy development over the early childhood years, it will be necessary to: 1) conduct extensive observations of their language and related experiences in their homes, external child care circumstances, and their formal education environments; 2) use a variety of instruments to gather additional information on their home, child care, and formal education circumstances; and 3) use a variety of instruments to assess the children’s language development (including vocabulary), reading readiness, and reading achievement (including reading comprehension).

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Recommendation 2: A study of a sample of elementary schools serving mainly low SES Latinos, mainly low SES African Americans, and mainly low SES Whites should be conducted to assess the reading-related curricular and instructional opportunities provided to low SES children who are in the first (bottom) quartile, second quartile, third quartile, and fourth (top) quartile on measures of reading readiness and reading achievement at the start of each school year from kindergarten through fourth grade. The study would be designed in part to determine the extent to which curriculum and instruction tends to be tilted toward any of these segments of children in the classrooms of these schools. For example, because a large percentage of the youngsters in these schools would be characterized as educationally at-risk and there is some evidence that schools with large percentages of African Americans often see more limited achievement gains among above average and high achieving Black students than among low achieving ones, the study would look at whether learning opportunities in the mostly African American schools tend to be tilted toward the needs of Black children with low levels of reading achievement and what strategies are used to meet the needs of the Black children in the top half of the achievement distribution. For schools serving many low SES Hispanic ELLs, the study would look at the extent to which opportunities for these children to learn to read in English tend to focus on the needs of the children with the most limited English skills and what strategies are used to meet the needs of the Hispanic youngsters who have more knowledge of English. The study also would look at other factors that may limit reading-related learning opportunities in schools serving heavily low SES student populations, such as high student mobility rates, high levels of teacher turnover and associated high percentages of inexperienced teachers, and extensive use of substitute teachers. Both teacher-created assessments and standardized assessments would be used to gauge the reading progress of the students who began the school year at various achievement levels from low to high. As benchmarks for the degree of challenge of the reading-related curriculum and instruction in these schools, a sample of schools serving mostly middle class and mostly high SES Whites also would be included. As a result, in addition to assessing within-school differences in learning opportunities for the schools serving mainly low SES children, this study also would provide information on differences between those schools and schools serving more advantaged White student populations. Ideally, the latter schools also would include a sufficient number of middle class and high SES Latino and African American children to assess their learning opportunities within theses schools relative to those of their White counterparts, as well as compare them to the opportunities of the Black and Hispanic youngsters in the low SES schools. Recommendation 3: A longitudinal study of preschools and elementary schools should be conducted that would assess the quality of teacher-child interactions for low SES, middle class, and high SES African American and Latino children. This study would be concerned with gathering evidence regarding whether the negative intellectual stereotype of African Americans, or social class or cultural differences between teachers and Black and Latino children, may be limiting language development or reading development opportunities for some Hispanic and African American youngsters in preschool and/or the primary grades.

57

This heavily observational study would need to include urban, suburban, and rural preschools and elementary schools that serve: 1) mostly low SES African American children who speak African American English; 2) mostly low SES Latino youngsters who are English language learners; 3) mostly middle class or high SES Whites, but include a minority of middle class or high SES Blacks and Hispanics; 3) a mix of low SES and lower middle class Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics; and 4) a mix of high SES and middle class Whites and high SES, middle class, and low SES Latinos and African Americans. The study would be longitudinal, so that the experiences of the children could be monitored over a period of years beginning, say, in preschools and prekindergartens and following them through the primary grades on into the upper elementary school grades (and beyond, if possible). From at least the start of kindergarten, it would be desirable to have assessments of the children’s reading readiness and achievement in order to gauge how White, Black, and Hispanic children from different SES levels but similar readiness and achievement levels interact with the teachers. Observational and other information on interactions between the teachers and the Latino, African American, and White parents also should be gathered. Funding the Recommendations Acting on the recommendations presented here would involve mounting many large, complex, expensive initiatives that in some cases would require 20 years (and possibly many more) of sustained work. Currently, no departments or agencies of the federal government seem well positioned to underwrite such long-term education R&D endeavors, especially with the scale, scope, and continuity that will be needed. In addition, few, if any, private grantmaking foundations have experience underwriting such initiatives—much less experience underwriting several such initiatives at the same time.154 As a result, it seems unlikely that federal agencies or existing private grantmaking foundations will be able to underwrite more than a small part of this R&D agenda. Consequently, it is recommended that leaders of a group of existing foundations give high priority to facilitating the creation of some new education R&D foundations that would specialize in funding the kind of long-term strategy development and related work proposed in this report. This is an era in which there are many wealthy individuals who could endow new foundations chartered to fund long-term education R&D focused on increasing the number of strategies proven to raise achievement in many areas for various segments of the nation’s students, including those that are the focus of this report. Leaders of a group of existing foundations should be able to build a strong case that some wealthy individuals do so over the next few years.155 After all, few, if any, educational challenges in the United States are more compelling than developing solutions to the achievement gaps experienced by African Americans and Latinos in reading and most other academic areas.

58

Appendix 1

National Assessment of Educational Progress Achievement Data for Racial/Ethnic Groups in Six Subjects

The tables in this appendix present achievement data for fourth-graders and twelfth-graders in public schools nationally from recent National Assessment of Educational Progress assessments in six areas—civics, geography, U.S. history, mathematics, science, and writing. Similar to the NAEP reading data for fourth-graders and twelfth-graders presented in the body of this report, the data presented here for racial/ethnic groups are broken down by social class. As in the case of the reading data, the SES marker for fourth-graders is their eligibility for free or reduced lunch; and, for twelfth-graders it is the education level of their parents. Also similar to the reading data, the fourth-grade data for the six subjects are disaggregated further by the language status of the students, i.e., whether they are English language learners or English speakers. The achievement patterns for fourth-graders and twelfth-graders in each of the six subjects are generally similar to the achievement patterns in reading. Specifically, Latinos and African Americans (and Native Americans) are overrepresented among low achievers and underrepresented among high achievers relative to Whites and Asians. There also are within-social class achievement gaps, many of which are substantial. Similar to reading, the within-social-class gaps with Whites and Asians are often larger for Blacks than for Hispanics. Among fourth-graders, English language learners also have lower achievement patterns than English speakers. As in the case of reading, this pattern is particularly important for low SES Latinos, owing to the large number of low SES Hispanic ELLs in the fourth grade. Students’ reading skills are only one contributing factor to the achievement patterns in the six subjects. Moreover, those skills are undoubtedly a larger contributing factor in some subjects (such as U.S. History) than in others (such as mathematics). Nonetheless, the similarity of the achievement patterns across the six subjects help explain why markedly raising the reading readiness and early reading achievement of Latinos and African Americans will probably be essential for improving their overall academic achievement patterns. Data for Fourth-Graders Table 10 Percentages of Fourth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally that Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the 2006 NAEP Civics Assessment, by Race/Ethnicity, Eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch and Language Status

Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch ELL Not ELL ELL Not ELL

Racial/ Ethnic Group >

Basic > Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- Ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

White NA NA NA 71.3 14.0 0.2 NA NA NA 90.2 39.8 2.5 Black NA NA NA 48.4 5.9 0.2 NA NA NA 74.4 19.8 0.3 Hispanic 27.1 1.6 0.0 62.8 9.6 0.1 40.3 3.3 0.2 80.0 23.4 0.5 Asian/PI NA NA NA 70.9 17.2 0.5 NA NA NA 89.3 35.8 1.8 Nat.Amer. NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2006 NAEP civics assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders.

59

Table 11 Percentages of Fourth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally that Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the 2001 NAEP Geography Assessment, by Race/Ethnicity, Eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch and Language Status

Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch ELL Not ELL ELL Not ELL

Racial/ Ethnic Group >

Basic > Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- Ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

White NA NA NA 66.1 9.3 0.3 NA NA NA 87.6 30.0 2.7 Black NA NA NA 35.5 1.8 0.1 NA NA NA 64.0 10.5 0.3 Hispanic 24.6 0.3 0.0 48.9 3.6 0.1 NA NA NA 75.3 13.0 2.5 Asian/PI NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 83.0 32.1 1.2 Nat.Amer. NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2001 NAEP geography assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Table 12 Percentages of Fourth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally that Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the 2006 NAEP U.S. History Assessment, by Race/Ethnicity, Eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch and Language Status

Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch ELL Not ELL ELL Not ELL

Racial/ Ethnic Group >

Basic > Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- Ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

White NA NA NA 69.3 9.6 0.4 NA NA NA 88.9 30.8 2.9 Black NA NA NA 38.6 2.9 0.2 NA NA NA 69.2 12.5 0.4 Hispanic 27.3 1.1 0.1 56.1 6.1 0.1 39.2 2.3 0.0 72.0 12.4 1.4 Asian/PI NA NA NA 72.9 15.6 0.2 NA NA NA 81.6 28.4 3.2 Nat.Amer. NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2006 NAEP U.S. history assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Table 13 Percentages of Fourth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally that Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the 2007 NAEP Mathematics Assessment, by Race/Ethnicity, Eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch and Language Status

Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch ELL Not ELL ELL Not ELL

Racial/ Ethnic Group >

Basic > Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

White 67.4 19.0 1.2 82.4 31.5 2.3 75.7 33.7 4.8 94.0 57.7 9.5 Black 45.2 6.1 0.0 59.1 11.1 0.4 56.2 13.4 0.1 76.8 26.6 1.8 Hispanic 52.6 9.7 0.3 77.6 25.6 1.4 55.8 12.1 0.7 85.1 38.1 3.9 Asian/PI 72.6 26.7 2.6 88.5 50.9 9.7 86.0 42.4 6.3 96.2 72.2 23.3 Nat.Amer. 36.6 4.4 0.4 68.8 20.1 1.1 NA NA NA 85.9 40.7 5.5 Source: Analysis of 2007 NAEP mathematics assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders.

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Table 14 Percentages of Fourth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally that Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the 2005 NAEP Science Assessment, by Race/Ethnicity, Eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch and Language Status

Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch ELL Not ELL ELL Not ELL

Racial/ Ethnic Group >

Basic > Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- Ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

White 34.9 5.4 0.0 68.1 22.6 1.1 63.4 20.0 1.6 86.8 44.4 4.3 Black 19.8 2.1 0.0 31.7 4.4 0.1 NA NA NA 56.0 14.9 0.9 Hispanic 23.3 2.5 0.0 50.5 10.7 0.2 36.3 7.4 0.0 68.4 23.3 1.3 Asian/PI 38.2 5.2 0.2 68.9 23.2 2.0 54.9 19.0 2.2 87.3 48.7 7.4 Nat.Amer. 24.2 2.4 0.0 48.6 11.4 0.3 NA NA NA 71.4 27.4 1.6 Source: Analysis of 2005 NAEP science assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Table 15 Percentages of Fourth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally that Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the 2002 NAEP Writing Assessment, by Race/Ethnicity, Eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch and Language Status

Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch ELL Not ELL ELL Not ELL

Racial/ Ethnic Group >

Basic > Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- Vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

> Basic

> Profic- ient

Ad- vanced

White 77.5 15.6 0.6 82.6 19.0 1.0 81.8 16.9 1.9 92.6 37.9 3.3 Black 63.9 5.4 0.0 74.3 10.8 0.4 NA NA NA 84.7 22.7 1.2 Hispanic 58.1 4.8 0.1 82.5 19.5 0.9 73.8 9.3 0.0 90.1 31.5 2.2 Asian/PI 79.1 17.5 0.7 91.0 31.2 2.3 89.8 22.9 0.5 96.8 50.9 5.6 Nat.Amer. 59.3 5.7 0.8 71.1 9.0 0.4 NA NA NA 85.5 26.4 2.7 Source: Analysis of 2002 NAEP writing assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Data for Twelfth-Graders Table 16 Percentages of Twelfth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP Civics Assessment in 2006 by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 73.1 40.1 59.7 71.7 81.7 33.0 10.8 16.4 27.7 43.3 5.9 1.3 1.1 3.1 9.3 Black 41.0 17.5 31.9 44.5 50.9 8.0 1.9 4.3 7.8 12.7 0.7 0.0 0.3 0.6 1.1 Hispanic 44.7 33.9 41.0 56.7 57.1 11.0 6.4 8.6 16.1 18.1 0.9 0.1 0.2 1.4 2.8 Asian/PI 68.7 NA 63.8 NA 76.0 32.5 NA 29.2 NA 39.5 7.2 NA 4.8 NA 9.3 Nat.Amer. 41.7 NA NA NA NA 9.2 NA NA NA NA 0.2 NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2006 NAEP civics assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders.

61

Table 17 Percentages of Twelfth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP Geography Assessment in 2001, by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 80.3 57.4 70.1 81.4 87.9 29.7 13.1 15.5 26.3 40.3 1.8 0.0 0.1 1.0 3.2 Black 32.7 21.6 22.2 36.7 42.4 3.5 0.4 1.1 3.6 6.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 Hispanic 46.3 37.5 44.0 56.0 60.9 5.7 4.0 2.5 7.2 11.8 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.3 0.9 Asian/PI 68.3 NA 60.0 72.6 81.2 24.2 NA 13.3 18.8 36.5 1.7 NA 0.0 0.6 3.3 Nat.Amer. NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2001 NAEP geography assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Table 18 Percentages of Twelfth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP U.S. History Assessment in 2006, by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 54.4 19.4 35.3 53.1 64.8 15.7 2.7 5.8 11.3 22.3 1.3 0.1 0.4 0.5 2.1 Black 18.8 11.2 10.0 20.2 25.7 1.9 0.7 0.5 1.7 3.3 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.3 Hispanic 25.0 16.2 21.9 31.2 40.2 3.9 1.0 3.4 4.7 9.2 0.2 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.5 Asian/PI 55.3 NA 42.2 44.2 68.6 20.4 NA 13.0 7.0 28.9 2.7 NA 1.0 0.0 4.3 Nat.Amer. 31.9 NA NA NA NA 4.0 NA NA NA NA 0.0 NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2006 NAEP U.S. history assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Table 19 Percentages of Twelfth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP Mathematics Assessment in 2005, by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 69.2 44.1 55.7 66.0 79.7 27.7 7.4 15.0 21.9 37.9 2.5 0.1 0.5 1.1 4.1 Black 30.0 19.8 20.0 39.9 32.4 5.4 5.5 2.2 7.2 6.5 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 Hispanic 37.8 30.2 32.8 46.7 51.2 6.9 5.6 4.0 8.6 11.9 0.4 0.3 0.2 1.1 0.2 Asian/PI 71.5 NA NA NA 83.0 33.5 NA NA NA 45.4 6.3 NA NA NA 11.1 Nat.Amer. 41.2 NA NA NA NA 5.0 NA NA NA NA 1.2 NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2005 NAEP mathematics assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders.

62

Table 20 Percentages of Twelfth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP Science Assessment in 2005, by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 63.7 35.3 50.2 65.8 71.8 22.9 6.8 12.7 19.9 30.5 2.3 0.2 0.6 1.5 3.7 Black 18.6 9.6 9.1 20.4 25.8 2.3 0.5 0.3 2.2 4.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.3 Hispanic 28.2 20.5 26.0 36.0 38.7 4.7 1.6 3.3 7.7 8.1 0.5 0.0 0.1 0.7 1.6 Asian/PI 57.5 NA 43.3 53.8 73.6 21.5 NA 13.4 16.4 31.9 2.6 NA 1.5 0.6 4.3 Nat.Amer. 47.5 NA NA NA NA 13.0 NA NA NA NA 0.2 NA NA NA NA Source: Analysis of 2005 NAEP science assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders. Table 21 Percentages of Twelfth-Graders in Public Schools Nationally Who Scored At or Above the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced Levels on the NAEP Writing Assessment in 2007, by Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Level

At or Above Basic At or Above Proficient Advanced Racial/ Ethnic Group

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

All No H.S. Deg.

H.S. Deg.

Some Post- Sec. Ed.

Bach. Deg. or More

White 85.6 67.8 76.3 86.8 91.3 28.6 9.1 14.7 24.4 37.3 1.1 0.0 0.3 0.6 1.7 Black 68.0 57.5 61.5 74.6 71.9 8.4 3.4 5.8 8.9 11.3 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.3 Hispanic 70.5 66.5 67.4 79.2 75.8 10.5 7.2 8.3 13.8 15.8 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.2 Asian/PI 85.5 71.1 80.7 88.4 91.0 29.9 17.8 20.0 23.9 38.6 1.4 0.3 0.9 0.6 2.1 Nat.Amer. 69.4 NA NA 78.7 80.5 11.9 NA NA 12.8 19.8 0.1 NA NA NA 0.5 Source: Analysis of 2007 NAEP writing assessment data by L. S. Miller. Note: Asian/PI refers to Asians and Pacific Islanders.

63

Appendix 2

Attendees of May 18-19, 2007 Meeting on Developing a Literacy-Oriented Early

Childhood Education Strategy Design, Testing, and Evaluation Agenda for African Americans and Latinos

Meeting Participants Dr. Diane August Senior Research Scientist Center for Applied Linguistics Dr. Oscar A. Barbarin III L. Richardson and Emily Preyer Bicentennial Distinguished Professor for Strengthening Families School of Social Work University of North Carolina Dr. Geoffrey D. Borman Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, Educational Policy Studies, and Educational Psychology School of Education University of Wisconsin-Madison Dr. James Christie Professor of Curriculum and Instruction Mary Lou Fulton College of Education Arizona State University Dr. David Dickinson Professor of Education Peabody College of Education and Human Development Vanderbilt University Dr. Linda M. Espinosa Professor of Early Childhood Education College of Education University of Missouri-Columbia Dr. Allison Sidle Fuligni Associate Research Scientist Center for Improving Child Care Quality Graduate School of Education and Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles Dr. Eugene E. Garcia Vice President for Education Partnerships Arizona State University

64

Dr. Edmund W. Gordon John Musser Professor of Psychology Emeritus Yale University and Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus Teachers College, Columbia University Dr. James A. Griffin Director, Early Learning and School Readiness Program Child Development and Behavior Branch National Institute of Child Health & Human Development Mr. L. Scott Miller Executive Director, National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics Arizona State University Dr. Elsie Moore Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Arizona State University West Dr. Michael T. Nettles Senior Vice President, Policy Evaluation and Research Center Educational Testing Service Dr. Robert Rueda Professor Rossier School of Education University of Southern California Dr. Rebeca Valdivia Senior Research Associate Center for Child and Family Studies WestEd Dr. Ann-Marie Wiese Senior Research Associate Center for Child and Family Studies WestEd Meeting Observers Dr. Erika Beltran Children, Families, and Communities Program Fellow David and Lucile Packard Foundation Dr. Kimber Bogard Postdoctoral Fellow/Program Associate Pre-K3 Research and Evaluation Forum and Young Scholars Program Foundation for Child Development

65

Dr. Susan Gordon Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Retired College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Other Attendees from Arizona State University Ms. Amara Scott Andrews Director of Strategic Communications, National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics Arizona State University Ms. Delis Cuellar Research Associate, National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics Arizona State University Mr. Bryant Jensen Research Associate, National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics Arizona State University Dr. Mehmet “Dali” Ozturk Executive Director, Research & Evaluation Office of the Vice President for Education Partnerships Arizona State University

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Endnotes 1 For example, very limited progress has been made since the early 1990s in reducing gaps in standardized test scores on the elementary and secondary levels between Hispanics and Whites and between Blacks and Whites. See Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Donahue, P. (2007). The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2007. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics; and Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Dion, G. (2007). The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2007. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. 2 Hernandez, D. (2006). Unpublished tables on the 0-8 population in the 2000 Census prepared for the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. 3 Hamilton, B. E., Martin, J. A., and Ventura, S. J. (2007). “Births: Preliminary Data for 2006,” National Vital Statistics Reports, 56(7), 1-18. 4 See for example, Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Donahue, P. (2007); and Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Dion, G. (2007). 5 Miller, L.S. (1995). An American Imperative: Accelerating Minority Educational Advancement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 6 For Hispanic-focused data on this topic, see Reardon, S.F., and Galindo, C. (2006). Patterns of Hispanic Students’ Math and English Literacy Test Scores. Report to the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Craig, H.K., and Washington, J.A. (2006). “Recent Research on the Language and Literacy Skills of African American Students in the Early Years,” in Dickinson, D.K., and Neuman, S.B. (Eds.), Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Volume 2. New York: Guilford Press, 198-210. 10 Institute for Education Sciences (2007). Education Research Grants Request for Applications, Application Number: IES-NCER-2008-01. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute for Education Sciences, April 6; National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics (2007). Para Nuestros Niños: Expanding and Improving Early Education for Hispanics-Main Report. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University; Borman, G.D., Hewes, G.M., Overman, L.T., and Brown, S. (2003). “Comprehensive School Reform and Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research, 73 (2), 125-230; Miller, L.S. (2004). Promoting Sustained Growth in the Representation of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans Among Top Students in the United States at All Levels of the Education System. Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut, National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. 11 Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Donahue, P. (2007); Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Dion, G. (2007); Grigg, W., Donahue, P., and Dion, G. (2007). The Nation’s Report Card: 12th-Grade Reading and Mathematics 2005. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 12 Reardon and Galindo (2006). 13 Ibid. 14 Duncan, G. J., and Magnuson, K. A. (2005). “Can Family Socioeconomic Resources Account for Racial and Ethnic Test Score Gaps?” The Future of Children, 15(1), 35-54; Rock, D. A., and Stenner, A. J. (2005. “Assessment Issues in the Testing of Children at School Entry,” The Future of Children, 15(1), 15-34. 15 Darling-Hammond, L. (2007). “The Flat Earth and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future,” American Educational Research Association’s Third Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research, Educational Researcher, 36(6), 318-314. 16 Reardon and Galindo (2006). 17 This is a concern because federal studies do not typically draw samples that have been stratified by SES for racial/ethnic groups. Cell sizes also can be small for high SES minorities in federal education studies. For instance, in the case of the ECLS-K, some cell sizes were quite small for African American and Latino children with mothers with high levels of education. For the initial collection of data at the start of kindergarten in the fall of 1998, reading data were collected for only 31 Black children with a mother with a master’s degree and for 9 children with a mother with a doctorate or a professional degree. Among Hispanics, data were collected for only 31 children with a mother with a master’s degree and for 18 youngsters with a mother with a doctorate or a professional degree. For the data collection at the end of the fifth grade, reading data were collected for just 20 Black children with a mother with a master’s degree and for 6 youngsters with a mother with a doctorate or a professional degree. For Hispanics, data were

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collected for 26 youngsters with a mother with a master’s degree and for 14 children with a mother with a doctorate or a professional degree. These figures are from an unpublished table of ECLS-K reading data derived from the public use ECLS-K data set by B. T. Jensen (2007). 18See reading data for the first grade broken down by race/ethnicity and SES from the federal government’s Prospects Study from the first half of the 1990s in Miller, L.S. (2000). Addressing the Minority High Achievement and Minority-Majority Within-Class-Achievement Gap Issues. Paper for the National Academies of Science and U.S. Department of Education Millennium Conference: Achieving High Educational Standards for All. September 21. Washington, DC. The data are from an analysis of the Prospects database by G.D. Borman for L.S. Miller. 19 Guidelines for student eligibility for the federal government’s National School Lunch Program are that children from families with incomes below 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free meals and those from families with incomes between 130 and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals. During the July 1, 2006-June 20, 2007 period, for a family of four, 130 percent of the poverty level was $26,000 and 185 percent was $37,000. Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Donahue, P. (2007). 20 Analysis of 2007 NAEP reading assessment data by L. S. Miller. 21 Shettle, C. et al (2007). America’s High School Graduates: Results from the 2005 NAEP High School Transcript Study. Washington, DC: U.S. department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 22Miller, L. S. (2007). Within-Social-Class Differences among Racial/Ethnic Groups in the United States at the Elementary and Secondary Level and the Imperative of Raising Achievement of High SES and Middle Class African American Students. Unpublished paper. June 27. 23 The trend data for twelfth graders are for the 1992-2005 period. Lee, J., Grigg, W., and Donahue, P. (2007); Grigg, W., Donahue, P., and Dion, G. (2007). 24 Reardon and Galindo (2006). 25 Ibid. 26 Vernez, G. & Mizell, L. (2002). Monitoring the Education Progress of Hispanics. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Snyder, T.D., Dillow, S.A., and Hoffman, C.M. (2008). Digest of Education Statistics 2007. Washington, DC: National Institute for Education Statistics, Institute for Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. 31 Cremin, L. F. (1980). American Education, the National Experience, 1783-1876. New York: Harper and Row; Go, S., and Linden, P.H. (2007). The Curious Dawn of American Public Schools. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, August; Goldin, C., and Katz, L. F. (1998). “America’s Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Economic History, 58 (2), 345-374; Thelin, J.R. (2004). A History of American Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 32 Anderson, J.D. (1988). The Education of Blacks in the South: 1860-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; Smith, J.P., and Welch, F. (1986). Closing the Gap: Forty Years of Economic Progress for Blacks. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation. 33 Weinberg, M. (1977). A Chance to Learn: The History of Race and Education in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press. 34 Bouvier, L. F. and Gardner, R. W. (1986). “Immigration to the U.S.: The Unfinished Story,” Population Bulletin, 41(4), 11-12; Miller (1995). 35 Vernez and Mizell (2002). 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2005). OECD Briefing Note for Mexico. September. 37 Lankford, H., Loeb, S., and Wykoff, J. (2002). “Teacher Sorting and the Plight of Urban Schools: A Descriptive Analysis,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(1), 37-62; Oakes, J. (1990). Multiplying Inequalities: The Effects of Race, Social Class, and Tracking on Opportunities to Learn Math and Science. Santa Monica, CA: Rand. 38 Herzenberg, S., Price, M., and Bradley, D. (2005). Losing Ground in Early Childhood Education: Declining Workforce Qualifications in an Expanding Industry. Washington, DC: Economic Policy

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Institute; Sadowski, M. (2006). “Degrees of Improvement: States Work to Reverse the Decline in Preschool Teachers’ Qualifications,” Harvard Education Letter, 22(1), 4-6. 39 Miller (1995). 40 Bowen, W.G., and Bok, D. (1998). The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 41 Ibid; Cole. S., and Barber, E. (2003). Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 42 Klitgaard, R. (1985). Choosing Elites. New York: Basic Books; Ramist, L., Lewis, C., and McCamley-Jenkins, L. (1994). Student Group Differences in Predicting College Grades: Sex, Language, and Ethnic Group. New York: College Board; Bowen and Bok (1998). 43 Hart, B., and Risley, T.R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing Co. 44 Ibid; Hart, B., and Risley T.R. (1999). Learning to Talk: The Social World of Children. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing Co. 45 Ibid. 46 Weizman, Z.O., and Snow, C.E. (2001). “Lexical Input as Related to Children’s Vocabulary Acquisition: Effects of Sophisticated Exposure and Support for Meaning,” Developmental Psychology, 37(2), 265-279. 47 Borman, G.D., Dowling, N.M. (2006). “Longitudinal Achievement Effects of Multi-Year Summer School: Evidence from the Teach Baltimore Randomized Field Trial,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 28 (1), 25-48. 48 Hart and Risley (1994); Hart and Risley (1999). 49 Farkas, G., and Beron, K. J. (2004). “The Detailed Age Trajectory of Oral Vocabulary Knowledge: Differences by Class and Race,” Social Science Research, 33(3), 464-497 50 Ibid. 51 Brooks-Gunn, J., and Markman, L. B. (2005). “The Contribution of Parenting to Ethnic and Racial Gaps in School Readiness,” The Future of Children, 15(1), 139-168. 52Raikes, H. et al (2006). “Mother-Child Bookreading in Low-Income Families: Correlates and Outcomes During the First Three Years of Life,” Child Development, 77(4): 924-953; Ferguson, R.F. (2005). Toward Skilled Parenting & Transformed Schools Inside a National Movement for Excellence with Equity. Paper for Achievement Gap Initiative and O’Connor Project at Harvard University and the First Educational Equity Symposium of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, October 24-25. 53 Gunn and Markman (2005). 54 Farkas and Beron (2004). 55 Ibid. 56 Ferguson (2005). 57 Ibid. 58 Moore, E.G.J. (1988). “Family Socialization and the IQ Test Performance of Traditionally and Transracially Adopted Black Children,” Developmental Psychology, 22(3), 317-326.. 59 Ibid; Moore, E.G.J. (1987). “Ethnic and Social Milieu and Black Children’s Intelligence Test Achievement,” Journal of Negro Education, 56(1), 44-52. 60 Mandara, J., Greene, N., and Varner, F. (2006). Intergenerational Predictors of the Black-White Achievement Gap in Adolescence. Paper presented at Achievement Gap Initiative Conference, Harvard University, June. 61 Miller (1995). 62 One of the most visible of these individuals is Charles Murray who, with the late Richard Herrnstein, wrote The Bell Curve, which was published in 1994 (New York: Free Press). Recently, Murray debated a scholar who takes the opposite position, James Flynn, at the American Enterprise Institute, with which Murray is affiliated. One of Murray’s recent pieces that discusses this topic was published in September 1, 2005 issue of Commentary Magazine. See Murray, C. (2005). “The Inequality Taboo,” Commentary, 120(2), 12-22. 63 See for example, Fryer, R.G., Jr., and Levitt, S.D. (2006). Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper W12066, March. 64 Shulman, R. (2007). “Scientist’s Remarks on Black’s Cause Furor,” Washington Post, October 20, A2; Dean, C. (2007). “James Watson Retires After Racial Remarks,” The New York Times, October 25. Retrieved October 27, 2007.

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65Asimov, N. (2007). “Summit Called to Address Racial Disparities in Academic Performance,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, A1. 66 Landsberg, M. and Blume, H. (2007). “Schools Chief Seeks End to Learning Gap,” Los Angeles Times, August 19. Retrieved November 14, 2007. 67Harmon, A. (2007). “In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice,” The New York Times, November 11, A1. 68 Steele, C. M. (1997). “A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance,” American Psychologist, 52(6), 613-629. 69 McKown, C. and Weinstein, R.S. (2003). “The Development and Consequences of Stereotype Consciousness in Middle Childhood,” Child Development, 74(2), 498-515; Ogbu, J.U. (2003). Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 70 Ferguson, R. (1998). “Teachers’ Perceptions and Expectations of the Black-White Test Score Gap,” in Jencks, C., and Phillips, M. (Eds.), The Black-White Test Score Gap. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 273-317. 71 Ogbu (2003); Mickelson, R.A. (2002). What Constitutes Racial Discrimination in Education? A Social Perspective. Paper for the Workshop on Measuring Racial Disparities in Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council, Washington, DC, July. 72 Fordham, S., and Ogbu, J. (1986). “Black Students and School Success: Coping with the ‘Burden of Acting White’,” Urban Review, 18(3), 176-206. 73 Tyson,, K., Darity, W., and Castellino, D. (2005). “It’s Not a Black Thing: Understanding the Burden of Acting White and Other Dilemmas of High Achievement.” American Sociological Review, 70(4), 582-605; Austen-Smith, D, and Fryer, R.G. (2005). “An Economic Analysis of Acting White,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 12(2), 551-583. 74 Ferguson, R.F. (2006). New Evidence on Why Black High Schoolers Get Accused of “Acting White.” Draft Research Brief. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, The Achievement Gap Initiative. 75 Kemple, J.J., Herlihy, C.M., and Smith, T.J. (2005). Making Progress toward Graduation: Evidence from the Talent Development High School Model. New York: MDRC; Quint, J., Bloom, H.S., Black, A.R., Stephens, L. (2005). The Challenge of Scaling Up Educational Reform: Findings and Lessons from First Things First. New York: MDRC; Snipes, J.C., Holton, G.I., Doolittle, F., Sztejnberg, L. (2006). Striving for Student Success: The Effect of Project GRAD on High School Student Outcomes in Three Urban School Districts. New York: MDRC. 76 Viadero, D. (2007). “Experiments Aim to Ease Effects of ‘Stereotype Threat.’” Education Week, October 24, 10; Miller L. S., Ozturk, M. D., and Chavez, L. (2005). Increasing African American, Latino, and Native American Representation among High Achieving Undergraduates at Selective Colleges and Universities. Berkeley, CA: Consortium for High Academic Performance, Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California at Berkeley. 77 Reardon and Galindo (2006). 78 Green, J.P. (1998). A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education. Claremont, CA: Thomas Rivera Policy Institute; Slavin, R.E., and Cheung, A. (2005). “A Synthesis of Research on Language of Reading Instruction for English Language Learners,” Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 247-284; Rolstad, K., Mahoney, K., and Glass, G. V. (2005). “The Big Picture: A Meta-Analysis of Program Effectiveness Research on English Language Learners,” Educational Policy, 19(4), 572-594. 79 National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics (2007). 80 August, D., and Shanahan, T. (2006). Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Mawah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 81 Slavin and Cheung (2005). 82 Espinosa, L., Castro, D., Crawford, G., and Gillanders, C. (2007). Early School Success for English Language Learners: A Review of Evidence-Based Instructional Practices for Pre-K to Grade 3. Paper presented at the FirstSchool Symposium: Early School Success: Equity and Access for Diverse Learners. Chapel Hill, NC, May 15. 83 One study estimated that it takes 4-7 years for students to become proficient in academic English in school districts that are viewed as doing a good job in this area. See Hakuta, K., Goto Butler, Y., and Witt,

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D. (2000). How Long Does It Take English Learners to Attain Proficiency? Policy Report 2000-1. University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute. 84 McLaughlin, B., August, D., Snow, C., Carlo, M., Dressler, C., White, C., Lively, T., and Lippman, D. (2000). Vocabulary Improvement and Reading in English Language Learners: An Intervention Study. Paper for Research Symposium on High Standards in Reading for Students from Diverse Language Groups: Research, Practice and Policy. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs, April 19-20. 85 Hart and Risley (1995). 86 Yarosz and Barnett (2001). “Who Reads to Young Children?: Identifying Predictors of Family Reading Activities,” Reading Psychology, 22(1), 67-81. 87 About one in ten of the 30% of Hispanics in the ECLS-K sample who were not proficient enough in English at the start of kindergarten were from the upper three SES quintiles. Reardon and Galindo (2006). There also were undoubtedly additional Hispanic children in the top three SES quintiles of the ECLS-K sample that, despite having the minimum oral English skills to take the assessment, still had relatively weak English skills as they started kindergarten. 88 National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics (2007). 89 American Educational Research Association (2006). “Foreign Language Instruction: Implementing the Best Teaching Methods,” Research Points: Essential Information for Education Policy, 4(1), 1-4. 90 Garcia and Jensen (2007). 91 Goldenberg, C. (2006). “Improving Achievement for English-Learners,” Education Week, July 26, 34-36. 92 National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics (2007). 93 Ibid. 94 August and Shanahan (2006); Zehr, M.A. (2008). “Evidence on Effect of Culture-Based Teaching Called Thin,” Education Week, January 8, 8; Goldenberg, C. (2008). “Language-Learners and Culture-Based Teaching,” Letter to the Editor, Education Week, January 30, 28; Borman, G.D., Hewes, G.M., Reilly, M., Alvarado, S. (2006). Comprehensive School Reform for Latino Elementary-School Students. Report to the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University. 95 Craig and Washington (2006). 96 Craig, H.K., and Washington, J.A. (2004). “Grade-Related Changes in the Production of African American English,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(2), 450-463; Thompson, C.A., Craig, H.K., and Washington, J.A. (2004). “Variable Production of African American English across Oracy and Literacy Contexts.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 35(3), 269-282. 97 Craig and Washington (2006). 98 Miller (2004). 99 Miller (1995). 100 Archer, J. (1999). “Sanders 101,” Education Week, May 5, 26-28. 101 Hanushek, E. A., Kain, J. F., and Rivkin, S. G. (2002). New Evidence about Brown V. Board of Education: The Complex Effects of School Racial Composition on Achievement. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, January. 102 Ibid. 103 For a decade, the Minority Student Achievement Network, a consortium of school districts in 25 suburban communities and college towns with diverse student populations, has been working to find ways to close these achievement gaps. 104 Lagemann, E.C. (2000). An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 105 Birman, B. F., Le Floch, K. C., Klekotka, A., Ludwig, M., Taylor, J., Walters, K., Wayne, A., and Yoon, Kwang-Suk (2007). State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, Volume II—Teacher Quality Under NCLB: Interim Report, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service; Darling-Hammond (2007). 106 Miller, L. S. (2003). Working More Productively to Produce Similar Patterns of Educational Performance among Racial/Ethnic Groups in the United States. New York: Teachers College, ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, Institute for Urban and Minority Education. 107 Rothstein, R. (2004). Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute/Teachers College, Columbia

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University; Berliner, D. (2006). “Fixing Schools Isn’t Everything,” NEA Today, February. Retrieved December 3, 2007. 108 Rothstein (2004); Miller (1995); and Mandara, Greene, and Varmer (2006). 109 Harris, D.N. (2006). Ending the Blame Game and Educational Inequity: A Study of “ High Flying” Schools and NCLB. Tempe, AZ: Education Policy Research Unit, Education Policy Studies Laboratory, College of Education, Arizona State University, March. 110 Ibid. 111 Siren, S. R. (2005). “Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement: A Meta –Analytic Review of Research,” Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 417-453. 112 Okada, T., Cohen, W. M., and Mayeske, G. W. (1969). “Growth in Achievement for Different Racial, Regional, and Socioeconomic Groupings of Students,” paper referenced on pp. 22-24 in Mosteller, F. and Moynihan, P. P., “A Pathbreaking Report,” in On Equality of Educational Opportunity: Papers Derived from the Harvard University Faculty Seminar on the Coleman Report, Mosteller, F. and Moynihan, D. P. (Eds.). New York: Random House, 1972. 113 National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Snow, C., Burns, M.S., and Griffin, P. (Eds.) (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Neuman, S.B. and Dickinson, D.K. (2000). Handbook on Early Literacy, Volume 1. New York: Guilford Press; Dickinson, D.K. and Neuman, S.B. (2006). Handbook on Early Literacy, Volume 2. New York: Guilford Press. 114 There is a virtual absence of discussion of these matters in the references in endnote 108. 115 Institute for Education Sciences (2007). Request for Applications Number: IES-NCER-2008-01. April 6. 116 Morrison, F.J., Williams, M.A., and Massetti, G.M. (1998). The Contributions of IQ and Schooling to Academic Achievement. Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, San Diego; Cantalini, M. (1987). The Effects of Age and Gender on School Readiness and School Success. Doctoral dissertation. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Toronto, Canada. 117 Biemiller, A. (2006). Vocabulary: The Missing Link Between Reading and Literacy. Lecture at World Congress on Literacy. Budapest, Hungary; August 10. 118 Ibid. 119 Hart and Risley (1993); Farkas and Beron (2004). 120 Raikes et al (2006). 121 Farkas and Baron (2004). 122 Jacobson Chernoff, J., Flanagan, K.D., McPhee, C., and Park, J. (2007). Preschool: First Findings from the Third Follow-up on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. 123 Reardon and Galindo (2006). 124 Graves, M. (2004). Do We Need Another Word Frequency Count—and a Lot of Follow-up Work? Unpublished paper. 125 Ferguson (2005). 126 Schweinhart, L.J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z., Barnett, W.S., Belfield, C.R., and Nores, M. (2005). Lifetime Effects: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study through Age 40. Monographs of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation No. 14. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. 127 Borman, Hewes, Overman, and Brown (2003). 128 Horton, C. (2007). Evaluating Early Care and Education Programs: A Review of Research Methods and Findings. Research Report. Erikson Institute, Herr Research Center for Children and Social Policy. 129 Campbell, F.A., Ramey, C.T., Pungello, E., Sparling, J., and Miller-Johnson, S. (2002). “Early Childhood Education: Young Adult Outcomes from the Abecedarian Project,” Applied Developmental Science, 6(1), 42-57; Schweinhart et al (2005); Reynolds, A.J., Temple, J.A., Robertson, D.L., and Mann, E.A. (2002). Age 21 Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Title I Chicago Child Parent Centers. Discussion Paper No. 1245-02. Madison, WI: Institute for Research on Poverty. 130 Schulman, K. and Barnett, W. S. (2005). The Benefits of Prekindergarten for Middle-Income Children. Policy Report. National Institute for Early Education Research, March. 131 Gormley, W.T. Jr., Gayer, T., Phillips, D., and Dawson, B. (2005). “The Effects of Universal Pre-K on Cognitive Development,” Developmental Psychology, 41(6), 872-884.

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132 Horton (2007); Borman et al (2003); Love, J.M., Kisker, E.E., Ross, C., Raikes, H., Constantine, J., Boller, K., et al (2005). “The Effectiveness of Early Head Start for 3-Year-Old Children and Their Parents: Lessons for Policy and Programs,” Developmental Psychology. 41(6), 885-901. 133 Lee, Grigg, and Donahue (2007). 134 What Works Clearinghouse (2007). Beginning Reading. WWC Topic Report. Washington, DC: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, August 13. 135 Ibid. 136 D’Agostino, J. V. and Murphy, J. A. (2004). “A Meta-Analysis of Reading Recovery in United States Schools,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 26(1), 23-38. 137 Slavin, R.E. (2008). “”What Works? Issues in Synthesizing Educational Program Evaluations,” Educational Researcher, 37 (1), 5-15; Viadero, D. (2004). “Researchers Question Clearinghouse Choices,” Education Week, August 11, 30 and 32. 138 Borman, G.D., Slavin, R.E., Cheung, A., Chamberlain, A., Madden, N., Chambers, B. (2006). Final Reading Outcomes of the National Randomized Field Trial of Success for All. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April. 139 Hiebert, E.H. (2007). “The (Mis)Match between Texts and Students Who Depend on Schools To Become Literate,” in Hiebert, H.E and Sailors, M. (Eds.), Finding the Right Texts for Beginning and Struggling Readers: Research-Based Solutions. New York: Guilford Press. 140 Biemiller (2006); Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., and Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. New York: Guilford Press. 141 Biemiller (2006). 142 Borman et al (2005). One important limitation of the evaluation is that there is no evidence as yet of long-term impacts, such as reading comprehension benefits at the middle school level. Also, because the target group was low SES African Americans, the evaluation provides no evidence regarding possible benefits for middle class or high SES Blacks or for Hispanics from any SES segment. 143 Frede, E., Jung, K., Barnett, W.S., Lamy, C.E., and Figueras, A. (2007). The Abbott Preschool Program Longitudinal Effects Study: Interim Report. National Institute for Early Education Research. 144 Campbell et al (2002). 145 Reynolds et al (2002). 146 Biemiller, A. (Forthcoming). Words Worth Teaching. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid; Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002). 149 Biemiller (Forthcoming). 150 Carey, S. (1978). “The Child as a Word Learner,” in Halle, M., Bresnan, J., and Miller, G. A. (Eds.), Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 264-293. 151 This recommendation is adapted from a similar one made in National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics (2006). The authors of this report served as executive director (Miller) and chair (Garcia) of the Task Force. 152 Horton (2007). 153 Hernandez (2006). 154 Miller, L.S. (2007). Needed: A Set of New Foundations to Specialize in Funding Long-Term Applied Education R&D Focused on Developing Proven Strategies for Raising Academic Achievement. Unpublished paper, revised May 23. 155 Ibid; Miller, L.S. (1995). “A New Case for Accelerating Minority Educational Advancement,” Change Magazine, 27(2), 63-69; Miller, L.S. and Ahnert, E.F. (1999). “Educational Renewal and the Improvement of Private Grantmaking,” in Sirotnik, K.A. and Soder, R. (Eds.), The Beat of a Different Drummer: Essays on Educational Renewal in Honor of John I. Goodlad. New York: Peter Lang, 259-274.