[lg policy] Houston: Hispanic Immigrants ’ Children Fall Behind Peers Early, Study Finds

[Harold Schiffman]

October 21, 2009
Hispanic Immigrants’ Children Fall Behind Peers Early, Study Finds

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

HOUSTON — The children of Hispanic immigrants tend to be born healthy
and start life on an intellectual par with other American children,
but by the age of 2 they begin to lag in linguistic and cognitive
skills, a new study by researchers at the University of California,
Berkeley, shows.The study highlights a paradox that has bedeviled
educators and Hispanic families for some time. By and large, mothers
from Latin American countries take care of their health during their
pregnancies and give birth to robust children, but those children fall
behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade
school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older. The new Berkeley
study suggests the shortfall may start even before the children enter
preschool, supporting calls in Washington to spend more on programs
that coach parents to stimulate their children with books, drills and
games earlier in their lives.

“Our results show a very significant gap even at age 3,” said Bruce
Fuller, one of the study’s authors and a professor of education at
Berkeley. “If we don’t attack this disparity early on, these kids are
headed quickly for a pretty dismal future in elementary school.”
Professor Fuller said blacks and poor whites also lagged behind the
curve, suggesting that poverty remained a factor in predicting how
well a young mind develops. But the drop-off in the cognitive scores
of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was
steeper than for other groups and could not be explained by economic
status alone, he said. One possible explanation is that a high
percentage of Mexican and Latin American immigrant mothers have less
formal schooling than the average American mother, white or black, the
study’s authors said. These mothers also tend to have more children
than middle-class American families, which means the toddlers get less
one-on-one attention from their parents.

“The reading activities, educational games and performing the ABCs for
Grandma — so often witnessed in middle-class homes — are less
consistently seen in poor Latino households,” Professor Fuller said.

The study is based on data collected on 8,114 infants born in 2001 and
tracked through the first two years of life by the National Center for
Education Statistics. The findings will be published this week in
Maternal and Child Health Journal, and a companion report will appear
this fall in the medical journal Pediatrics.

The analysis showed that at 9 to 15 months, Hispanic and white
children performed equally on tests of basic cognitive skills, like
understanding their mother’s speech and using words and gestures. But
from 24 to 36 months, the Hispanic children fell about six months
behind their white peers on measures like word comprehension, more
complex speech and working with their mothers on simple tasks.

The study comes as the Obama administration has been pushing for more
money to help prepare infants and toddlers for school. In September,
the House passed an initiative that would channel $8 billion over
eight years to states with plans to improve programs serving young
children.

In addition, the economic stimulus package included $3 billion for
Head Start preschools and for the Early Head Start program, which
helps young parents stimulate their children’s mental development.

Eugene Garcia, an education professor at Arizona State University,
said the Berkeley-led study confirmed findings by others that the
children of Hispanic immigrants, for reasons that remain unclear, tend
to fall behind white students by as much as a grade level by the third
grade.

“It seems like what might be the most helpful with Latino kids is
early intervention,” Dr. Garcia said.

Carmen Rodriguez, the director of the Columbia University Head Start
in New York City, said there was a waiting list of parents, most of
them Hispanic, who want to take Early Head Start classes with their
children.

Dr. Rodriguez said the study’s findings might reflect a surge in
interest in early childhood education on the part of middle-class
Americans, rather than any deficiency in the immigrant homes.

“Any low-income toddler is disadvantaged if they don’t get this kind
of stimulation,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/us/21latina.html?em=&pagewanted=print

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