Writer Calls For ESL Focus In Nation's Pre-K Programs

In an op-ed in the Washington Post (6/1, 553K) author Maggie Severns, a policy analyst for the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative, writes about the low academic performance of recent immigrant students within the context of recent reports about rising US minority populations, noting that such students "will account for virtually all growth in the workforce over the next 40 years, the Brookings Institution has estimated." Severns warns that without "an effective strategy for exposing immigrant children to English and building their literacy skills, these kids are at risk of falling behind." In order to address this issue, she writes, Illinois policymakers have combined pre-K programs with "public school services for English-language learners, which has led to new efforts to train teachers who work with children as young as 3. Training teachers who give immigrant children their first systematic exposure to English sounds like common sense - but in almost every state, there is no such push."