America’s Diversity of Children

On November 17, 2010, First Focus hosted a Congressional Briefing, “Children in the Recession,” sponsored by Senator Bob Casey (Pennsylvania). At the briefing, First Focus and the Policy Lab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s released the policy brief, “The Effect of the Recession on Child Well-Being.” The brief finds that even a short spell of poverty can have lifelong effects on vulnerable children and families, and provides evidence that public benefits and government-sponsored programs that support children and families play a pivotal role in speeding slow recovery and can reduce the long-term effects of the recession.

This study examines the implementation and organization of the state mandated curriculum in the 4-hour SEI block in 18 K-12 classrooms in 5 different districts.

In the Harvard Education Letter, Michael Sadowski reports that Prekindergarten, not just preschool, may be the key to narrowing disparities in achievement by race, ethnicity, and income.

Hispanics account for over one-fifth of newborns in the United States, and Hispanic children, on average, achieve at much lower levels from kindergarten forward than the non-Hispanic white majority and Asian Americans.

This paper describes what is currently known about early childhood education for Hispanic children in the United States and suggests what can be done to help Hispanic children to start school prepared and to be academically successful during the primary grades.

The 2010 annual release of the the Foundation for Child Development Child Well-Being Index (CWI) is the first report to offer comprehensive data on the impact of the Great Recession on American children’s quality-of-life.

Pre-K students are expelled at a rate more than three times that of children in grades K-12, according to a primary study by Yale Child Study Center researcher Walter S. Gilliam.

The National Task Force on Early Childhood Education of Hispanics describes the characteristics of young Hispanic children and their families.