America's Diversity of Children

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.

Jensen B.T. (2005, October). Culture and Practice of Mexican Primary Schooling: Implications for Improving Policy and Practice in the U.S. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 8(25). Children of Mexican immigrant families represent one of the fastest growing student populations in the United States.

The Foundation for Child Development’s Child Well-Being Index (CWI) provides a national composite measure for monitoring change in the quality of life of America’s children by indicating the average amount of change that children experience between a baseline year and a subsequent year. the method also has been implemented for whites, blacks, and Hispanics to assess trends for each group individually.

The regular production and release of the national Child Well-Being Index (CWI) by Ken Land and his colleagues has been a significant development for the field of child indicators.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to problems that may arise with regard to the validity and acceptance of the CWI because of the use of the equal-weighting procedure.