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What Early Childhood Teachers Need to Know About Language

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November 2000
EDO-FL-00-07
What Early Childhood Teachers Need to Know About Language

Considerable evidence exists that high-quality early childhood education programs for children from birth to age five can have long-lasting, positive consequences for children's success in school and later in life, especially for children from low-income families (Barnett, 1995; Frede, 1995). However, such programs are not available for all children who need them, nor are all programs of the quality that is necessary to achieve positive outcomes for children. In fact, only about 15% of child care centers are judged to be good or excellent. A recent study of a random sample of Head Start programs found that, while none of the programs was poor, the level of quality varied, and support for language and literacy learning was weak in many programs. Not surprisingly, children in the better quality programs out-performed children in lower quality programs on measures of learning and development (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1998). Overall, Head Start children's expressive language skills were below national norms, but in the better quality programs, children's scores approached or matched those of their middle-class counterparts.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Education released a study of the skills and knowledge of a nationally representative cohort of children at entrance to kindergarten showing that social class and other group differences are already evident this early (West, Denton, & Germino-Hauskin, 2000). This finding suggests that kindergarten is too late to intervene in order to narrow the achievement gap. High-quality early childhood education programs have great potential for preventing later school failure, particularly if they place a strong emphasis on language development. For this reason, early childhood

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