Curriculum and Assessment Considerations for Young Children from Culturally, Linguistically, and Economically Diverse Backgrounds.

Early childhood educators and school personnel increasingly will be working with children and families from diverse economic, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. While the student population is rapidly becoming diverse, the teaching force remains predominantly White and from middle-class backgrounds (Whitebook, 2003). This growing cultural and linguistic discrepancy between the children enrolled and the teachers who teach them underscores the need for all educators to develop the skills, knowledge, and, most importantly, the attitudes to effectively teach in multicultural and multilingual settings. Children from different cultures and low-income households who enter school programs speaking little or no English are highly vulnerable to chronic academic underachievement and eventual school failure. Recent research has revealed dramatic differences in young children’s achievement in mathematics and literacy by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) at school entry (V. Lee & D. Burkam, 2002). This article reviews the relevant research on effective teaching and assessment practices for young children from diverse backgrounds and offers recommendations for school personnel. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. A recent national report, Inequality at the Starting Gate, which includes analyses of a nationally representative dataset also demonstrated that race/ethnicity and socioeconomic class (SES) are closely related in the United States and that most children from minority households enter school with a double disadvantage (Lee & Burkam, 2002); however, there is convincing evidence that with high-quality early education provided by sensitive and well-qualified teachers, this achievement gap can be reduced (Barnett, 1995; Hauser-Cram, 2004; Schweinhart, Barnes, & Weikart, 1993). To grasp the educational urgency of the current situation for children who are from diverse backgrounds, it is useful to consider the demographics. From the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K; 1999), we know that children entering kindergarten in the United States in 1998 were 61% White, 18% Black, 14% Hispanic, 2.5% Asian, and 4.8% Other. Hernandez (2004) projected that sometime between Years 2020 and 2030 more than 50% of U.S. children will be from racial/ethnic minority groups. This coincides with the retirement and aging of the Baby Boomer generation; 75% of the elderly will be White while the majority in the workforce will be from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds. The ECLS-K sample of over 16,000 children and families also revealed the close connections between race/ethnicity and social class; children who are Black or Hispanic are much more likely to be in the lowest SES quintile than White children. Low-SES Black and Hispanic children enter kindergarten more than half a standard deviation below the national average in math and reading achievement (.68 SD below the mean in math and .56 SD below the mean in reading for Black low-SES children; .71 SD below the mean in math and .69 SD below the mean in reading for Hispanic low-SES children) while high-SES White children scored far above the national average in math and reading (.70 SD above the mean in math and .64 above the mean in reading) (Lee & Burkam, 2002). We also know that the demographics of diversity are more concentrated in communities with large numbers of young families and recent immigrants (Espinosa & Burns, 2003).