Description:
Given that children of immigrants form a growing share of the population of young children in the country, policymakers wishing to ensure that their prekindergarten programs are reaching children who could benefit from early education must continue to work to attract and include immigrant families and ELLs. This report is intended to help those interested in improving participation--from program staff to state directors and policymakers--learn from the experiences of other communities about ways to facilitate immigrant families' enrollment in public prekindergarten programs. To understand what strategies programs can adopt to enroll more children of immigrants, we conducted more than 40 telephone interviews with local prekindergarten program directors, outreach specialists, English as a second language (ESL) specialists, state prekindergarten directors, directors of other early childhood education programs such as Head Start, and national early childhood education specialists in communities and states across the country involved with diverse types of early childhood education programs. The strategies described to us fall into four main categories: outreach, enrollment assistance, building relationships with parents, and building immigrant-friendly prekindergarten programs. For each strategy, we describe actions used by local programs and regional program directors and discuss some of the policies, funding, and infrastructure at the state level that they identified as being helpful for this work. Some strategies involve substantial investments of resources and staff time, while others are quite simple and inexpensive to implement. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Publisher(s):
Funder(s):
Country:
United States
State(s)/Territories/Tribal Nation(s):
California;
District of Columbia;
Florida;
Georgia;
Illinois;
Kansas;
Maine;
Maryland;
Nebraska;
New Jersey;
New York;
North Carolina;
Oklahoma;
Tennessee;
Texas;
Washington