Preschool Participation and Linguistically Diverse Learners' English Language and Literacy Acquisition
Year: 2011
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Linguistically diverse learners are a rapidly growing subpopulation of the students currently served by schools and future forecasts indicate that population growth is expected to continue. Students who enter school speaking a language other than English need adequate time and opportunity to English. Furthermore, children who attain grade-level literacy by the third grade demonstrate greater achievement in school and life. Because language and literacy acquisition in the early elementary years leads to later success and English language learners (ELLs) need time and opportunity to master both, it is imperative that school systems focus on interventions to ensure both early and long-term success for ELLs. Participation in high quality prekindergarten programming may be a viable avenue to contribute to successful outcomes for linguistically diverse children in schools by offering extra time and opportunity during a child's journey to English mastery. This nonexperimental ex post facto study examined whether ELLs who participated in the publicly funded Colorado Preschool Program (CPP) through their school district were more likely to achieve grade-level language and literacy proficiency as measured by the Colorado English Language Acquisition (CELA) standardized assessment while taking poverty into account. Previously collected data were obtained from a database maintained by a school district an upper-middle class, large school district in Colorado. The final study sample consisted of 118 ELL students who had complete data from the 2004-2005 school year through the 2009-2010 school year. Logistic regression results indicated that for each year a child participated in CPP, he or she was approximately two-and-a-half times more likely to demonstrate proficiency on the CELA test prior to the end of third grade (p
Author: Tara Szabo Maxson
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2283169818