Findings and Recommendations of the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics

Abstract

Abstract The National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics was established in 2004 with the mission of developing recommendations for expanding and improving early childhood education for Hispanic children in ways that would enhance their school readiness and raise their academic achievement in the early years of school. On the basis of an extensive review of the evidence, the Task Force made recommendations that fell into 3 major categories: (a) increasing Hispanic children’s access to high–quality early childhood programs, (b) increasing the number of early childhood teachers who speak Spanish and English and the number of second language acquisition specialists, and (c) increasing efforts to design, test, and evaluate language and literacy development strategies across the early childhood years.